"The set by designer Mirella Weingarten — give that woman a medal — is starkly stupendous. A steep slope runs the length of the stage, spattered with mud and earth like a slice of a Paul Nash landscape."
The Spectator
"Khan conjures up a whirlwind of emotions on and around Mirella Weingarten’s brilliant set, the vertiginous slope of a trench, with dark and evil mud all around.The final moments, as a vast flood of pine cones cascades down the sides of the trench, seeking fertile soil in which to grow, are epic both in scale and in impact. Like Xenos as a whole, quite unforgettable."
Adelaide Festival Review
" Plaudits especially (and as throughout) to dramaturge Ruth Little and designer Mirella Weingarten." - Sunday Telegraph
"Combined with Weingarten’s intuitive set design and the absorbing, emotive music, performed live by five superb musicians, Xenos rarely feels like a solo work. Together, its various elements present a powerful visual and emotional portrayal of trauma. Weingarten’s design in particular offers a striking visual expression of one man’s loneliness and confusion among the grubby, laborious existence of trench warfare."
Exeunt Magazine
"It is a masterly sequence. Mirella Weingarten’s monolithic set, Michael Hulls’ space-shaping, mood-making light and shadow, the grounded sound of the Indian musicians ceding to Vincenzo Lamagna’s free-floating, filmic score – all the elements are proportionate to Khan’s riveting performance."
The Guardian
"Mirella Weingarten’s set transforms the Sadler’s Wells stage into a nightmarish no-man’s-land (...). There is a studied avoidance of combat clichés — no khaki, no barbed wire, no duckboards, no tin helmets."
Financial Times
„Somewhere in here is a reference, too, to the myth of prometheus creating man out of clay, as Khan attempts to shape the earth that covers the stage (an incredible set design by Mirella Weingarten). It is elemental, inexorable, futile.“
The Times****
"Mirella Weingarten’s stunning set design dramatically echoes the soldier’s transformative journey into another identity and place." - Limelight
„The designer Mirella Weingarten was amazing to work with. She created hell for me and she was absolutely happy to do that. She said: You need to struggle with the elements. I said: I am struggling with the biggest element: my age! I am fighting time...“
Akram Khan
