“Coates is an astonishing musician, a quiet marriage of precision and magic.” The Guardian
“Extraordinary, with Armstrong’s subtle directionbringing this terrible natural disaster back to life with subtlety and pathos alongside Oliver Coates’ beautiful score and the Ragazze Quartet’s masterful playing.” The List (UK)
When the North Sea flooded in 1953, it swept away lives and homes in the Netherlands, Belgium and the UK. Drawing from the tape-recorded memoir of a woman who lost everything to the flood, Shorelines – directed by Josh Armstrong – is a music-theatre work exploring the aftermath and effects of the disaster, as well as mankind’s increasingly vexed relationship with the natural world. Composed by Oliver Coates (London-based winner of the Royal Philharmonic Society Young Artist Award 2011) and performed by the Ragazze Quartet, Shorelines sees performers interact with ghostly recordings of themselves, while acting out the constantly shifting tug of war between the current and the remembered, between man and nature.
“Radiohead’s secret weapon.” FACT on Oliver Coates
“A stroke of theatrical genius… extremely effective and moving.” The List
