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Mindebender Peepolykus The Umbrella Revolution Š The Garden of Unearthly Delights Until Sat 28 Feb Mindbender sees the audience become part of a charade. We become the audience for Michael Santos, psychic, lover, man about town, charlatan. We enter his realm and the rickety structure that supports it. We are the voyeurs to its destruction. Worthy aims indeed, and targets worth chasing. What Mindbender doesnÕt do is what it promises. It promises to be brilliant and funny and potentially is; unfortunately what was delivered was mostly second hand material in desperate need of some punishing direction. There were moments of hilarity, mostly provided by the audience plant and his various characters but they were often lost in a sea of average humour. A saving grace is the delivery of some psychic tricks that produce enough even to impress a hardened sceptic such as myself. The plot meanders from an overlong introduction to a parody of pyschic shows to Purgatory and back again. Santos dies, is resurrected with actual powers and is overcome by his minders and eventually dies a long time before we wished he and the show had. All elements contain some often brilliant ideas (Bernard the all singing, all dancing Angel of Death for example) that unfortunately get lost in this overly long production. Fifteen minutes could have been easily removed and the resultant quality would have been measurably higher. The actors throw themselves into their parts with abandon and produce performances of high energy; unfortunately this doesnÕt make up for the dearth of quality material necessary for this show to work and be enjoyed. I wanted to like this show, I really did, unfortunately I didnÕt. |
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