Review: Creation Theatre, via a digital theatre platform, 18-27 June. This show may return for another season! Book Creation Theatre tickets here.
[Disclosure of Interest: I am thrilled to be a Trustee of Creation Theatre company. Every day, I see what a wonderful company it is full of dedicated and talented people. All this means I am biased. This is why I’m not giving my review a star rating. However, I do want to share my love of great theatre, so I’ve done my best to write a review that gives you the information you need to decide whether to buy a ticket.]
Keeping Up with Kassandra is Creation Theatre’s latest live digital theatre offering and the first presented in its newly built digital theatre. The new digital platform is gorgeous! The waiting area is beautifully designed, you can wander around the theatre looking at things while waiting for the doors to open. Once the ‘doors open’, each ticket holder can take a seat (as a live picture if you enable your camera) around the stage area. It really did recreate the feeling of going to the theatre!
The show, written by Funlola Olufunwa, follows Kassandra, who is a Nigerian princess, reality TV star and humanity’s conscience. The premise of the show loosely follows the story of mythical Cassandra, who is cursed by Apollo with the ability to prophesy but never to be believed.
Kassandra is supported by a cast of characters played by the actors that make up Creation Theatre’s repertory company, which was set up in early 2020 to employ actors and bring original digital theatre to people in lockdown.
Supporting characters include gogglebox families commenting on Kassandra’s media appearances, rappers doing dance scenes, news readers reporting on Kassandra’s activities and opinions, Kassandra’s preacher brother and some gloriously silly scenes with barbie doll puppets. All these scenes, some pre-recorded and some live, were fun to watch and were cleverly done.
One thing I love about Creation Theatre is that it never takes the safe option. Even in the heart of a pandemic, it has continued to produce challenging, edgy material, not safe crowd pleasers. With Keeping Up With Kassandra, it has done so again!
I don’t watch reality TV or gogglebox type shows – so for me, I’m just not used to that format. This meant that I found it difficult to follow Kassandra’s narrative arc. Given the style of show I would have liked to see Kassandra’s public prophesies, not in a church – which felt a bit literal, but via social media, perhaps as a guest on daytime TV or as a podcast guest, etc.
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