A Dastardly Fiction tells the story of a struggling author’s ill-advised deal with a demon and the ensuing consequences. Unfortunately for the production, I am not summarising as that is the only aspect of the plot that was clear.
In their publicity it states that A Dastardly Fiction is a ‘dark comedy…that makes the audience both laugh and think’. However, it is very difficult to do this when the audience is confused from about five minutes in. The problem wasn’t the lack of plot, but rather the fact that there was too much of it. A wide variety of new points keep being introduced and ham-fistedly dropped in, from lesbian relationships to existentialism - two things that I did not expect to find co-existing in this play. The main issue story-wise is that, whilst A Dastardly Fiction is clearly trying to be meta in getting its characters to question their own reality, it makes the mistake of going too far thus simply confusing the audience. This meant that any edge that the play might have had gets lost because the story can’t be taken seriously and therefore it is impossible to get invested in it.
There are also significant issues with the acting. For a play that is well into its run there are a lot of line stumbles and mistakes, to the point where it simply feels unpolished and almost as if parts may have been improvised. Too often it was difficult to know where to look as the actors constantly pulled focus away from the dialogue in an attempt to look like they were interacting, but simply upstaged their colleagues.
A Dastardly Fiction is billed as a parody. However, it is unclear what exactly it is meant to be a parody of. Even if it was clear, due to its extremely poor delivery and message I’m not sure that it would make any difference.
