FestBuzz

What: King Arthur, by Siege Per­ilous
Where: New Town The­atre, Freema­sons’ Hall
When: 14:45, August 5 – 30 (not 9, 17, 24)
How Much: £5 – 12

In 140 char­ac­ters or less: “Densely writ­ten polit­i­cal intrigue com­bined with crises of faith, stark and mov­ing but at times overly com­plex and ambi­tious for its length.”

The leg­end of King Arthur has been end­lessly retold over the cen­turies, as suc­ces­sive ages find their own mean­ing in the time­less sto­ries.  In this stark pro­duc­tion writer/producer Lucy Nord­berg places the famous char­ac­ters in a vaguely 20th cen­tury set­ting, test­ing the rel­e­vance of Arthurian themes to our own times.

The play leaps rather abruptly into the heart of the issue, as Arthur (Jim Byars) dis­cusses his plan to insti­tute democ­racy in his king­dom as a means of ensur­ing the con­tin­u­a­tion of his poli­cies for good.  How­ever, the king quickly encoun­ters oppo­si­tion from many par­ties within the court who hold other ambi­tions.  There are also con­cerns about the people’s inter­est in and abil­ity to rule them­selves, high­light­ing the con­flict between blind faith and rea­son that runs through the Arthurian myths.  The strug­gle is par­tic­u­larly strong for Arthur’s ille­git­i­mate son Mor­dred (Steven McMa­hon), who has been dis­placed from his own king­dom to take his place as heir at his father’s court and is imme­di­ately lost in the ever-shifting moral and polit­i­cal land­scape.  In this sense Mor­dred, and many of the other char­ac­ters wrestling with their own val­ues and alle­giances, are apt rep­re­sen­ta­tions of indi­vid­u­als trapped in mod­ern soci­ety:   con­fused and dis­tressed by the ero­sion of tra­di­tional cul­ture and val­ues, and dis­ori­ented by the loss of their home­lands through eco­nomic or polit­i­cal necessity.

A cast attired in slightly ill-fitted evening wear and and a spare set that hints at a over­sized chess­board com­fort­ably enhance the mood of tense plot­ting.  There is none of the magic and glory of the Arthurian myth in this retelling, save in the sad­dened rem­i­nisces of the king’s old­est fol­low­ers, who feel they have hitched their wagon to a dream only to see it crash under the weight of age and change.  Instead the mood is heavy with a sense of decline and irrev­o­ca­ble decay, with Renais­sance music and dia­logue writ­ten in iambic pen­tame­ter adding a gloss of past elegance.

The script is rich and highly poetic, but unfor­tu­nately the pace at which the dia­logue is spo­ken is often so rapid that its com­plex­ity can­not be processed in time.  Nord­berg intro­duces some strik­ingly beau­ti­ful imagery, but there is no time to savour these ideas if the viewer wishes to keep apace with the devel­op­ment of action.  This head­long race through the story is both a strength and a weak­ness:  in one sense the show can be com­mended for cov­er­ing so much intri­cate mate­r­ial in only an hour and a half, while on the other hand it is a pity that the ideas and char­ac­ters are given so lit­tle time to breathe.  This is epic stuff, and while the capa­ble cast do man­age per­for­mances that are acces­si­ble and mov­ing, the audi­ence is left feel­ing a lit­tle clob­bered with the weight of it all.  Per­haps this was the inten­tion;  and for those who are not look­ing for a pretty spec­ta­cle of chivalry and romance, it is ulti­mately an inter­est­ing take on the stan­dard legend.

Fes­t­buzz Rating:

Words: Domenica Goduto