You Are Here review: Danny Boyle’s postwar pop-culture tribute lets it all hang out

By Alexis Petridis•The Guardian Music

The director’s immersive Southbank Centre takeover has vim and ardour in spades, if not complete coherenceYou Are Here is an undertaking on an impressive scale: a self-styled “epic, one-off pop-cultural spectacular” involving immersive theatre, dance, music and a “cast of hundreds”, all directed by Danny Boyle. It takes up a hefty chunk of the Southbank Centre and sets itself a similarly hefty task: “reimagining some of the most vivid and influential youth and social movements that have driven culture forward since 1951”, the year of the Festival of Britain, when the Royal Festival Hall opened for business.“Some of” turns out to be the operative phrase: there’s an awful lot going on, but even so, the sheer enormousness of its subject means a degree of selectivity is necessary. Continue reading...

The director’s immersive Southbank Centre takeover has vim and ardour in spades, if not complete coherence

You Are Here is an undertaking on an impressive scale: a self-styled “epic, one-off pop-cultural spectacular” involving immersive theatre, dance, music and a “cast of hundreds”, all directed by Danny Boyle. It takes up a hefty chunk of the Southbank Centre and sets itself a similarly hefty task: “reimagining some of the most vivid and influential youth and social movements that have driven culture forward since 1951”, the year of the Festival of Britain, when the Royal Festival Hall opened for business.

“Some of” turns out to be the operative phrase: there’s an awful lot going on, but even so, the sheer enormousness of its subject means a degree of selectivity is necessary.

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