SITE GUIDE
SEARCH
REVIEWS
REVIEW ARCHIVES
ADVERTISING AT CURTAINUP
FEATURES
NEWS
Etcetera and
Short Term Listings
LISTINGS
Broadway
Off-Broadway
NYC Restaurants
BOOKS and CDs
OTHER PLACES
Berkshires
London
California
New Jersey
DC
Connecticut
Philadelphia
Elsewhere
QUOTES
TKTS
PLAYWRIGHTS' ALBUMS
LETTERS TO EDITOR
FILM
LINKS
MISCELLANEOUS
Free Updates
Masthead
Writing for Us
A CurtainUp 
London Review
London ReviewBe Good Revolutionaries
by Sebastian King
|
Open your eyes. Look within you. Are you satisfied with the life you're living? — Red
|
Citlalli Millan as Dark (Photo: Jon Lee) |
A revolution is underway. The rebel leader has gone missing and his family await his return. But it’s clear that the dictatorial regime he’s gone to fight has left its mark on the family. Anna (Juliet Prague) runs her household with an iron fist, dishing out punishments to her children and rewarding good behaviour by giving out stars. Daily chores and meals are timed with countdowns from 10, and training sessions in guerrilla warfare have become routine. When a stranger arrives, her regime is thrown into disarray, and another revolution threatens to begin in her own home.
Heavily influenced by Latin American 'Day of the Dead' festival, Christopher Lawley's set sees the auditorium floor covered in a carpet of mud and bark, and the walls plastered with murals and writing. Apples are suspended from the ceiling, and we pass a colourful shrine of toys as we make our way to our seats. White shrouds hang from washing lines like cocoons, from which Anna’s three children emerge. A fourth child, Dark (Citlalli Millan) has already left the family home – and potentially the world of the living - and emerges instead from a pile of earth, rising from the dead as she continues to fight in her own revolution.
As an experience, Be Good Revolutionaries feels intimate, immediate, and at times dangerous. Surrounding the stage on three sides, we exist within the same space as these characters, and are part of their revolution. There are strong performances from the whole cast, with Juliet Prague’s tyrannical yet tragic portrait of a mother struggling to keep control and Francesca Dale as her brazenly curious daughter Red particularly memorable. Laura O’ Toole’s Emilia and Alex Britton’s Curly are similarly complex, and are imbued with just the right amount of childlike innocence and energy. However, if I have one complaint it is that the roles of Dark and The Stranger feel comparatively underdeveloped.
The language has moments of beautiful poetry, and Anne-Gaëlle Thiriot’s choreography is at times electrifying. But what stands out most of all is the music, provided by Rebecca Thorn who stalks the stage as an enigmatic observer of the action. Alternating between playing a pipe, an accordion and singing, Thorn provides a haunting soundtrack to the action of the play. It ends with her rendition of the folksong ‘I Wish, I Wish’ whose parting line ‘till apples grow on orange trees’ reminds us that some things will never happen no matter how hard we try.
The trailer for the show is a simple time-lapse film showing two seeds germinating, their shoots rapidly sprouting up. It’s a brilliantly appropriate metaphor for a show that is not only about the coming-of-age journey of three children on the cusp of adulthood, but about the growth of ideas and the cross-pollination of thoughts. Be Good Revolutionaries plants seeds in its audience’s minds that will continue to grow long after we have left our seats.
|
Subscribe to our FREE email updates with a note from editor Elyse Sommer about additions to the website -- with main page hot links to the latest features posted at our numerous locations. To subscribe,
E-mail: esommer@curtainup.comesommer@curtainup.com
put SUBSCRIBE CURTAINUP EMAIL UPDATE in the subject line and your full name and email address in the body of the message -- if you can spare a minute, tell us how you came to CurtainUp and from what part of the country. |
Be Good Revolutionaries
| |
|
REVIEW FEEDBACK Highlight one of the responses below and click "copy" or"CTRL+C"
Paste the highlighted text into the subject line (CTRL+ V): Feel free to add detailed comments in the body of the email . . . also the names and emails of any friends to whom you'd like us to forward a copy of this review. |
