Monday, December 08, 2008
Festive Fears
On Saturday there I went to see the Radio Theatre Group's latest (and last show of the year) show, Festive Fear, which was alot of fun I have to say. Being more ambitious in scale and presentation than the Suspense season (which I was very privileged to be a part of!) the Festive Fear season, was a collection of four short radio plays, two of them presented by two of RTG's veteran performers, Derek MacDonald and James Keenan.
Back for Christmas the first play of the night was great fun to watch, James did a fine job as the henpecked husband who plots to murder his nagging wife . After that we had The Nightmare Before Christmas, which was acted out on the stage by Derek MacDonald who did great job as the spooky Jack Skellington (I wonder who did his make-up). After a break we had another solo stage performance from James who played The Grinch who Stole Christmas, James was really entertaining in this role, bounding round the stage (using a single chair as a sleigh no less!). But the grand finale was grand indeed as The Plot to Overthrow Christmas was an excellent ensemble piece, with six actors all on the mics, all as devils who conspire to kill Santa Claus. I think it was safe to say this piece was my favourite of the night and it was great to see some actors I hadn't seen before play some wonderful character roles, Alasdair Mitchell in particular I thought was great as Ivan the Terrible. John Love (who I worked with on Sorry, Wrong Number) did a fine job as the head devil Mephisto (even sitting down he looked quite fearsome!) and also as Santa Claus. The ryhming speech of the scripts made the pieces even more unique, and overall I loved the staging of the plays, "Plot" in particular made great use of the actors mingling with one another when not involved in scenes. Oh and a big shout goes out to Bruce Downie who did another fine job operating the sound effects not to mention directing everything, oh and also Teresa who did the announcing of the plays and "links" between them.
So overall it was fun to see the finale of the RTG season and its always a pleasure to watch (even more so to take part in). I'm looking forward to their new season next year, The Escape Season, hopefully i can take part in that too at some point. RTG provides something unique in theatre and its good to see it gets an audience, as something different in theatre is always welcome. So bring on the next season....
Back for Christmas the first play of the night was great fun to watch, James did a fine job as the henpecked husband who plots to murder his nagging wife . After that we had The Nightmare Before Christmas, which was acted out on the stage by Derek MacDonald who did great job as the spooky Jack Skellington (I wonder who did his make-up). After a break we had another solo stage performance from James who played The Grinch who Stole Christmas, James was really entertaining in this role, bounding round the stage (using a single chair as a sleigh no less!). But the grand finale was grand indeed as The Plot to Overthrow Christmas was an excellent ensemble piece, with six actors all on the mics, all as devils who conspire to kill Santa Claus. I think it was safe to say this piece was my favourite of the night and it was great to see some actors I hadn't seen before play some wonderful character roles, Alasdair Mitchell in particular I thought was great as Ivan the Terrible. John Love (who I worked with on Sorry, Wrong Number) did a fine job as the head devil Mephisto (even sitting down he looked quite fearsome!) and also as Santa Claus. The ryhming speech of the scripts made the pieces even more unique, and overall I loved the staging of the plays, "Plot" in particular made great use of the actors mingling with one another when not involved in scenes. Oh and a big shout goes out to Bruce Downie who did another fine job operating the sound effects not to mention directing everything, oh and also Teresa who did the announcing of the plays and "links" between them.
So overall it was fun to see the finale of the RTG season and its always a pleasure to watch (even more so to take part in). I'm looking forward to their new season next year, The Escape Season, hopefully i can take part in that too at some point. RTG provides something unique in theatre and its good to see it gets an audience, as something different in theatre is always welcome. So bring on the next season....
# posted by kenny @ 6:18 pm 
