Rogues' Gallery's The Folk Contraption at VAULT Festival We bloody loved it. Itchy City loves VAULT festival. It reminds us of a mix of the best bits of Bristolian bohemia and Edinburgh Festival. Hidden away in the Old Vic Tunnels, a new performance space using disused areas of Waterloo Station, this brand new festival got off to a great start. Having been overwhelmed with choices, Itchy eventually decided that we wanted to see Rogue Gallery’s Folk Contraption, which was described as "An album of short plays with music. A beautifully ramshackle night filled with storytellers, folk-musicians and a whole heap of city lore." Itchy is apprehensive at best when it comes to theatre - we've seen things you wouldn't dream of (including a man doing an actual poo on stage... don't ask!) and consider the blurb in the programme to often be far from the thing you actually see in front of you on stage - but boy did The Folk Contraption deliver. We were led into a large intricately decorated warehouse room with cushions on the floor. (Itchy recommends you shotgun a cushion ASAP on entering... the floor's rather hard.) Three men with guitars were jamming to one...

Basing our choice more on what night we were free rather than something we were desperate to attend, we plucked at random to buy tickets for The Folk Contraption which is the current project from the Rogues Gallery who are a group of actors, writers and directors who were “fed up of waiting for the phone to ring” and decided to create their own work which is brilliant in itself and should be supported. Also the description of the performance was ‘ramshackle’ which is probably my favourite word and style of thing too. The Folk Contraption took place in a tented-off area in the vaults, and as everyone sat cross-legged on the floor with wide eyes I got the impression everyone was as unsure what to expect as we were. What followed was the most enchanting, amazing performance (definitely living up to the ramshackle promise) that consisted of stories, poetry, songs, music, sketches, comedy and basically anything else you can think of. They describe it as part play, part gig and part magical mystery tour which is pretty accurate! All the performers were so talented, that it was often impossible to know who to keep your eye on as...