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Battle for Peace
CarrèRotondes
FEATlets 2009 Brussels
Review by Tim Hancox NWTC Luxembourg brought us a home-assembled (I assume it is not an "original script" if it consists largely of well-chosen quotes from the past?) Battle for Peace. A cast of fourteen, of which it is not unfair to say the older ones seemed more committed and aware of a production's needs - but I guess that's why we put the young ones on stage too: to learn. A few random recollections of an excellent meander through war and warmongering: Queen Elizabeth's " ... body of a weak and feeble woman .." and Churchill's " ..We shall never surrender" could safely have been taken higher, theatrically: nonetheless, they were skilfully delivered. The "Once more into the breach" was dynamically and perfectly timed on the way down the audience staircase. The "Tomorrow belongs to me" from Cabaret was hair-raising, literally, from a lovely single voice in a spotlight on the side of the stage, then joined by the rest of the company in carefully modulated groups - no wonder we end up fighting wars, with such an evocative and stimulating call to Youth! I wondered what they would do with the Nazi salute to end: yes, they did, entirely appropriately, but I am driven also to wonder irrelevantly if the Director thought to tell them it's fine on stage, but too sensitive a thing to joke about off - I suggest this is a part of the purpose of Youth theatre. There was a Japanese sequence, based on Hiroshima, sensitively handled but other than that, the spectacle was anglocentric: nothing wrong with that, when Presidents Roosevelt and Obama have the gift of rhetoric too! 27/09/2009 |