Le Company

"What Le Navet Bete does, and with such conviction, is persuade us that theatre is not an elite activity. It can, and should be, for everyone." - ReviewsHub on Aladdin

Hello and welcome to the world of Le Navet Bete!

We are one of the UK's leading touring physical comedy theatre companies having been proudly based in Exeter, Devon UK since 2008. Our mission is to create and tour hilarious, physical and totally accessible comedy theatre using creative and engaging storytelling for absolutely everyone (ages 4 - 104!) throughout the UK and internationally. We are Associate Artists at the Exeter Northcott Theatre and Artists in Residence at the Exeter Phoenix.

A Bit More About Us...

There are three of us who make up the core team of the company - three performers (Nick Bunt, Al Dunn and Matt Freeman) alongside our technical and production wizard Stuart Billinghurst. We first met each other whilst studying on the Theatre and Performance course at the University of Plymouth in 2003 and, since graduating, have produced twelve indoor and three outdoor shows to huge critical acclaim and success.

Our first two shows Serendipity and Zemblanity, heavily influenced by bouffon and non-narrative-based structures, were performed at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe in 2008 and 2009 respectively and gained multiple five-star reviews. As we developed over the following years, our inimitable style of performance became much more storytelling / narrative-driven with hit shows such as The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, Dick Tracy and Robin Hood and His Merry Men placing physical theatre, fooling and slapstick at the heart of it. Dracula: The Bloody Truth has been published and licensed worldwide. 2019 saw us take on Alexandre Dumas' The Three Musketeers. 2020 brought it's own challenges but we continue to tour these shows including Treasure Island and Christmas 2022 saw us perform with other actors for the first time in our co-production of Robin Hood at the Exeter Northcott Theatre.

Making accessible work has been at the centre of our ethos right from the very beginning. This saw us diversify into outdoor performance in 2010, quickly becoming one of the UK's most ridiculously outrageous, much-loved outdoor acts, performing to hundreds of thousands from the circus fields at Glastonbury Festival and the beautiful gardens of the Herrenhausen Palace in Hanover, Germany, to the picturesque Plaza de Armas in Morelia, Mexico, and high up on the side of the Rock of Gibraltar.

As well as performing, we have a widely renowned education programme specialising in physical comedy, performer-audience relationships and play, that we have taught in schools, colleges and universities across the world from the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama in London to the Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico in Mexico City.

The main reason we do what we do is that we simply love to make people laugh. Everyone should be able to enjoy theatre and that is exactly what we hope to achieve. So whether you've seen all of our shows, taken part in a workshop or just passing through we hope to see you sometime soon!

Nick, Al & Matt