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


Popular posts from this blog

Review of Murder She Didn't Write at Royal & Derngate (Royal), Northampton

Murder She Didn't Write , stopping off for a four-day run at Royal & Derngate on a lengthy UK tour, treads the now well-worn path of an improvisational evening of theatre entertainment. Unsurprisingly, from the title, this show from Degrees of Error's takes a murder mystery as its inspiration, with the story influenced by ideas from the audience each evening. Due to this, Murder She Didn't Write and a review are very much an individual affair. What I saw in my evening at the theatre will differ significantly from what the audience will see the following evening; however, the fine performers will remain. The touring cast, in no particular order, is Lizzy Skrzypiec, Rachael Procter-Lane, Peter Baker, Caitlin Campbell, Stephen Clements, Douglas Walker, Harry Allmark, Rosalind Beeson, Sylvia Bishop, Emily Brady, Alice Lamb, Sara Garrard, Peta Maurice and Matthew Whittle. For my performance, Skrzypiec, Procter-Lane, Baker, Walker, Bishop, and Clements were on stage alongsid...

Review of Immune by R&D Youth Theatre at Royal & Derngate (Royal), Northampton

The cover note for the script of Oladipo Agboluaje's Immune describes it as "a challenging science fiction play with a large cast", and the word challenging in this case is not a lie. This is a fast paced, multi-cast changing script which leaves little room for error for its young cast in the performance. If the script isn't enough to handle for the young performers, director Christopher Elmer-Gorry and designer Carl Davies have made the situation even more complex for the actors with the set and stage work. Having to manhandle great panels on wheels and a huge cube, which also splits in two occasionally, during scene changes requires skill, coordination and cooperation of a high level. As if all this is not enough, the actual story is epic enough for the relatively small stage of the Royal. Attempting to form an apocalyptic world (albeit only happening in Plymouth) offers challenges in itself, but Agboluaje's script does that in a sort of apocalypse in the teac...

Review of Bat Out Of Hell - The Musical at Milton Keynes Theatre

Bat Out of Hell - The Musical was first realised as a stage musical back in 2017, opening at the Manchester Opera House. Since then, it has achieved significant international success. Now, as part of a new UK tour, it has returned to Milton Keynes Theatre, which it previously visited in 2022 during its global tour. The storyline of Bat Out of Hell , written by Jim Steinman, draws on the story of Peter Pan as a basis and evolves it within a dystopian world, where a group of teenagers known as The Lost live forever at the age of 18. This plot is both flimsy and initially confusing; however, within the music of Meat Loaf and Jim Steinman, it finds a rough-around-the-edges polish that allows this weakness to shine through and succeed. At the centre of this group of teenagers is Strat, who, following an unexpected encounter, falls under the spell of Raven. Within this, a megalomaniac lurks, as all dystopian worlds require. This maniac is Falco, the father of Raven and Sloane's husband....