Fortune Cookie Theatre Company @ Union Hall
6:30pm, Fri 24 Feb 2006
Score: 3
“In the spirit of ‘3 Dark Tales‘”, boasts the ads for this piece.
What a piece of crap.
This piece of Shakespearean tragedy is sublimely presented, with a lovely elaborate set, and the cast are all obviously talented. But whilst 3 Dark Tales created three distinctly wonderful worlds, inhabited by curious and lovable characters, The Travellers proffers a simple tale, which will be boringly familiar to long-time tragedy fans.
Milking the trapdoor laden stage for the few moments that could be considered clever, The Travellers was interminably long – almost painfully so. The few highlights – the slow motion death scene, the feather duster puppetry, and a snippet of embedded Shakespeare – failed miserably to make up for the overwhelming audio, the boorish shouting masquerading as dialogue, and a general feeling that this production was mired in the presentation, rather than the text. Style-over-content.
“In the spirit of ‘3 Dark Tales‘”, eh? The association is an insult.