Edinburgh Fringe 2015
Hideout
Haste Theatre
Genre: Comedy, Drama, Physical Theatre
Venue: C nova
Festival: Edinburgh Fringe
Low Down
It’s the 1920s and Aphrodite and Hades, gods of ancient Greece, spend their nights in Dionysus’s bar, looking for entertainment by playing with the lives of the little people below. The story for tonight is Theseus and the Minotaur played out with panache.
Review
Aphrodite and Hades welcome us as we arrive and set the scene for a delicious romp through the tale of Theseus and the Minotaur via jazz, tap dance, physical theatre that takes over not only the stage but quite often the auditorium. They bound up and down the steps settling everyone in and introducing us to the Hideout. Dionysus, the God of wine, music and merriment, watches from the stage.
The Hideout is a bar, a slightly odd bar, somewhere in the 1920s where music plays and stories are told. Dionysus wants some entertainment, some mortals to tease and provoke. After some argument and recruiting help from the audience the story for the night is chosen – Theseus and the Minotaur.
The all-female cast are multi-talented with the storytelling using shadow puppets, song, live music, tap dance, and a surprising amount of gymnastics and physical theatre given the relatively small stage. Every one of them gives a high octane performance and clearly enjoy every minute of the show.
The set – screens to one side and a couple of armchairs and a table to the other provide the setting for the bar. The screens are used flexibly and help to move the story on. The chairs on the other hand aren’t used at all and whilst providing additional atmosphere for the bar could perhaps be hinted at rather than occupy stage space that the actors could make more use of. However, the cast did make good use of the auditorium bringing the story out into the audience on several occasions.
In some ways it is a difficult show to write about without giving too much away, there is a lot to see so perhaps it is just best if you go along and experience it all.
