The Bear Space
The Marlborough Theatre
Foul Play Productions
Written by Jack Stigner
Puppets by Annie Brooks of Colossal Crumbs
Design by Ulysses Blac
A man explains the nature of the theatre to his daughter in the 17th century and the audience gamble with puppets in the 21st century is how the show was described. Instead we got a wonderfully fresh production about Tudor theatre and entertainment without a single name check for You Know Who, this 400th anniversary year of all things Bardy. It was a seriously engaging fun and electric performance that changed from improvised audience participation, serious reflection on the nature of cruelty, violence and harm in the name of entertainment, some touching sweet puppetry and an utterly bizarre dénouement that ended up with us being plunged into a bear pit re-enacted with audience members a huge bear and some rather menacing undertones. Foul Play Productions, winners of the Brighton Fringe ‘Best Outdoor Event’ 2014, return to the Festival with a wining but bloody tale of bards, barks and bears.
Foul play use a combination of styles; comedy, serious acting, clowning and crowd engaging skills to pull the audience together into the ‘bear space’ and their deft handling of some of the more robust audience participation was a pleasure to witness, always kind, with a hint of direction. This company knows how to pull the best experience from both venue and audience and it’s a treat to go out and see such a sharply written, well acted and funny show with such a gory, shocking punch at the end.
That ending (which I won’t reveal as it’s a big part of the experience and possibly changed with the performance on the night) was emotionally charged leaving us pondering on what we had seen, wanting more and wandering out into the evening feeling slightly repulsed by the whole concept of entertainment and it’s visceral relationship with cruelty both historically, as portrayed on the stage, and currently in it’s many forms of film and TV violence and harm and what that therefore makes us, the audience, for both facilitating, desiring and consuming it.
Thought proving and funny, in equal measure and never fully tipping from one to the other, a high wire of narrative balancing which is not an easy mix but one which Fouplay produce with verve, style and very funny and engaging performers. Great fun.
Recommended.
Till June 2
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The Marlborough Theatre
50 mins
£10.5/£8.5 concessions
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