My 2012 theatre year may only be two weeks old, but it's already given me three mightily impressive productions: Midnight, The Ballad of Halo Jones (both part of LassFest at the Lass O'Gowrie) and The Voyages of Sinbad the Sailor (at Unity Theatre in Liverpool).

First up, Midnight. This was the good Russell T Davis episode of Doctor Who; you know, the one where The Doctor is on a transit tube travelling across Midnight, the diamond planet. Devoid of life. Except that thing which takes over a passenger and does the creepy repeating thing. That one. Well, for LassFest, a group got together and adapted it for stage. Not that much adaptation was needed - start with getting on the transit and... err... I think that's about it.

The venue was the Lass O'Gowrie's Theatre, basically an upstairs room. Capacity 28. A wonderfully claustrophobic venue for a claustrophobic play. The cast were great, the weakest link possibly being the professor but I think his character gets some fairly wooden lines (a bit like my problem with Roy Cohen's opening lines in Angels in America - they don't feel addressed to the other characters as much as the audience). A stand out performance from Zoe Morris [CHECK] though as Sky Sylvestry who does an astonishing job in repeating and then synchronising with the rest of the cast.

Immediately after Midnight I saw The Ballad of Halo Jones in the main part of the pub. With even less scenery and stage space than Midnight, this was a mightily impressive performance. Before going to this, about all I knew was the brief summary I'd read on the website and Wikipedia.

For the first half, I struggled to warm up to Halo Jones herself - well, so would you with Rodice and the constant interruptions from Swifty Frisco with up to date news bulletins and entertainment news, Halo seems so... dull. But her determination shows her to have far more ooomph than the loud and brash Rodice and gets her off The Hoop and into space. Where we meet Glyph (Awww... Glyph...) and the Rat King and the far more interesting Halo.

I mentioned earlier the lack of space and stage dressing but the production used projections and costume really well. Again, special mention to Benjamin Patterson playing Toby for injecting wonderful menace and friendliness through and with the mask.

Of course, Moore's and Gibson's world bears worrying similarities to our own. The "sit-drams" and constant entertainment news keeping the unemployed masses in check (the commercialisation of poverty?) and the fear, distrust and near criminalisation of anyone seeking to escape that unemployment (see especially young people and "chavs"/working class) have worrying echos today.

All in all, two excellent productions, and I look forward to seeing more at next year's LassFest and what Scytheplays come up with next in Sci-Fi Theatre.

Finally then, The Voyages of Sinbad The Sailor. This is the family play that Unity Theatre put on over Christmas/New Year instead of a panto. It's aimed at kids and so has a very simple script and fun songs and (very limited) audience participation. Not all elements of the Voyages were fully realised (choosing to narrate over some of the adventures), the bits that were were handled really well.

This is a proper theatre space with scope for set and stage design. Previous visits have been fairly limited stage settings but, this time, Unity could show off. It was beautiful. This was real Magic Of Theatre stuff and the designers Katie Scott and Emily Youell deserve massive congratulations for what they created. Themed around being in a large tent, the white walls and roof allowed for shadow play, projections and beautiful imaginative playfulness such as the roof flapping as if wings of a giant bird to whisk Sinbad away, or sails on a mast as characters take lookout on the ship.

And then we get to the puppetry: small dolls and larger, posable figures of the characters were used many times throughout the show, perhaps best of all when tackling the Giant Ogre. And then The Genie... amazing puppet there and Puppet Pool should be highly praised for that.

My only point of contention with this production was the inclusion of effeminate men and boys as the butt of jokes and dismissive attitudes. It surprised me from Unity who had previously felt the most queer friendly theatre I'd been in (mainly because of the Homotopia programme items I had mostly been to in the past) - it just felt slightly off.

But, three stunning pieces of theatre, and hopefully there is much more to come this year.

Alex
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