Theatre review: Savage

The title of Claudio Macor's Savage surely refers to whatever sadist decided a poky room over the Arts Theatre was fit for purpose as a performance space. In my one previous visit to Above The Arts, the venue's notorious overheating problem seemed to have been mostly resolved, but tonight it was clearly back with a vengeance. Between the buckets of sweat, the acoustics that favour every other room in the building apart from the one we're in, and sightlines that, I would estimate, leave about four or five seats with an unimpeded view of the action (mine wasn't one of them,) and the sooner that long-promised remodeling of the theatre comes along, the better - especially if this unloved second space ends up getting remodeled right out of existence. In circumstances like these, any positives the actual play itself might have, if any, are pretty hard to spot.

Theatre review: In the Dead of Night

"It breaks all the rules" is one of those clichés that crops up all the time when describing shows; it usually means "food gets thrown around in a vaguely symbolic way." At least In the Dead of Night at the Landor has made a very specific decision about which rules it's going to break: Those of the Hays Code, which censored Hollywood movies between 1930 and 1968. Since this included the heyday of film noir, writer/director Claudio Macor has tried to imagine what those movies would have been like if they'd actually been able to show the sexuality, swearing, violence and criminals getting away with it, that actually underpinned much of their source material. The result is a story set in a South American shanty town that doesn't fall under any regional jurisdiction, and as such is the ideal place for illegal bars, prostitution and drug trafficking to flourish.