ROBIN ARTHUR   

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Literary Agent:  n/a

Plays by Robin Arthur

ROBIN ARTHUR

Spectacular

1st Produced:

Riverside Studios, London, EUR >>>

2008

Company:

n/a

1st Published:

I don't think it has been published. Try emailing Playwright or Agent where listed at top of page.

ISBN/ASIN:

-

Music:

-

doollee no

#93059

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Genre:

Piece

Parts:

Male

1

Female

1

Parts other:

-

Notes:

concevied and devised by Forced Entertainment; text by Tim Etchells, Robin Arthur and the company

Synopsis:

It is the end of the show. Fake blood has been splattered everywhere. The body count is high. The final victim drops to the floor writhing in agony. The body's twitches subside, and the survivors speak the epilogue. As you watch them, you notice that the exertions of dying are still takingtheir toll on the actor. The corpse is breathing heavily, and any minute now the dead will rise and take their bow at the end of the show. Tomorrow night they will live, die and rise again. We have all been there, and now Forced Entertainment take us there again in a show whose name is a finely honed joke, but also achallenge to the audience. There is absolutely nothing spectacular about Spectacu-lar, which features a paunchy man in a skeleton suit on an empty stage describing a performance that is not taking place, and a woman who keeps on interrupting him and seizing the spotlight to perform a series of melo-dramatic death scenes that rupture the unspectacular spectacle. Both these performers are making a spectacle of themselves, but alone they cannot smother the absence that fills the stage, the emptiness where the man in the skeleton costume tells us that there should be dancers wearing pink ostrich feathers and a band playing an upbeat ragtime number and a warm-up man cracking jokes. They can all be seen, but only if like that glorious moment in Peter Pan when we have to save Tinkerbell -the audience really believes. There are three of us in this theatrical marriage, and we all have to work pretty hard to keep it going.
- Lyn Gardner, Guardian

Further Reference:

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