Reviews

What a happy, wholesome show this is!

Seussical creators, Flaherty and Ahrens, took principal characters from several Dr Seuss books, mimicked his doggerel style and threw them together in various plot situations to produce the book and lyrics.

Actors move around on a sparse stage, set with merry-go-round horses and sprinkled with sand that makes a crunching sound as it is walked on.  This modern reinterpretation, by The Rabble, of the original novel Story of O written by Pauline Reage (Anne Desclos) and published in 1954, is at times an overwhelmingly visceral experience.

In my youth, as in countless others, Lord of the Flies was a mandatory text. It seemed at one point or another every person that I know studied this book at school. And why not? It portrays deep messages about the law and order vs primal animalistic urges and it’s prepubescent cast of characters appeals to a younger demographic. There is so much an assumption that we all know the story that it has even been parodied on The Simpsons.

Arthur Miller’s account of the “Salem Witch Trials” in colonial Massachusetts between 1692–93, is an allegorical play which points to the climate of hysteria surrounding McCarthyism in the 1950s.

The Crucible is a heavy, cheerless play, principally about, honour, power and its abuses. When Miller was called to testify before the “Un-American Activities Commission” in 1956, he was sentenced to a year in gaol for contempt of Congress, for refusing to name names. The conviction was eventually over-turned on appeal.