THE Cornish-based Miracle Theatre celebrates 40 years of open-air performances this year, with Bill Scott’s new play A Perfect World.
It is the ideal play for the company, full of invention, fun, speedy costume changes, silliness and thoughtful ideas.
Set in the 1930s, it revolves around exploration, steam punk, magical lands, peculiar people and lots of derring do. It’s suitable for all ages and tastes – a perfect world for lovers of alfresco theatrics and for Miracle’s many fans.
The five-strong company includes Miracle stalwarts Benjamin Dyson (as baddie Grough ‘Bully’ Barker as Halcyonite Falling Rock), Hannah Stevens as The Empress, the Rev Fogg and Dripping Water, Ben Kernow as the lovelorn Timothy Fogg and Loamy Furrow, Rose McPhilemy as Ruth and newcomer Daniel Richards as Archibald McMackintosh and Swooping Raven.
Once the intrepid Ruth and Timothy, with their exploratory chums, make the promised machine work at Covent Garden underground and find themselves in the undiscovered land of Halcyon, it’s only a short time til they meet the inhabitants, with their colourful costumes and strange speech patterns.
But is this really the paradise it seems to be? Is the Empress levelling with the populace.
A Perfect World raises all sorts of questions that are just as relevant to today’s world of celebrity, greed and “look at ME!” as they were when the play is based.
If the weather holds, this really is the perfect way to spend an evening at open air theatre. If you are sitting near the front, watch out for your picnics. Explorers can get a bit peckish!
GP-W
The Miracle tour continues to
at the Square and Compass at Worth Matravers on Wednesday 10th July and Maumbury Rings in Dorchester on 12th July, and returns to Dorset for three Artsreach performances at Springhead, Fontmell Magna on Thursday 1st August, Sandford Orcas near Sherborne on 2nd and Kimmeridge Bay on Saturday 3rd August.