"The Dark Side of Love" Roundhouse Theatre

"The Dark Side of Love" is a contemporary promenade theatre production that uses Shakespeare's tragedies as inspiration to explore young love. For many of Shakespeare’s most tragic characters, love represents not an ascent into heavenly bliss, but a descent into hellish despair. It is an intense and atmospheric experience with stunning digital projections. The audience are encouraged to lose themselves in the action, whilst the characters lose themselves in the most extreme of emotions as they search for the light of love glimmering through the darkness. 


Devised in collaboration with teenagers from London and Brazil and directed by Companhia Bufomencanica artist Renato Rocha. The production repsonds to the World Shakespeare Festival's themes of international exchange and bringing professional artists to work young, emerging artists."


Description from the Roundhouse website and "The Dark Side of Love" programme.

As the description states, this experience (as it seemed more to be), was very interactive. We started off promenading around the edge of Roundhouses' basement room. The actors were stationed periodically round the circular walk, each performing their own mini 'piece' or monologue. Then everyone was literally taken by the arm and subtly directed into the center of the space through these little archways. We were between two large cloth sheets which were being projected onto from the other side. Suddenly they were taken down, and this is when the real show starts. The actors were paired in each of the archways and interacting with each other. Although we, as the audience, weren't required to do anything, we were still in a very intimate position with what was happening. We were ushered to different parts of the space and were able to watch the development of the performance, as a whole, from all around us. Projections of faces underwater, and various other textures, were on the walls (the whole space still being circular), and sound and music, along with other lighting, was used to complete the atmospheric exploration of "young love." 


It was a really effective arrangement, which sometimes didn't quite make sense, and could be seen as too "conceptual", however you got into the swing of it a lot more towards the end, and, like in any of Shakespeare's plays anyway, you just had to "go with the flow". The ending also highlighted really strong performances from some of the actors. They actors used elements of Shakespeare's language, but the real effective part was their modern interpretation and relevance to a younger generation! The space was incredible, this gothic/ tomb vibe, and the lighting and projection techniques was definitely something to take on board. I especially liked the projection onto cloth and also projections they did onto the surface of cloudy water in buckets!! Very clever! The textures and materials worked well with the animated style of the actors and performance overall.


For more information visit: http://www.roundhouse.org.uk/whats-on/productions/the-dark-side-of-love