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[sarahpannasch]

10 Plagues, Poster Design for the Belfast Ensemble

[imonlysayin-blog]

10 Plagues

Belfast Ensemble | Naughton Studio, Lyric Theatre Belfast | 28 - 29 July

★★★★

“a stellar incarnation of a singular role”

Tracing one man's journey through a city in crisis, Ten Plagues charts the great plague of 1665. Part torch song, part Schubert song cycle, this groundbreaking piece of music-theatre was originally written for iconic singer Marc Almond and premiered at the Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh in 2011. Drawing from the biblical story of the Israelites who survived the plagues wrought upon the Egyptians, Ten Plagues projects that tale of survival forward through 1665 when the Black Death (The Great Plague) devastated London, to the 20th century emergence of AIDS - The Gay “Plague” as it was homophobically labelled in sections of the media - and charts the impact of living through the onslaught of this most modern disease.

Mark Ravenhill and Conor Mitchell's award winning AIDS polemic comes to the Lyric stage once more for the start of LGBTQ+ Pride week, and is performed by Matthew Cavan accompanied by the composer.

The score is dense with a musical complexity rarely found in the form. Mitchell’s formidable technical ability enables the interesting melodic lines and harmonic textures to weave a mature musical narrative with a sophisticated dynamic subtlety.

Matthew Cavan delivers a stellar incarnation of the singular role originally performed by Almond. Within his melodic marathon, Cavan delivers a performance with an enviable musical maturity and emotional depth. At times genuinely affecting, his characterisation is unquestionably authentic and profoundly memorable.

The production and moving image design however are by contrast distinctly lacklustre. Disappointingly, the back projections do little to compliment the unique narrative of the piece, are at times extremely distracting and surprisingly utilise imagery already seen in some of the Ensemble’s previous work. Nevertheless, the use of a more original and relevant moving image design would undoubtedly add another dimension to an otherwise flawless work.