Bizzurk
Troupe dart @ The Arch (Holden Street)
6:15pm, Thu 9 Mar 2006
Quoting verbatim from the director’s notes:
Commedia dell’Arte is a form of theatre that dates from the early 1500’s in Italy, and subsequently spread across Europe, remaining popular for more than two hundred years.
Commedia uses leather masks, improvisation, stock characters, physical exaggeration, slapsticks, falls and acrobatic moves, music, verbal wit, obscenity and absurdity.
Bizzurk, he goes on to say, leverages the traditions of southern Italian Commedia, revolving around the exploits of layabout Pulcinella and his wife, Donna Zeza. Our performance also included the evil (and gorgeous) Octavia Pantalone and her daughter Elektra, her husband, her lover, and… Death. It’s all very silly, it’s not always obvious which bits are improv and which are stock, and it’s not un-entertaining.
Look – the only word you need to know is “improvisation”; that means that anything I write about my particular show could be completely different for the one you go to. All I can say is this: the actors are all capable, there’s huge potential to be had for a giggle, and Octavia is a babe. Easy, really.