The Masque of the Red Death
We went to the Battersea Arts Centre's The Masque of the Red Death
underwritten by the National Theatre. It was a very enjoyable evening - the kids in particular loved it. The whole place has been taken over and dressed up as one huge and varied set of Edgar Alan Poe's book. The audience explore the space dressed in a very awkward mask (if you wear glasses that is) and discover the narrative. Various parts are quite scary - I was one of a few people watching one of the cast being bricked up in an subterranean crypt - no one was prepared to stay behind on their own in the room - we virtually ran out. The sets are great and the proximity to the actors and the weird presence of the public - certain hairstyles looked extremely bizarre with those longed nosed masks!
So, a successful evening but narratively a bit of a failure - we four walked around separately, and for the entire evening and yet, comparing notes, none of us discovered as much as 50% of the narrative. Personally, I think I came across 25% of the set pieces and had a clue about 10% of the entire story line.
When I saw a similar site specific piece - Crime and Punishment, it was set up in such a way that you had to be negligent to miss the set pieces, here I went through rooms for about 40 minutes and saw no set pieces at all - in places my daughters later found theatrical action.
So, I would give it 9/10 on most fronts, but 3 out of 10 for carrying the narrative - and this was in my opinion a bit negligent. Were they carried away by having too big a space to cover? Did they want the audience to come back (well maybe but can you get tickets? no!) They should have used methods of getting people together - this worked for the final set piece but otherwise I can't help regretting all the parts of the play I missed.
underwritten by the National Theatre. It was a very enjoyable evening - the kids in particular loved it. The whole place has been taken over and dressed up as one huge and varied set of Edgar Alan Poe's book. The audience explore the space dressed in a very awkward mask (if you wear glasses that is) and discover the narrative. Various parts are quite scary - I was one of a few people watching one of the cast being bricked up in an subterranean crypt - no one was prepared to stay behind on their own in the room - we virtually ran out. The sets are great and the proximity to the actors and the weird presence of the public - certain hairstyles looked extremely bizarre with those longed nosed masks!
So, a successful evening but narratively a bit of a failure - we four walked around separately, and for the entire evening and yet, comparing notes, none of us discovered as much as 50% of the narrative. Personally, I think I came across 25% of the set pieces and had a clue about 10% of the entire story line.
When I saw a similar site specific piece - Crime and Punishment, it was set up in such a way that you had to be negligent to miss the set pieces, here I went through rooms for about 40 minutes and saw no set pieces at all - in places my daughters later found theatrical action.
So, I would give it 9/10 on most fronts, but 3 out of 10 for carrying the narrative - and this was in my opinion a bit negligent. Were they carried away by having too big a space to cover? Did they want the audience to come back (well maybe but can you get tickets? no!) They should have used methods of getting people together - this worked for the final set piece but otherwise I can't help regretting all the parts of the play I missed.
Comments