Half Trick theatre proves that there is a place at the Fringe for the old as well as new, in this lively revival of John Marston’s little known Early Modern revenge tragedy. One half of their devilish double-bill alongside The Faustus Project (separate review to follow), Antonio’s Revenge is ambitious, gory, and darkly funny.
Antonio’s Revenge has all the familiar tropes one might find in Shakespearean tragedy, only it makes the likes of Macbeth and Hamlet look rather tame. Audiences unfamiliar with this reasonably obscure piece need not worry about its comprehensibility – we roll along with an easy to follow, rapidly deteriorating plot, the foregone conclusion from the grim murder that opens the play being a gruesome fate for most participants. A smattering of torture here, the vengeful ghost of a dead father there, too many murders to count, topped off with cannibalism and so much blood, the play hardly promises a barrel of laughs; yet Half Trick draw out the humour from the dregs of the script to produce a wry parody Marsten’s more famous counterpart whose work, love it or not, is uncontestably over-performed.
The show works because despite the parodical nature of the piece, its cast deliver performances worthy of the Shakespearean stage. Courtney Bassett’s Piero is an accomplished feat, bringing a dynamism to a character whose only discernible personality trait is ‘evil’; if Antonio makes Hamlet ‘look like a little bitch’, her Piero makes Uncle Claudio look like a stand-up guy. At all points do she and the rest of the company adeptly straddle the line between sincere Shakespearean thespian and pantomime villain. It is in this tension between the high-brow seventeenth-century dialogue and the playful fervour with which it is spoken that the humour emerges.
The studio at C Arts Alto is an intimate performance space, which in this instance had its benefits and drawbacks. In the company of a modest but fully engaged audience, one certainly got a feel for the reciprocal experience of Elizabethan theatre – but a larger audience, whose collective laughs, gasps of shock, and groans at the blood and gore are more amplified, would only have elevated this further. That is to say, I hope to see Half Trick on a grander stage; the sophisticated performances of its actors are undoubtedly worthy of it. I left Antonio’s Revenge amused, a little repulsed, and in eager anticipation of the second instalment in Half Trick’s double-bill.
Antonio’s Revenge is on at C Arts Alto on even dates from August 4 to 24. Tickets available
here.
Press image provided by Half Trick Theatre.
