Review: A Family Business, Omnibus Theatre - smartly performed but connection issues
24/02/2024
A Family Business is based on conversations with academics, activists and diplomats, and is part interactive educational lecture on nuclear weapons and part drama about the campaign for nuclear disarmament.
Writer and performer Chris Thorpe takes the part of the educator. He greets people as they arrive to take their seats, asking names, which he squirrels away for later. (A skill that I'm always hugely impressed by as someone who finds names skim through my brain at an alarming speed.)
He throws questions out to the audience to test knowledge and hands out biscuits for correct answers. He asks other questions too about where people live, favourite places etc. When a Google map is projected on the back wall, the direction is pretty clear.
However, woven between lecture segments is the story of some campaigners trying to get a treaty on nuclear disarmament signed and ratified by enough countries.
Here, you get insight into how the argument for nuclear disarmament fairs in the world of politics: the power imbalance between the few who have and the many who have not. It's also insight into how the privilege of power is wielded.
It's an interesting concept, arming the audience with lots of facts and then using more traditional drama to illustrate that, however strong the fact-base case is, it's a huge uphill battle to get disarmament.
But the problem is that the two formats interrupt each other. The lecture is paused by the drama, and the drama is interrupted by the lecture. It elongates the former while stopping you from getting to know the characters well enough to form a connection.
Overall, the beat of the message is so loud and so consistently earnest it starts to drown itself out.
As a piece, it is smartly performed and certainly educational, but despite its best efforts, it doesn't fully develop the drama and, as a result, doesn't connect as well as it should.
I'm giving it ⭐️⭐️⭐️ and a half stars.
Family Business, Omnibus Theatre
Writer and performer: Chris Thorpe
Director: Claire O’Reilly
Performers: Greg Barnett, Efé Agwele and Andrea Quirbach
Running time: 90 minutes without an interval
Booking until 25 February, for more information and to buy tickets visit the Omnibus Theatre website.
This was a review ticket.
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