The Stage

The Beautiful Journey

Published Monday 8 June 2009 at 11:30 by Roger Malone

The more the images resonate in the mind, the more you realise how The Beautiful Journey is an incredible experience.

Draped around a plot where a classical story is given a futuristic twist, the setting, scenes and performance knit into a rich cloak of dramatic superlatives.

Perhaps the most potent is Kassandra’s (Sue Hill) wild white hair catching the breeze as, raised high in her flying birdcage contraption (courtesy of a Dockyard crane), she floats past a near-full moon with the waters of Plymouth Sound in the distance.

It is a spellbinding moment that can not be contrived as the elements themselves conspire to conjure a unique theatrical moment.

This promenade performance lingers largely amid the shanty homes of Kalypso Island - the last inhabited place on the planet.

Here are rooms created from scaffolding, planks and plastic sheeting, furnished with the flotsam and jetsam of cherished possessions. Here also is a cabaret stage for the musicians, cloaked in curtains and illuminated with a chandelier.

As the dockside surroundings dissolve into darkness, stage lights heighten the atmosphere. The moon plays its bit part arcing further across a clouding sky.

Samuel Gardes, as the immortal Hermes, gives a mesmeric delivery as he guides us through this surreal world. So too, does Kalypso, Queen of the Island (Agnieszka Blonska).

Under director Bill Mitchell the ambitious and innovative production harnesses its surroundings to the full.

Ushered inside a huge shed we see a massive melting ice block - the memories it stores, unscrambles and projects on a circular screen suspended from the roof. With hope restored, the Beached Sailor (Roger Delves-Broughton) then launches his real boat from a dockyard slipway, and sails into the night. In this world within a world the real and fantastical fused in one enchanting odyssey.

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