Helter Skelter

We're off to the Tramway, this evening, for the Helter Skelter performance. It's a tramway commissioned performance which leads you through the hidden gardens and the tramway building.

A performance that leads you through the enchanting Hidden Gardens and the dark corridors of Tramway. Composer Stephen Deazley joins forces writer Dilys Rose (Lord of Illusions/Our Lady of the Pickpockets) to create a spectacular musical entertainment with its roots in burlesque and music hall, and conjur up a dream world reeking of the freak shows, fairgrounds and circuses of long ago. As night falls and the curtain rises, lost souls washed up in this place come out to entertain!

I'll report back tomorrow

EDIT: It was rained off, we're going on Saturday night instead.

Here's what the herald has to say about the piece

http://www.theherald.co.uk/features/features/display.var.1524478.0.0.php

EDIT: Our review (by Alburt)



Hmmm, that was quite an odd affair. While to some extents I agree with the Herald's review that the costumes, the music and the basic premise of the show were all great - I just wasn't blown away by it all. Often, the sound would become unballanced and it was difficult to hear or understand exactly what the enthusaistic cast were saying.
There were some great individual images and moments during the show, the trapease artist hanging alone with a red balloon, or the fish boy swimming laps around the fire lit moat. But I didn't really feel the whole show was coherant enough to hold up. It was by far most powerful, when telling individual tales of solitary characters - the pigman and the ratcatchers daughter or the wolf and the bearded lady, but these were just fleeting glimpses in an otherwise swirling mass of colour/ shouting and people running around. During these swirls - you couldn't help getting the feeling that the cast were having much more fun than we were.

We did enjoy it but none of us thought it amazing - it felt to much like the results of a month workshop and not enough like a tightly crafted show - with any consistancy. We went to see something similar in an abandoned slaughterhouse in London (ann makes me go to these things) and there we were led a round a series of clearly defined extracts from tales. And while it to did not give a coherent story, there was enough going on to get your imagination to decipher the images. Here it felt a bit to much erratic.