Skip to main content

Review of UoN Fringe 2019: Adventurers Wanted! by Do Or Dice Theatre at The Platform Club, Northampton

Back in the eighties, I used to read quite a lot of Choose Your Adventure books from the likes of Livingstone and Jackson, so, I was vaguely aware of the health, agility and whatever points as I came to this intriguing, and genuinely extremely different, Fringe Festival performance. The difference here from those books was this used the action and live a competitive diced variety of play, and this you have to think a little more on your feet and quicker at than sitting in bed reading.

However, I was surrounded by non-experts anyway, so, as I took my Dragonborn form into the basement of The Platform, with helmet fitting badly over my glasses and on my giant, mostly empty head, I and the others relied on our guardian like guide (think Treguard but friendlier, for those old enough to get the reference), Liam Bottazzi. He is a jovial chap, all willing to guide us, but also as the gamesmaster, kill us if we step out of line.

Our assembled gang decided in our path to steal a crystal to stick together, glued together as a cluster trying to get on the same square mostly, it is as it turned out a tactic that worked, like lightning, flames and my devasting insult ability helped win the day, even if it was akin to "you fight like a dairy farmer" (another reference certain people will get) mockery.

Bottazzi is a good companion for a performance like this, friendly, fun, full of character and silly voices. Able to work the audience, here the game players, with ease. It all oddly works in the most surreal way you can imagine, and perhaps at times, you can see the appeal of this game among a whole group of people who actually know what they are doing from the outset, unlike us.

Adventurers Wanted! is not really a theatre play, but then, often the point of the Fringe is to give you something different, and in that respect, this is very different. However, the point is to be entertaining and intriguing, and there is no question that for 45 minutes we grown-up were having fun, and maybe in an often heavy collection of plays, that is no bad thing. Also no one died and we got the crystal! Win!

Performance viewed: Tuesday 30th April 2019

The Fringe Festival 2019 runs until Sunday 5th May 2019 at The Platform Club Northampton, and one show at Hazelrigg House.

Details here: Fringe Festival 2019

Labels:

Popular posts from this blog

Review of Barnum at Milton Keynes Theatre

Barnum , with a book by Mark Bramble, lyrics by Michael Stewart, and music by Cy Coleman, premiered on Broadway in 1980 and followed in the West End just a year later. At the helm for these two productions were two huge names in the entertainment business: Jim Dale on Broadway and Michael Crawford in the West End. It needed, of course, big names to fill the shoes of the legendary P. T. Barnum, whose tale is told in this now-fondly remembered musical. Filling these boots in this new production, now pitched at Milton Keynes Theatre, is Matt Rawle, a prolific theatre performer himself, but can he, and this production, live up to the iconic greatest showman? “Step right up and enter the dazzling world of P.T. Barnum, where imagination and ambition know no bounds”, the publicity for the show announces, and this new production of the now-classic Barnum - The Circus Musical mostly ticks these boxes. Rawle is a captivating and strong presence as the lead, bringing an infectious charm to the p...
Read more

Review of Lord of the Dance at Milton Keynes Theatre

On what was so far the hottest day of the year, and the highest in many a record book, it feels a tad evil to watch as a group of extremely talented performers bring to the stage one of the most famous and most energetic dance shows to tour. However, arriving now at Milton Keynes Theatre, as part of what is now the still rather immodestly titled 30 Years of Standing Ovations tour, Lord of the Dance remains full of energy even on the hottest of evenings in Milton Keynes. I last and first saw Lord of the Dance as part of the 25 Years of Standing Ovations tour, four years ago (yes, the sums don’t quite work), and it was every bit as spectacular as you could imagine this world-famous dance show is. Born into the world from Michael Flatley and the Riverdance spectacular that preceded it, Lord of the Dance is a simple but effective battle between good and evil and the resolution of it through dance rather than fighting. The dancing here is, as expected, exceptional, led by the Lord of the...
Read more

Review of The Woman Who Cooked Her Husband at The Playhouse Theatre, Northampton

During the interval of The Woman Who Cooked Her Husband , last weeks production at The Playhouse Theatre Northampton, I got involved in a conversation between a couple sitting next to me. The lady was very much of the opinion that the play was a comedy, while the gentleman, had formed one that it was a tragedy. They were joking of course in the conversation, but it did highlight the differences that Debbie Isitt's dark comedy might have between the sexes. And also now perhaps the passing of time. When this was written in the nineties, Isitt's play was a forthright feminist play, heralding the championing over of the ladies over the man. One the ex-wife plotting to cook him, the other, the new lover, potentially already very tired of him after just three years. The husband, Kenneth (Jem Clack) elopes initially in pursuit of sex with Laura (Diane Wyman), after his nineteen years of marriage with Hilary (Corinna Leeder) has become tired and passionless. Then later, he elopes ...
Read more