I walked away from The Balcony perplexed - unfortunately not as a result of theBrechtian overtones of the production, rather due to the confusion of what waspresented by the King's Players.
From the outset, there's something missing in director Shakti Bhagchandani's visionwhich meant it took me far too long to have any clue what was going on. The playis set in the midst of a revolution, paired in this production with images from themost recent bout of London riots. Visual designer Ben Mills sits us very clearly in agrey, unforgiving dystopia, with mismatched TV sets and plastic sheeting on the floorused to great effect. With the majority of the play taking place in a brothel, mirrorsfeature heavily, occasionally providing a great image of reflected body parts and tornexpressions.
First up, we get a haphazard introduction to this world through three men whoget their kicks by pretending to be various pillars of power in our society. I wasintrigued by Jordan Theis giving an engaging, if somewhat unrefined, performanceas The Bishop. Both Theis and Dominic Chambers, who plays The General, capturethe absurdity of their characters and are obviously having a lot of fun switchingbetween 'playing' the power and revealing their true weakness. Jeff Scott as TheJudge is suitably manic, and Olivia Streatham draws us in as Regina, the surly andsexily defiant brothel girl and Emma Pritchard is sweet as the flirtatious Carmen. Theensemble put in a good amount of energy and most actors pull their weight admirably,particularly considering the relative youth of the King's Players (of King's CollegeLondon).
After the initial confusion, the plot became clearer - however the point the Playerswere trying to make became ever fuzzier. The story that unfolds is interestingenough, though there is a side story involving the 'voice' of the revolution that isdistractingly pointless. Bhagchandani tries to use Genet's play to make a poignantstatement, it's just not at all clear what that statement is. There's a hundred vaguecomments made on the nature of power, humanity and self-examination, but nothingwas truly explored and certainly nothing they were saying was new.
The ending - spoiler alert - tries too hard to be shocking and pointedly disjointed, with a camerabeing pointed directly at the audience and actors leaving sans curtain call, but it just felt tacky. Overall, the intention was clearly there, but the execution left me underwhelmed.
