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Wychwood ★★★
Edinburgh theSpace on Niddry St (Venue 9)
Until Saturday 20th August 2016
A horror musical? Cool! We loved Carrie The Musical so we eagerly took our seats from what was described in the Fringe brochure as their “most ambitious show to date”.
This was the opening show and the production is made up of a very young cast. The set was made up of 2 doors but more props were to appear later.
The lights go down and a video is projected. Quickly the audience is aware of the issue that I hope they fix for the rest of the run – the sound. The soundtrack was very loud and was at a volume AC/DC would be proud of. The only problem was when the 2 narrators come on, as good as they were, they seemed very quiet by comparison.
Wychwood is a montage of a number of stories of ghostly goings on in Victorian times. Murders, people going insane and things that go bang in the night. We have a number of visuals that will have made Victorian audiences faint with horror along the way. Slightly tongue in cheek, it was good fun.
There are some musical numbers along the way supported by a live band of young musicians. Having a live band is always a move that we support.
Direction has kept the action flowing. The props are delivered to one part of the stage whilst something happens at the other – this helped maintain the pace.
Highlights included a master who decides to see if the servants’ quarters is haunted, by sleeping there the night and a doctor who decides to try to get rid of the evidence after killing his wife. The feel is that of some of the ghostly writing of Charles Dickens.
There is clearly some talent on show from the large young enthusiastic cast. They will gain a lot of experience from their week’s run in Edinburgh. Fix the sound and reduce the reliance on that screaming sound effect and we will have an entertaining show.
This review was written by Stephen Oliver the North East Theatre Guide – follow Stephen at panic_c_button
Read the original NETG preview: http://nomorepanicbutton.blogspot.co.uk/2016/08/preview-wychwood-at-edinburgh-space.html
Tickets:
Tickets £8.00 Students £6.00
Book over the phone: 0131 226 0000
In person at The Fringe Box Office - 180 High Street, EH1 1QS or The University of Edinburgh Visitor Centre, 2 Charles Street, EH8 9AD. (Card sales only)
Tickets can be booked online at https://tickets.edfringe.com/whats-on/wychwood
utter rubbish. left after the second story. felt sorry for 'michael' and 'maria' of that story as they were clearly the only talent of the show. the butler and his wife ranged from completely wooden and line fluffing (butler) to the near epileptic 'acting' of his wife. I really don't know how this show mustered three stars.
ReplyDeleteThanks for your feedback. It was our lowest score of the Fringe. We are only passing an opinion about how we feel about the show that we saw. You saw a show later in the run and in your opinion that show wasn't good. In fairness it must be difficult for you to make a judgement about just 2 people being talented if you only saw about 20 minutes of a one hour show (and hence saw probably less than half of the cast.) The final story was one of the better ones in my opinion (but it is only justt that - an opinion).
DeleteI'm aware of the show getting 2 3-star reviews and a 2-star review based upon that first performance.
We don't normally use "star ratings" for a variety of reasons and the use of them during the Fringe was a trial. We don't plan to use them for other shows as they are too blunt a tool and they mean different things to different people. If I see a 3 star review of a book, film or an album I don't think "I must rush out and buy/see it".
We saw lots of great shows during the week - I hope that you got to see some too. It is a huge festival with a wide range of events.
Best wishes.
To be fair, this is a school play taken to Ed Fringe with parental funding. Steve has been kind. What he hasn't said is more telling. I get the impression the kids hate the play. Only a few seemed into it.
ReplyDelete