This play promises a quick and basic guide to the development of western theatre. We travel through early developments of theatre in ancient Greece, the trauma of the dark ages and progressive development from the Renaissance onwards. Snippets of interesting or amusing facts such as Molieres death from overacting litter a script for light hearted entertainment. The modern theatre and its funny quirks are satirised, such as a heartfelt call that insisted people must avoid professional actors at all costs. The script offers cheap thrills and inoffensive aspersions. Its full of pithy jokes and sweeping generalisations that are tried and tested crowd pleasers. Theres a lot of ewww hes rubbish and Chekhov F-off lines. Its certainly a slackers guide which is made poor by the sense that the writer didnt have any strong or original reflections on theatre. Unfortunately it seemed as though someone had read Theatre for Dummies and then rattled out whatever it said. A mass of knowledge was not condensed into a fascinating package for us slackers, but a slacker fired off whatever they knew in a laid back manner. This was almost condescending by the nature of the plot which was done in the manner of educating us with a confident in-your-face attitude. There were genuine moments of comedy and insight, such as a demonstration of Brechts theatre where the lights came on and the inner workings of the theatre was shown to the audience. The cast produced a mixed performance which could have been slicker, but still had resounding energy. Strong elements of comedy and intrigue were overshadowed by the problems of an over simplified show that was ultimately unfulfilling.
