Theatre Review: Minotaur-June 10 2008

I was excited to see Minotaur. I've never been frightened by a play before, and I was looking forward to seeing exactly how the writers were going to do it.
I thought about the conventions of scary films, and wondered how a play, without the same edits and special effects available, could frighten me.
The play began before we even entered the theatre. It was presented as a lecture: the audience were the students, and the cast members the instructors. After I saw the play, I discovered that the cast members shot some videos and posted them to a blog...a very nice touch, I thought.
It's hard to believe that anything happening in a play is really happening, but the cast did a good job of creating tension and suspense by describing a strictly regulated learning structure and then inserting inexplicable, haunting elements which interrupted the flow of the 'course'. Lights dimmed, characters lost each other in the dark, characters lost themselves in their attempts to recreate the events in the last few weeks of a missing couple. The theatre was freezing cold*
Another effective element of the play was its abrupt ending. There were no bows and there was no space for applause. The audience was led out of the theatre in awkward silence. I half-expected to see the cast waiting outside.
I wasn't crazy about the 'background lectures' delivered at the beginning of the play. They were probably necessary to give symbolic background to the story and establish the lecture form, but I felt that they could have been a lot shorter, or delivered in a more serious way. I loved that the show started in the foyer, but the introduction reminded me a bit of the type of enthusiastic and slightly creepy welcome you might get when you go to see the circus or a magician perform.
I've seen three plays in under two months.
I'm afraid that I might have a bit of a fever...















*Perhaps that was just the air conditioning.