From the moment you see the stage you know that you are about to experience something out of the ordinary. The set design is amazing and it immediately transports the audience to the putrid town of ‘Helkaville’ out on the frontier of the American Wild West.
Play Dead- Show 115 is experimental theatre and is the 115th show produced by theatre group The People Show. The show is meant to be a visual spectacle, a living blend of the arts. Given this premise I was expecting a feast for the senses, something original that would stay with me for days after the performance. What I witnessed instead however was a surreal performance of variable quality ranging from great comedy moments to over the top melodrama.
Overall the play has the feel of a collage created from several smaller pieces that had been awkwardly spliced together and left me searching for some kind of logic to the sequence of events I watched unfold onstage. I found it truly impossible to connect with the emotions the characters were expressing in the darker moments of the play and as a result found myself scrambling to hold on to some thread of the plot.
The play is only just saved from being truly irredeemable by the actors’ strong comic abilities and the excellent stage design that allows for the dramatic shift between the conscious and unconscious worlds of the characters.
Play Dead- Show 115 certainly is an experience different from anything else you are likely to see on the Fringe this year and I’m sure there are people out there who will love it. However, for the rest of us, especially those not familiar with experimental theatre it will leave you disappointed and baffled by the sheer randomness of it all.
2/5
Matthew Straw
