Theatre - Theatr

Dyma stori am orchfygiad Periw. Mae'n gynhyrchiad lliwgar, llawn cyffro gyda cherddoriaeth fyw gan Theatr Ieuenctid y Ganolfan.

The Royal Hunt Of The Sun - review by Alex Gilbey from Opening Night

Sound effects. Lights up. Enter the narrator and the story begins. Spain,

1533 and General Francisco Pizarro (Marcus Dobson) has a problem. He’s getting old and has things he still wants to accomplish, specifically getting his name into history and getting very, very rich. The key to both of these ambitions lies in the New World, where rumour abounds of an Aztec country where gold is like water. Accompanying him is his newly recruited page. Hero worshipping his bitter and cynical commander, he pledges to follow him anywhere, while his elder self (the narrator) watches from the sidelines.

On arrival they discover a highly organised empire of millions of people.

Meanwhile the Aztec Emperor Atahualpa (Roger Clarke) is informed of their arrival and the two leaders meet in one of the Aztec’s towns. Seeing how badly he and his men are outnumbered, Pizarro seizes the Emperor and has his attendants massacred, holding Atahuallpa as a hostage to ensure their safety. So ends the first half.

Following this, things rapidly become more complicated. The two leaders reach an agreement.  Atahuallpa asks to be ransomed in exchange for enough gold to fill a room. Pizarro knows that if the Aztec lives, he and his men will never survive, but agrees on the basis that nobody can find that much gold in a hurry. As time passes, the two leaders become friends, both being illegitimate children who have gained power through their own abilities. However, when the room is filled problems arise. Having come to know his hostage well Pizarro is reluctant to break his word, but is also informed that only he will be allowed to leave, his men killed in exchange for their massacre of the Aztec’s. The others of his troop see a simple answer - kill Atahuallpa whose people will not attack without his orders.

Eventually Atahuallpa exhorts Pizarro to bow to his men’s demands: as the son of a god he cannot be killed.

Unfortunately for him, this is not the case. Old Martin a man left embittered by what he witnessed as a boy and since, laments the empire that was. With their leader dead, the Aztec civilisation fell apart, replacing the agriculture which had sustained them with forced labour and gold mining.

As I said, it’s a big story. As on any first night there were issues with dialogue, although to be fair it’s an intensely verbose play, but it wasn’t until the second half that many of the characters began to emerge as Pizarro’s expedition begins to fragment and different people begin to emerge from the group. The scenes between two leaders were both masterful and compelling, but in other parts where large groups were involved, the pace flagged. Battle scenes were kept symbolic, but the problems of depicting epic battles on a stage are many and varied and they sometimes seemed anti-climatic compared to the preceding action and dialogue.

However, acting and pace improved throughout the entire cast as the show ran on and no scene overshadowed any other. The whole thing was a great success, an achievement for any group putting on a play of this scale, particularly with the Youth Theatre’s lack of resources and rehearsal time. The most successful part of the staging were the sound and lighting, giving a real sense of setting and changeability to a very simple set.

It is my policy not to name names when reviewing ensemble pieces, on the basis that any actor is as important as any other. That said, I must especially praise the narrator (James Hancock-Evans) for a performance that was both close to and far from his younger counterpart and which set the mood for the whole production. The same can be said of the leading Spaniards for portraying a wildly differing group of men, their men for showing the nature of those who carved out the new world and come to that, the rest of the cast for making the entire thing both a great spectacle and an intimate portrait of a single place and time.

So, a superb piece of storytelling well told, a play well acted, a stage well set and the whole thing calculated to keep you riveted. That sounds like a result to me. My reservations will doubtless be cleared up as the cast get into the swing of the play and I’d encourage you to go and watch it.