Menu of eccentric wonders in the enchanted forest
Festival Latitude Henham Park, Suffolk
There was a moment on Friday evening when a few drops of rain punctured the sky over Henham Park. As a groan went up, though, the clouds pulled themselves together. Bad behaviour on their part simply would not be tolerated – even if thousands of delighted children were running amok on the ground.
Now in its 11th year, Latitude is a festival where atmosphere is all. It is a temporary Eden, where wild swimming takes precedence over hot showers and where the woods surrounding the music arena are crowded with unexpected delights.
Fortunately, its line-up of music, theatre, performance art and dance is equal to the magical surroundings.
Sadler’s Wells have curated a firstrate selection of dance, all performed on a beautiful lakeside stage, the highlight of which was ¡Vamos Cuba!, a whirlwind of salsa and jazz that bristled with colour and energy.
Elsewhere are comedy, lively poetry events and even a charming bookshop for those in need of refuge from the assault on the senses.
It was a typically bold decision to put the Maccabees, who had never headlined a festival, at the top of the bill. But the south London band, who last year released their first number one album, delivered in spades.
The introspective, intricate indie of the Maccabees’ early records has been replaced by a heavier, more robust sound. Marks to Prove It, from 2015, was a wildly ambitious album full of clattering hooks and epic choruses.
Here, though, they displayed an impressive agility, moving comfortably between different stages of their career. The beautiful fragility of Orlando Weeks’s voice was the one constant in a set that gently simmered, before boiling over for the exhilarating final bars of Something Like Happiness.
Every bit as exciting was Christine and the Queens (the stage name of French singer-songwriter Héloïse Letissier). Her swaying synth-pop and knotty choreography entranced a heaving crowd keen to show solidarity with a nation coming to terms with yet another terrorist attack.
Swedish theatre troupe Svalbard bend the parameters of what is humanly possible. In a late-night show that melded contemporary circus, physical comedy and live music, Svalbard’s members performed a series of contortions so vertiginous, it was a challenge simply to remove hand from mouth. They stitch the absurd with the nightmarish so violently it left the audience numb.
Even at a festival where eccentricity is celebrated, their show still stood out. An extraordinary achievement at a far from ordinary festival.