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Dido Queen of Carthage

Published Wednesday 6 February 2008 at 12:00 by Nuala Calvi

After toying with settings including a 19th century women’s refuge and the site of the Rose Theatre, site-specific company Angels in the Architecture have finally found a venue that brings Marlowe’s neglected classic to life.

The state apartments at Kensington Palace ring with the histories of troubled female royals down the years, from Mary II to Princess Diana, providing a haunting backdrop for this tale of a Queen destroyed by love - especially when filled with much swaying lamplight and watery sound effects.

When Dido invites the shipwrecked Trojan, Aeneas, to dine with her at Carthage, she does so in a bona fide royal banqueting hall, with the audience invited among the guests, while Cupid’s cruel love games are overlooked by painted Gods and cherubs, who seem to be egging him on from the ceiling.

Sarah Thom handles Dido’s transformation from sombre monarch to giddy lover exquisitely, with Jeremy Legat’s winged troublemaker lending suitably ticklish support.

Her subsequent outpouring of grief and anger, when Jupiter calls Aeneas away to his destiny in Rome, feels truly earth-shattering, and makes her hero seem a damp squib in comparison.

Jake Maskall, best known as EastEnders’ Danny Moon, certainly looks the charismatic warrior, but manages to turn even the highly-charged cave scene - played out in an echoey marble room - into a passionless affair.

Nevertheless, the production instils a chilling sense of the potentially destructive power of love, even if the audience has to undertake a promenade odyssey to rival The Aeneid to experience it.

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