Reviews

If you have seen Cirque du Soleil even on television, you know to expect something grand and memorable.  But there’s nothing like being there in the flesh.  And Quidam, a production nearly as old as the troupe itself, didn’t let us down.  Aiming not to take us into other worlds but to let us enter the world of its protagonist’s imagination, it nonetheless left us with an impression of having viewed everyday friends and strangers as though from the perspective of another realm.

A bickering young couple, Trish and Craig (Lucy Norton and Remy Coll) prepares to welcome another young couple, Olivia and Sean (Anthea Greco and Sam Floyd) for dinner. Trish is snippy and brittle; Craig is jumpy and distracted.  Olivia and Sean arrive.  She’s shy and self-deprecating; he’s cocky and a little aggressive. The couples seem scarcely to know each other, but we quickly learn (spoiler alert) that Olivia and Craig are having an affair. 

Panoptican Collective has extremely admirable goals that aim to increase social responsibility and raise awareness about social injustice. These objectives are fully fleshed out in this play. Six female stories trace the very long history of the abuse, oppression and marginalisation of women across of range of social and political contexts. Each story is inspired by literary and historical figures and told entirely from the perspective of the individual experience of persecution.

Poppy Seed Festival ends its inaugural (and interesting) event with Vicky Jones’ much lauded play The One. Truth be told, the play itself is a pale imitation of Edward Albee’s magnificent Who’s Afraid Of Virginia Woolf?. But where the latter seethes and boils with molten lava of vitriol, the best The One can do is simmer, off the boil, without ever threatening or going over the edge, and so we remain always as observers, never involved in the tension or in any danger.