I've seen
Venice Preserved once before, but as
that particular production was an incoherent car crash that was 50% sales presentation for a property development and 50% people desperately shouting "immersive!" at you while asking for money for four hours, it's probably easiest all round to just treat Thomas Otway's Restoration thriller as completely new to me. Prasanna Puwanarajah directs a mercifully coherent production, although how much sense the plot itself makes remains up for debate. Jaffeir (Michael Grady-Hall) is recruited by his best friend Pierre (Stephen Fewell) to join a bloody rebellion against the corrupt ruling class of Venice; both swear loyalty to the cause, but each also has a personal vendetta against some member of the senate which is the real clincher in wanting to bring them down. In Jaffeir's case, it's his senator father-in-law Priuli (Les Dennis,) who disapproved of the marriage and went out of his way to punish him for it.
