'Ahoy! The Ballad Of The Time Kraken' is an original musical by Liv Burton, produced by Rocket Whip Productions and performed at Salford Arts Theatre as part of the Greater Manchester Fringe Festival.
The musical is rather camp, fey, improbable, and very silly.. but don't worry - it is supposed to be. Rocket Whip Productions are a female-led LGBT company working within Manchester, and encourage performers with day jobs and in amateur productions to come and work with them. Most, if not all, of the music this evening, were reworkings and arrangements of already published music. There is no-one credited for the writing of the score in the programme.
The story tells (in faux-piratical fashion) of a young lady from our time finding her way on board a ghostly pirate ship, which is travelling in the Seas Of Time, and collects passengers from all eras who have 'lost their way' and need a time and a place for them to realise who they are and have the courage to go back to their own time and continue their lives. I really liked this idea and this could have worked much better than it actually did.
The ship is captained by the eccentric and very OTT Captain Longsocks (Emmy Khan), with a crew made up of misfits in various forms: Babs, a talking parrot (Jake Smeeton), Reggie (Rum Samuel), Sammy (Elliot Brophy), and Two-eyed Huey {who actually has three eyes!] (Joanna Gresty). As they sail on they come into contact with, and do battle with, another pirate ship headed by Captain Brunch (Katie Bossom), with her crew of Ash Brown (Abi Beaven) and Sunny Side Sal (Christina Mellor), and of course, they have to defeat The Time Kraken itself too; a large and dangerous squid which is never seen, and appears only in voice-overs by Ewan Sowerby. Our time-travelling protagonist, who is given the name New Blood, is played by Isabel Nicholson.
The whole show appears to have been produced on (even for Fringe theatre standards) an incredibly low budget. The set was cardboard cut-outs stuck together with selotape, and the cast obviously provided their own costumes, such as they were. However the sound levels / sound cues and lighting cues were all spot on and worked well.
In general the acting and the storyline were both sadly over-the-top, inconsequential, and insubstantial, meaning they were unable to curry the audience's sympathy, and the laughs too this evening were very thin on the ground.
Reviewer - Matthew Dougall
on - 28.7.23
on - 28.7.23
No comments:
Post a Comment