Tag Archives: Tristan Bates Theatre

San Domino – 2 Stars

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Domino

San Domino

Tristan Bates Theatre

Reviewed – 10th June 2018

★★

“The key players are never given a chance just to be themselves and convince they are worth rooting for”

 

A creaky, wooden interior. Barrels serve as tables, milk crates as chairs. There are shelves stuffed with champagne glasses and bottles of wine. A jaunty band whip up a storm on accordion, violin and double bass, setting the stage for a bohemian romp into the past … San Domino, Tim Anfilogoff and Alan Whittaker’s 1939-set musical, starts with promise, but quickly disappoints.

Eight Italian men in this café in Catania, Sicily are rounded up, labelled as degenerates, convicted to ‘internal exile’ and shipped off to San Domino, an island off the east coast of southern Italy to serve their sentence. Their crime? Being gay. Imprisoned, relationships between the boys (and a woman!) flourish and fall, lives are put at stake and one camp guard discovers an inconvenient (and ironic?) truth about himself. How will the boys get home, and what will they have lost?

The plot is ambitious and its themes vital. In the tight Tristan Bates Theatre, it bursts at the seams. Faye Bradley’s gorgeous set design does its best with a small space. With a humongous cast of thirteen, the ensemble seems restricted in movement, and Matthew Gould’s direction at times leaves the actors awkwardly in the way of action. Generally speaking, the ensemble excels in the musical numbers, with stand-out vocals from Callum Hale and Joe Etherington. The star of the show is Andrew Pepper’s cross-dressing Pietro though. Pepper is witty, flamboyant, charismatic and utterly bewitching.

San Domino’s biggest fault is Anfilogoff’s book and lyrics. With such a large host of characters, it becomes difficult to care enough about each of them. New characters are introduced and new storylines thrown in making such a soup of information that it becomes quite hard to follow. Dramatic leaps are made with little or no reasoning behind them. Songs are asked to carry too much narrative weight than they can deliver. The key players are never given a chance just to be themselves and convince they are worth rooting for. Most disappointing is the decision to give what feels like the majority of romantic airtime to the only heterosexual relationship in the show. What should be a core relationship, and perhaps the only positive gay relationship in the show, is briefly mentioned, forgotten about, and, suddenly, the couple are performing a covert, ceremonial marriage ritual, leaving the audience (read: me) thinking: “What on earth have I missed?”

San Domino does offer a crucial insight into Europe’s fascist history, and its punishment of gay men. The band are superb, and almost every actor whips out an instrument at some point. “Cack-handed” and “Letters From Home” are two songs that show off the skills of the entire creative team beautifully, and suggest that Anfilogoff and Whittaker could become a formidable musical producing partnership.

To address gay history through theatre and song is bold and brave, and though no romp, San Domino is informative, emotional, and a story well worth hearing.

 

Reviewed by Joseph Prestwich

Photography by Rachael Cummings

 


San Domino

Tristan Bates Theatre until 30th June

 

Related
Previously reviewed at this venue
Love Me Now | ★★★★ | March 2018
Lucid | ★★★★ | April 2018
Meiwes/Brandes | ★★★ | April 2018

 

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Meiwes / Brandes – 3 Stars

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Meiwes

Meiwes / Brandes

Tristan Bates Theatre

Reviewed – 28th April 2018

★★★

“in need of work to bring it up to its full potential”

 

Performed at the Tristan Bates Theatre, Meiwes / Brandes is a new musical based on the grisly true story of Armin Meiwes and Bernd Brandes. The entire piece was co-written and co-directed by the cast of four graduates from RADA. The story follows Meiwes, played by Harriet Taylor, who was a German repair technician turned cannibal, who searched the internet in hopes to find a willing victim. Brandes, played by Scott Howland, was his eager prey, offering himself up to be consumed. Aurora Richardson and Laura Dorn take lead on the more musical elements of the performance, playing minor characters Frankie, Meiwes’ imaginary friend from childhood, and his mother.

The music in this performance is wonderful and beautifully written. It strikes a perfect balance, the cheery pop music being undernoted by much darker, sinister lyrics. Mentions of words like ‘skin’ carry a much deeper meaning when put into the context of a cannibalistic relationship. Using only a piano and guitars, the cast make further use of the instruments as props, fully integrating the music within the narrative.

The story begins a little murkily, only coming into its own in the last half of the performance. At first it is unclear who each of the characters are, what exactly it is they’re doing and why they’re singing sinister love songs, and without prior knowledge of the real story of Meiwes and Brandes, this might be a slightly confusing for the audience. The script, using mostly verbatim messages and communication between the lovers, is well written but perhaps need reordering in order to reach its full potential and achieve a clearer, more impactful opening.

The cast make full use of the very small space, using a table and a few chairs to bring the story to life. The stage at times can feel a bit crowded, and the mother and imaginary friend characters sometimes feel slightly obsolete and unnecessary. It is also important to note that Meiwes and Brandes were both men, and by casting a woman as Meiwes, there is a distancing from the real, raw nature of their relationship. There is no apparent reason for Meiwes to be played by a woman and this is a somewhat confusing element of the play. Although each of the four actors played their characters wonderfully, the casting does seem to have just been a process of dishing out roles between a group of friends, rather than well thought out decisions based on the characters themselves and the type of actors which would have suited them.

The play is extremely interesting, and the musical element alone is enough of a reason to go and see it, but it is in need of work to bring it up to its full potential.

 

Reviewed by Charlotte Cox

Rehearsal photography  by Camilla Greenwell

 


Meiwes / Brandes

Tristan Bates Theatre

 

 

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