Wednesday, February 15, 2006
So... in my endless pursuit of intellecrual upliftment, I actually forced myself to go see a play. Imagine that. Even opening night and everything. A friend of a friend has links to the theatre company so he got us cheap tickets on opening from his quota.
The play was "The Odyssey" produced by the Black Swan Theatre Company, as part of the Perth Arts Festival. It is basically a modernised and highly modified retelling of The Odyssey. But to be honest it resembles Homer's original no more than "O brother where art thou". It's all there in spirit... the cyclops, the sirens, the lotus eaters.... the underlying themes are pretty close to the original as well... but it's all been brilliantly interpreted.
Frankly I loved it. The stage was just MASSIVE (check out the picture), there were a tone of actors, and there was music and dance and horror and violence and nudity. It was just spectacular. But it wasn't a magic show either. The whole thing was put together very artistically. The main focus was on the theme of war and survival and the quest for immortality (as in the poem)... and even though it is based on a work written thousands of years ago the whole thing was put into a brilliantly contemporary context. You could relate to every bit of it. Visually it was stunning. The stage was a giant rotating disc, and it moved almost constantly and the effect of that... was just brilliant.... really gave you a sense of time passing and change. Overall the theme of change and time was brilliantly done with lights and special effects showing night and day and moving from one place to another. There were no curtains as you would expect and scenes just seemed to weave into one another... brilliant.
I don't know much about arts and stuff as I clarified before. But this is the kind of theatre I like. Original, engrossig, thrilling, moving and overall terrific entertainment but deeply thoguht provoking as well. Not the kind of bizarro psycho-abstractist by-antels-for-antels kind of stuff that is popular among most people these days.
It's really something to see. They are going to tour with it I believe next year. Don't know how many places they'll go, because it's a big expensive production. But if it comes anywhere near you, definitely, definitely see it.
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5:32 PM
