Beowulf in Bath
June 7th, 2008p>To Bath for Friday night’s dress rehearsal of the FullSail Theatre’s production of Beowulf, A tale of the Dark Ages. This is one of the many offerings at the Bath Fringe Festival 2008
, the west off England’s answer to the Edinburgh Festival. Beowulf opens on Sunday night at 8 PM and closes the following night. It is billed as a multi-media promenade production. If that sounds a bit daunting fear not. What it actually means is that the company is part of that refreshing move in the arts world to take the theatre back to the people. Far away from astronomical West End theatre prices and princely salaries for star actors.
That’s not too different from the Globe Theatre in Shakespeare’s day. Last night the cast gathered in Sydney Gardens, one of the City’s beautiful parks, on what proved a not too chilly and entirely dry evening. The prompter, a bloke of about my age, had enough light to see the script. And it was just warm enough for him to stand in thin purple cloak, bare legs and sandals without shivering.
This being just a dress rehearsal the park was empty apart from the cast and a few friends. And a group of young teenagers sitting on the grass a hundred yards ago. (Judging by the girl’s this year’s skirt length is hyper micro, as near the navel as it is possible to get.) As the performance got under way the teenagers came over to listen and then followed the cast around, as they performed different scenes in different parts of the park.
In the opening scene there was a whoosh of noise rather like a modern train going by, which I thought must have come from some concealed loudspeaker. When it happened again twice I realised that it was a modern train because the main west coast line runs in a cutting right through the park. As does the canal, as I discovered when we all trooped down to the tow path into a tunnel. Then we watched a film projected from a lap-top computer on to the wall of the tunnel.
My mobile phone had difficulty in coping with the light as nightfall approached. But below is a picture of the opening scene which should give you a taste of the scene.
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