The story, set in 18th Century Georgia, is a morality tale about Grusha, a servant girl who unwillingly rescues a baby during a political uprising, and devotes her life to raising the child as her own. Once order is restored, the ownership of the child is called into question when its biological mother, the Governor's wife, wants him back.Brecht uses the 'play within a play' structure, as we start off with a band of folk singers assembling to tell us the tale. The opening is impressively choreographed, with one folk musician becoming two, then gradually more join the party until the entire cast of 20 fill the stage, erupting into a joyful Russian styled song and dance routine. After this energetic display, the lead musician is urged to tell the story, and so he begins 'Once Upon a Time...', and with a change of lights, we're now into the events he's singing of.After such a promising start, the production goes downhill rapidly as the line delivery and acting ability during the play's dramatic scenes is extremely poor. Few of the actors seem aware that in order for the audience to hear them, they need to project their voices, which were all but drowned out in the first 15 minutes by the noisy air-conditioning unit. Whether this was the fault of the venue, or the stage manager, the actors need to be prepared to adapt to the space they're performing in. However, once the unit was switched off, it appeared to make little difference to the overall delivery anyway. Entire scenes were performed with the actors facing away from the audience, with dialog either mumbled, or barked out with little thought as to what was being said. Huge pauses are left between lines in what was either under rehearsed or vastly misunderstood sections of verse.The cast is mostly made up of aspiring actors from Iceland and Sweden, with a few Brits thrown in for good measure.Given that English is not the first language of many of the cast, it's commendable to attempt to perform this modern classic, but the end product is flat, with no real command of the language in a dramatic context.The singing talent, original music and lavish period costumes are not enough to rescue this production. Overrunning by 30 minutes, this show is a long two hours with no interval.
