Theatre Review- Macbeth, performed by Act Three Theatre

Title: Macbeth

Writer: William Shakespeare

Performed by: Act Three Theatre

Major cast: Josh Beecham, Ned Walkely, Simon Morgan

Seen at: Paradise in the Vault, Edinburgh Fringe
Summary: An exciting new take on William Shakespeare's Macbeth. Using the original language but set in a young offenders’ prison, it is bold, fast-paced, and performed entirely with a cast of three.

Theatre Review-Lysistrata by Christopher Adams and Aristophanes

So, I went to the Edinburgh Fringe festival. It was brilliant-most shows. I’m only going to review the shows I really enjoyed though-I don’t really see much point in spending time writing a 250 word review saying “this was okish.” So over the next week, here’s my pick of shows.

Title: Lysistrata

Writer: Christopher Adams and Aristophanes

Director: Christopher Adams

Performed by: DEM Productions

Major cast: Lousia Holloway, Charlotte Mulliner, River Hawkins and Robert Willoughby

Seen at: C Nova

Review: It starts with Lysistrata's birthday party and her friends have bought her a stripper. But prices are rising, they can't pay and so he leaves. Lysistrata, angry with the austerity measures and work exploitation and the state of Greece in general, convinces her friends to withold sex  until the men of Greece sort out the situation.

I've read Lysistrata by Aristophanes and I thought this was a very clever adaptation. I love the relavence of the Greek  financial crisis and the use of social media as a rallying call to women.  The transitions between rhymed verse and normal speaking is quite jarring  and the tone set up at the beginning means the verse sounds really out of place.

It starts off a faithful modern adaptation, as much as you can do with four actors, distilling choruses down to single people and using sound effectively to create crowds. Then about the 2/3 mark I think (I’m not entirely sure) it gets very different, a lot darker, and by the end I'm thinking two things: this was meant to be a comedy and the writer seriously thinks Greece is screwed. I left thinking “woah. Not expecting that.” and I think it worked in this version [possible spoiler-highlight to see] as the war on austerity would obviously take time to fix and not be sorted by a sex strike in one night, as opposed to a war being fought by men who could easily stop. [end spoiler]

All four actors are very good. Louisa Hollway is Lysistrata throughout, doing well as a drunk angry woman who wants change, but also good at showing a more vulnerable side. The other three actors multirole, often crossdressing, creating very different characters through voices and movement.

The logistics could have been better. I sat in the centre of the third row, but a few scenes were on the ground, an unraised stage, so only the front row could really see, and the actors didn't have microphones so it was really hard to hear them when music was playing, meant to be in the background but drowning the actors out.

Overall: Strength 4 tea to a strong modernisation and adaptation.

Book Review- Vampire Knight vol 1 by Matsuri Hino

Title: Vampire Knight vol. 1

Author: Matsuri Hino

Series: Vampire Knight #1

Published: January 2007 by Viz Media. First published in Japan in 2005 by Hakusensha. First published in magazine Lala in 2004. First published in English in Shojo Beat in 2006.

Length: 200 pages

Warnings: vampires, gore, violence, guns. (my recommendation) “Sexual themes and violence” (Viz rating)

Other info: There are currently 11 volumes out in English the twelfth should be published later in the year. Matsuri Hino has written Captive Hearts and Meri Puri. Vampire Knight is still ongoing.

Summary (blurb):Cross Academy is attended by two groups of students: the Day Class and the Night Class. At twilight, when the students of the Day Class return to their dorm, they cross paths with the Night Class on the way to school. Yuki Cross and Zero Kiryu are the Guardians of the school, protecting the Day Class from the Academy’s dark secret: the Night Class is full of Vampires!
Yuki Cross has no memory of her past prior to the moment she was saved from a vampire attack ten years ago. She was adopted by the headmaster of Cross Academy, and now works alongside Zero to guard the Academy’s secret. Yuki believes that vampires and humans can co-exist peacefully, but her partner has different ideas...

Review: My book 4 of Parajunkee’s Vampire Challenge.

The story begins with a girl who looks about three (but is five) about to be attacked by a vampire. A boy who looks about eight comes along, kills said vampire, is a vampire himself, and walks off.

Cut to present day: Aforementioned girl is revealed to be Yuki Cross. We’re at the Cross Academy, with a day class and a night class. The night class are all extremely beautiful and adored by the Day class. This is because they are all vampires. The Night Class walk to school, and would be attacked by the Day Class if it wasn’t for Yuki, whose job, as school guardian, it is to keep Day and Night Classes separate. Kaname Kuran is revealed to be the boy who looked about eight and is now dorm president. And then Zero Kiryu turns up, who is the other school guardian. The rest of the volume is really an introductory thing, which does have a plot of its own. We learn that Zero is a vampire, we meet a couple of vampires, one of which bites Yuki and ends up with a slap from Kaname, and we meet the headmaster of Cross Academy, whose dream it is that vampires and humans can co-exist. In case you haven’t guessed, this goes badly, which is basically what the whole of this volume revolves around.

The story is good. There’s a lot more going on than I said earlier, but I tried to summarise it all. It’s interesting as everything happens in a fairly quick period of time and is fairly fast paced.

The characters are slightly stereotyped, with the damsel in distress caught in a love triangle between Mr. Perfect and angry young man. The romance is a lot of “who will she go for”, which I suppose is interesting to those who like that sort of thing. Characters other than Yuki, Zero and Kuran don’t really serve much purpose other than as comic relief, in this volume anyway. The art is especially pretty, detailed and realistic.

This isn’t a Twilight clone. I know this because it was published BEFORE Twilight. However, t

here are a lot of similarities (the love triangle, the Mary Sue, and many more) that means people do compare t

hese.

Overall: I give it strength 3 tea because I enjoyed it, but it wasn’t outstanding. It’s a good read for any vampire fan, especially Twilight fans, but to anyone else, it would just be average.