Turandot

Benn Beaton — Tue, 23 Aug 2011 10:50:38 +0000

Opening with a hanged corpse surrounded by darkness, Turandot is the tale of Puccini the composer of the unfinished opera Turandot. It seeks to uncover the autobiographic relationship between the composer and his creation.
Using a spectacle of carnal reds and spectral whites accompanied by soft choral singing this play knows how to impress. The variety of mixed media is incredibly complimentary to the plays vision and each of the effects adds to the dream like quality. This play does an excellent job of simulating Puccini’s creative process at work.
As phantoms of Pucchini’s thought process the actors are never required to be believable in their roles allowing them to be slightly incongruous in their performances. They take up multiple roles with little to change their character but their posture. The cast makes the transition between multiple roles very easily and without their quality of acting this could have been very confusing.
This is not a traditional play in any sense of the word. It styles itself as an opera for deaf people but it is more akin to an Opera by David Lynch. An excellent play for fans of dark surrealism or those curious to learn of Puccini’s sad fate.

4/5

Desire

Chris Kidd — Mon, 09 Aug 2010 10:45:11 +0000

Imagine, if you will, a musical that is a cross between A Chorus Line, Prison Break and The Bill. Sound good?
‘Desire’ is a stage reworking of the film “Kvaska” by Mirjam and Daniel Landa. It opened in 2008 in Prague to apparent rave reviews and sell out performances. It has debuted this year at the Edinburgh Festival having been fully translated into English from it’s original text in Czech. The show depicts the escapades of a young escaped convict who falls in love with a stage starlet and decides to get close to her by auditioning for her musical. Obviously he gets a way into the show, becomes the co-star and gets the girl.
The show appears to say that if you desire something and go after it then you will get it. Not a bad philosophy, however in its depiction of this it somehow manages to portray to the audience that bribery and corruption are acceptable, talent counts for nothing and breaking up a marriage for your own benefit is acceptable. ‘Desire’ comes across to the audience as the workings of someone who has read what a good musical needs to succeed but doesn’t know how to go about making it work. It lacks any emotional connection with the lead protagonist and before you know it he has gotten the girl and they have barely even interacted.
There are various points when it is impossible to decipher what is actually being sung on stage leaving you in the bind of having to work out what was said or forgetting about it and hoping it wasn’t important. Each scene of the musical doesn’t exist to complement the whole show and in general the audience leave feeling confused and disappointed. However, the ensemble cast of this show portray what has been given to them with excellent energy and amazing performance quality, dancing the ensemble pieces with flair and talent. The lead female has an amazing voice and the actor playing the musical’s director shows a genuine acting ability that supersedes any other onstage by far.
It can not be better describe than a quote from an audience member on leaving the theatre who said; “It was bad but at least they looked like they were really enjoying themselves”.

2/5

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Turandot

Desire