The script is conceptually quite clever. Somewhere in the United States, an apocalypse takes place. Act One: a small band of survivors pass the time by retelling what they remember of a “Simpsons” episode about Sideshow Bob going on a murderous rampage. Pop music such as Britney Spears’ “Toxic” and Eminem’s tracks, and “Three Little Maids” from “The Mikado” get added to the half-remembered mix. Act Two: seven years later. The same characters are now in a medieval-style touring theatre company, recreating the “Simpsons” story, pop music mixes, and television commercials for just-remembered luxuries like wine and cars. Act Three: seventy five years later. A big high-art theatre production of a new musical….. and it’s the “Simpsons” episode, now given the full Greek tragedy treatment, with snatches of Britney Spears, Eminem and “Three Little Maids” woven un-ironically into the score, like gypsy folk music is woven into opera. A very clever pay-off, and satisfying when it eventually did come.
But Act Three wasn’t until after interval, and Acts One and Two were where the director’s and actors’ contributions were badly needed.
As a director – and as a director working with student actors who are still learning their tools – Sean Aydon’s interpretation of the text was paper-thin. Act One primarily consists of a group of people that we don’t know quoting “Simpsons” at each other. That text in itself is banal and uninteresting. Completely missed by the company was the performance layer underneath. These people are all strangers to each other; they’ve just been in an apocalypse; they have lists of loved ones that they are looking for and, we presume, they would all have different personalities, back-stories and relationship-styles too. None of that came out in the performances. There was a lot of enthusiastic “Simpsons” quoting, and the occasional break-off to mention the apocalypse with no real depth. All the characters looked, and sounded, the same. I can’t even comment on individual performances, because there weren’t any.
Act Two was wildly confusing, because we had the same group of identical characters, and it wasn’t clear that they were performing pre-apocalypse pop culture as live theatre: – it just looked like they were making retro television without a camera operator present. And again, when they started squabbling with each other, because all their personalities were the same, there was no investment in what was going on. The surrounding post-apocalyptic world was completely ignored. A character was shot dead at the end of the act, and the audience was left unmoved.
Act Three was really well done, with beautiful set and costume design by Chloe Wyn. But it worked because all the characters were staged cartoons, and we never saw them as the flesh-and-blood performers behind them. Also, it seemed, the post-apocalyptic world was now on the mend and able to stage lavish musicals with strong production budgets. So, yes, lovely: when style was the driving factor, it shone.
I’ve been asked by producers how you work out how good a director is when watching a show. I say: if it’s a large cast, see if the younger and less experienced actors are at the same level as the older and more experienced actors. When a director is not bringing the actors into a world, older actors start self-directing to compensate. Younger actors don’t yet have the tools to do this. And in this drama school production, where the actors did not yet have self-directing tools, the weaknesses in Aydon’s direction really, really stood out.
Reviewer - Thalia Terpsichore
on - 30.11.23
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