| The Beautiful Journey Reviews |
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This latest piece from Wildworks, played out at sunset on the waterfront, is inspired variously by the sea, the Odyssey, the stories and memories of local people and the human capacity to hope. The audience are cast as the few survivors of an unnamed catastrophe in a world where even the bees have disappeared. We are taken to the quayside, where a strange wind- and bicycle-powered shantytown has sprung up. It is a place of waiting, where a song or a dance can be exchanged for food and water, or maybe even a taste of precious honey. Staged by the waterside, among buildings the disappointed grey of a winter afternoon, Wildworks’s production is a rough-and-ready affair. It’s also punctuated by bursts of beauty that alone are worth the price of admission. I Doubted anything could better Cornish-based Wildworks' Souterrain a couple of years ago when the audience travelled, jaws gaping, with the players through the Gates of Hell, alternatively known as Dolcoath Mine at Camborne. But The Beautiful Journey is even more ambitious and awe-inspiring; thought-provoking and honest to goodness fun in equal measure. The more the images resonate in the mind, the more you realise how The Beautiful Journey is an incredible experience.Draped around a plot where a classical story is given a futuristic twist, the setting, scenes and performance knit into a rich cloak of dramatic superlatives. |