Irrepressible!

Dundee Rep is currently showing Monkey! at the moment and as my regular Wednesday Night Star Wars GM was occupied, myself and two of the other players went to see it based on a recommendation from Mystery Girl.

It was fantastic!

As a kid I loved the imported TV show, I couldn't get enough of it. Flying clouds, demons, heroes, cheesy special effects, sticks that grew and shrank and looked like thin Duracell batteries. It was great. Even today I can still "sing" the opening theme tune.

Tonight was even better. Whenever you see/hear a new version of something you keep comparing the two. For example, in my mind Michael Horden is Gandalf, not Sir Ian McKellan. This was different. All there was for me was the here and now. Not anything I'd read or seen before, just the stage and the actors doing a marvellous job of bring the action to life. As Chaos described it, "Pantomime with Enlightenment." The Scottish Dance Theatre did a magnifient job of choreographing the action scenes, even incorporating some 'wire-fu' into the performance.

The circular stage was very minamalist, empty execept for a few ladders along the edges for monkeys and demons to perch on or monks to hide on. Any scenery was made up of either a few sticks held by 'invisible' stage hands or those self same stage hands becoming a bridge or gate. With nothing to get in the way of the performance ad distract, scene changes were very fluid and helped the story along rather than interupting it.

It's a simple story and if you don't know it, a quick summary can be found here. If you get the chance go see it. It's in Dundee until the 20th May and then Edinburgh, Aberdeen and Glasgow.

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