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Edinburgh Fringe 2010

Carnivale

Unwish Theatre

Genre: Outdoor and Promenade

Venue: C Venues Soco

Festival:


Low Down

Unwish Theatre’s Carnivale invites the audience into a dinner party with a difference. Set in the roaring 1920’s with flapper dresses and fur stoles to match; flies on the wall, the audience are invited to share a meal as guests (food and beverages included). Best not to give too much away. Go along and see for yourself!

Review

Carnivale is one of those hyped up shows that manages to live up to its promise by the skin of its teeth. The premise, the show design and setting and the actors themselves are all dynamic elements, but do not quite mesh as a whole because the storyline is slightly predictable and certainly not ominous enough to live up to the expectations you have on entering the space.

The show is enjoyable but is shorter than the hour it promises on the box and the food is disappointing and not very realistic when teamed with the envirnment or the premise of the piece which is a dinner party. Cheese on a plate with a few lettuce leaves and some bread and cut up ham does not consititute dinner party fodder. However the concept and the idea are great and if excexuted a little

better this could be an excellent piece of promenade theatre. It is

that it lacks a meshing of the elements.

Technically it needs to be bedded in a bit more. The actors are all believable especially the dinner party host. However it is the unpredictability of the concept as a whole that makes it tough for the actors to consistently stay in character. With only 12 people are audience verses 5 actors if an audience member steps over the boundary, easy to do in such an intimate space where the actors do interact to a degree then the spell can be broken.

In all a great concept not executed as well as it could have been. A bit of work and a little leeway for some improvisation and this little company could be on a winner.

Published

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Unwish Theatre