This was a weird and wacky take on the old Chaucerian tale which left itsaudience members altogether bemused. The cast of three young men and onewoman, as well as a musical accomplice, fused the old with the new in whatwas at times exciting, but at others disconcerting and fractured.
The plot was surprisingly hard to follow, despite the fact that I am wellacquainted with Chaucer’s original. It followed loosely the story of threegluttonous men searching for Death. They are directed towards treasure andbecome enthralled by that instead, leading them to greedy homicide.
The pardoner was introduced nicely at the beginning but some aspects ofthe narrative were bizarre and disjointed from the plot. For example, theyfought over a piece of paper for a very drawn out length of time but I hadabsolutely no idea what it was supposed to be.
The opacity of the plot was largely a product of the hybrid nature of theperformance – they tried to blend too many different styles, genres andthemes. The comic was fused with the serious in a way which left bothlacking. The profundity of Chaucer’s original was lost to these comedicsketches. There was also a strange recourse to mime which the play did notbenefit from, as more speech, or even song, could have helped clarify whaton earth we were watching.
The best and cleverest bit of the play was a section in which they broughtone of the audience members on stage and reluctantly transformed him intoone of the minor characters in the narrative. It was great because itmeta-theatrically brought attention to how the play itself was put together– the man was given a haphazard costume and a piece of paper with hislines. It also nicely drew attention to the fact that the men’s acting issupposed to be a visual construction of the Pardoner’s narrative – it isonly a ‘tale’ after all.
The music was also a highlight. There was one man positioned with a guitarat the side of the stage and the play was sprinkled with some surprisinglycomic and engaging song and dance.
Although parts of the play were overacted, on the whole the cast wereentertaining and brought life to the show. The woman playing the pardoner,in particular, lent an eerie quality to the whole play, which worked well,and was nicely reminiscent of Chaucer’s original.
The audience were given artistic ‘holy relic’ momentos to take with themas they left; a nice touch – shame the play was nothing much to beremembered.
