The Stage

Exclusive: Udderbelly cow to make its London debut this summer

Published Wednesday 11 March 2009 at 10:55 by Alistair Smith

Udderbelly, the 400-seat, giant upside-down purple cow that has been a popular feature of the Edinburgh Festival Fringe since 2006, is to make its London debut this summer when it will play host to a new arts festival on the South Bank.

Fringe operator Underbelly has teamed up with the Southbank Centre to programme an eight-week season of events, from theatre to comedy, music, magic and children’s shows. Big names appearing over the season include Joan Rivers, Clive James and David O’Doherty.

There will also be performances from Tom Tom Crew, a mix of beat-boxing, circus and drumming, The Terrible Infants - puppetry, live music and storytelling - and The Crack, from variety performer Miss Behave - a long-term member of West End hit La Clique.

The season will run from May 27-July 19 and will feature more than 40 different events. The cow - along with the ‘pasture’, which will host a bar and food outlets - will be pitched in between the Royal Festival Hall and the London Eye. It will be the largest outdoor arts event to be staged on land around the Southbank Centre since the reopening of the Royal Festival Hall.

Underbelly director Ed Bartlam told The Stage there would also be a significant education and outreach programme running alongside the shows. He explained: “One of the key things we are doing, along with the Southbank Centre, is an educational programme. So, during the day, there will be a number of workshops. For example, with Tom Tom Crew, which is our headline show, they’re going to be doing beat-boxing workshops, drumming workshops or maybe acrobatics workshops. The other strand will be an initiative which will see young people from the local area come and shadow different employees of both Underbelly and the Southbank, the idea being to try to get young kids interested in the arts.”

Many of the outreach events will be free, while the vast majority of tickets for the shows will be priced at less than £20. During the week, there will be two shows a night, while at the weekend, there will be three or four a day, including matinees. If the initiative proves a success, Bartlam is hopeful the cow will become an annual fixture on the South Bank.

Jane Beese, senior programmer at the Southbank Centre, explained that the organisation had an ongoing ambition to “animate” the 21 acres of land around the Royal Festival Hall and feels that Udderbelly would help to attract new audiences.

She added: “We hope that the cow will help draw in people to being interested in the Southbank programme year-round. Some people might find the building [the Royal Festival Hall] quite intimidating and actually we want to make it more accessible and open.”