THEATRE

With an interesting and potentially complex narrative, MetaMorpho successfully communicate a tale of embezzlement, devious landladies doubly letting a flat and finally, murder. This is cleverly conveyed without any speech, although it is through farce, which is not always palatable. ‘Devil in the Detail’ is a show you’ll either love or hate, and I’m a fan of marmite, but for metaphor’s sake, my dislike of the show was as unwavering as the savoury spread haters’.

Performing using masks requires such precision and control in the physicality to compensate for the lack of facial expression and ironically, this lacked ‘detail’ in the gesture which failed to communicate emotion. Their movements were very flippant apart from the frequent ‘knowing look’ pointedly aimed towards the audience, which was frankly annoying as the plot was conveyed effectively without being patronised, It was predictable even. Instead, they settled for simplistic clowning and confirmed the stigma attached to masked theatre; as a very base art form, and fringe-goers expect and pay for more than pantomime.

This show was an hour and 20 minutes of my life I wish I could get back. I could feel the abhorrent look on my face grow as I endured the show, so that I too had a fixed grotesque expression on my face as if the masks were a hideous contagious disease; infecting theatres with boredom as the chief symptom.