"A substantial proportion of Suzanne Collins's smash 2008 YA novel is set during the titular Games, which are a sort of gladiatorial reality TV contest in which heavily armed teens murder each other until there's only one left, Historically this sort of thing is not theatre's strength. A cheeky duel, absolutely. But a half-hour plus nonstop combat sequence featuring 24 fighters and multiple sub-locations is... tricky."
"director Matthew Dunster and a top notch creative team do a pretty damn good job of finding a way forward, deploying aerial work, pyro, video screens, some tightly drilled choreography, the odd song and a highly mobile, rapidly changing set from Miriam Buether to create a sequence that's coherent and gripping, even if it's hard to really hand on heart say this is as effective a representation as the one in the beloved Jennifer Lawrence film"
A lavish stage adaptation of The Hunger Games is mounted in the purpose-built Troubadour Canary Wharf Theatre. The production tackles large-scale action through aerial work, pyro, video screens, tight choreography, occasional songs and a highly mobile set by Miriam Buether. Matthew Dunster's direction foregrounds the novel's class-oppression themes, contrasting the gaudy Capitol with impoverished District 12. The in-the-round, steeply raked auditorium frames the audience as spectators of the Games. The staging achieves coherent, gripping sequences despite the difficulty of representing sustained combat and the loss of filmic close-ups that identify minor characters.
Read at Time Out London
Unable to calculate read time
Collection
[
|
...
]