I will keep this review brief, as I don’t have anything kind to say. This show is not an enjoyable experience.  The content is the theatrical equivalent of bad poetry – the text vague and florid, the delivery halting, the performances stilted and unconvincing, the chorus disorganized, the staging frankly abysmal and the whole effort giving off a distinctly under-rehearsed, rudderless feel of poor direction.

Birds of the underworld in mask guide us through this journey – but where are we going, and why?  We’re dragged up the stairs, out to the carpark and down again, made to change direction in our seats more or less every scene and then finally taken down the hall to sit on the concrete stairs, and at no time does there seem a reason that the feeble fragments of turgid monologue or cumbersome dance we witness there require this shift of locations.  The whole thing is an underwhelming mystery.

The finale involves an enigmatic and bland character reading a profoundly unengaging text from a scroll which she unwinds slowly as she retreats from the audience.  Upon her exit a dancer appears who wraps herself in the unfurled paper and spins offstage in the same direction, where she is partially hidden behind a wall, awkwardly sticking out until the final blackout.  This for me summed up the quality of the whole show, a bungled piece of staging that, even had it been performed cleanly and skillfully, would still have held little meaning or interest.

The absence of a programme for the show means I can’t single anyone out for blame – probably for the best.  Most of the cast seemed pretty young, certainly they were unskilled.  I won’t further take them to task – this is the Fringe after all and groups like this can only exist here, at the periphery of society’s interest.  But one has to wonder, with a show so seemingly vague in intention, and with enough seats in the venue only to accommodate around 16 people, who are they making it for?

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