Ben Watson's meet and greet as we entered the theatre made his audience immediately warm to him. It was personal touches like this that proved to be the most enjoyable part of his fact-driven foray into his more-or-less sixty minute history of everything.
The swiftness with which he changed into his impressive repertoire of costumes made his dynamism pleasurably exhausting to watch
His first performances involved the natural transition through the ages. Opening with the Big Bang proved rather fitting for the energetic performance that was to grace the stage. His then detailing of the many ages of humanity - the Bronze, Stone and Ice etc - were all accompanied by appropriately amusing pop songs. Ice Ice Baby was a particular highlight.
While the majority of the production was light-hearted, Watson also included some more serious messages within his performance. Admitting that climate change and other such natural occurrences are often out of human control, he stressed throughout that human interference often speeds up the destruction that these environmental changes produce.
The ill-founded human changes that often arise from the desire of nations to be the strongest, were illuminated by Watson in the show. Yet, his perpetual optimism shone through in the slick song transitions between describing the fleeting empires and reflecting upon the more harmonious relations between countries.
The swiftness with which he changed into his impressive repertoire of costumes made his dynamism pleasurably exhausting to watch. The attention to such aesthetic details clearly conveyed the amount of thought that had gone into this elaborate production. His stating that in the beginning there was nothing, stood in stark contrast to the way in which he made each audience member feel as though they were the ones who made his performance the roaring success that it was. One to watch out for, Watson's foray into the history of everything has surely secured him a place in the future of the world of theatre.
