In Minotaur, Fourth Monkey present the story of the famous creature with the body of a man and the head of a bull. Or so the title would suggest. This is a piece that spans the length and breadth of at least two different stories. If anything, the performance is more about Dedalus; it starts with his exile from Athens, moves on to his arrival to Crete to show a bit about his life there, only to then go on to how Aphrodite curses king Minos’ wife who falls in love with a bull, copulates with him and gives birth to the Minotaur. The performance ends with the myth of Icarus, completely moving away from the Minotaur. Although a clear continuity is established between these stories, the material always feels superficially approached as too much happens without being supported by sufficient character development.
To be fair, perhaps character development is not the point and the piece just aims to borrow certain features of an ancient Greek tragedy: the writing is lyrical enough, containing snippets of wise generalisations about fate and the inability to resist it that are repeated every once and awhile. In this case, the problem was that the characters weren’t clearly defined enough from the beginning. The script’s other issue is its fragmentation. Although that could work wonderfully under certain circumstances, the fact that lines are often divided amongst chorus members sometimes made the meaning difficult to follow due to the actors’ varying deliveries. A minor problem worth mentioning is that the script also contains the occasional, inexcusable anachronism, as Dedalus laments his loss of Athens and the Parthenon, even though the latter would not have been built yet.
The performance itself managed to be quite atmospheric; in particular the lighting accentuated the darker elements of the unfolding story. The use of music was effective, although at times its introduction was too abrupt and disrupted the show’s flow.
The performance’s major drawback was the somewhat amateur acting. The actors’ movement came across as unnatural and, at times, mildly pretentious. Despite some truly wonderful moments of physicality, such as when various actors morph into a Minotaur body in his battle against Theseus, the overall impression created was that not enough time or attention had been devoted to this aspect of the production. Another issue was that it sometimes felt like actors didn’t understand the meaning of the lines they were delivering; repeated phrases often became simply repetitive, instead of acquiring increasing significance as the play progressed. The chorus often whispered phrases that the audience could not hear simply to create the impression of doing something.
None of these issues, however, is a reflection on the actors’ talent per se; in fact most actors exhibit significant potential. King Minos’s wife is very effective when possessed by the madness that makes her lust after the bull; Dedalus, although at times too shouty, was genuinely touching in his scene of exile and when he falls in love; Icarus was the embodiment of innocent optimism that turns into arrogance; the chorus were wonderful in the labyrinth scene. Perhaps the answer to why these were just moments can be found in an overall lack of efficient direction and guidance.
Although definitely bursting with potential, for now this production remains incomplete and leaves a lot to be desired.
