Publius Horatius, White Bear Theatre

I can see what the company was desperately trying to do here and the subject has so much potential. By recognising the familiar political traits and questions that have run throughout human society since the Greeks and Romans this show is exploring the development of political discourse. It is interesting that they based their script on texts by both ancient authors such as Titus Livius and 20th century playwright Bertolt Brecht, weaving into the performance another layer of thought- provoking complexity.

The actors successfully created a series of quite effective vistas which were visually interesting. However the problems came in getting into these panoramas. There were long delays as each actor spoke then positioned themselves, and sadly if this was meant to be the point this didn’t come across and it slightly felt like they couldn’t do both walking and talking. That being said, the set was quite appealing: a clever use of newspapers and binbags to create both the floor and most of the props (including dead bodies).

The point of this piece was to ‘explore the way of talking about individuals and their deeds in a contemporary political context’, but for the first forty minutes it was just a retelling of the story of the Horatian. As far as I could tell no element of modern political characters appeared until the very last few minutes in the form of beautifully designed masks of famous faces such as Thatcher and Stalin. Unfortunately therefore, this show didn’t really achieve its aim, and only got interesting right at the end. A little more development and slightly faster storytelling would make this show far more interesting and watchable.