THEATRE – THE POLITE GENTLEMAN

Shane | 20 September 2012 | Reply

The Blue Room Theatre, Perth, Western Australia
19 September 2012
By Shane Pinnegar

Mark Storen is mesmerising as he relates his simple, cautionary tale of Mouse, a downtrodden and left behind loser who is tempted to make the ultimate deal with none other than The Polite Gentleman – The Devil himself.

During the course of this short but powerful one-man show Storen acts as storyteller and plays the parts of not only Mouse & his friend Frank, a former client of The Polite Gentleman, but also The Gentleman himself – in his current form as none other than a chicken!

It’s heady stuff. Storen spins a quality yarn with plenty of laughs to defuse the dark material and has a tremendous, sonorous voice ideally suited for this type of intimate theatre. He even cracks out an acoustic guitar and sings and plays a couple of blues songs very effectively.

The design team have worked wonders – a simple stage is made the most of by tremendous (and again, simple) lighting, and the soundtrack of Robert Johnson and Howlin’ Wolf blues evoke the dark themes well.

If anything, a couple more songs would have helped avoid the crowd looking bemused at the brevity of the 50 minute performance, but there’s no denying the show was riveting and emotionally engaging from start to finish.

Read Shane’s interview with Mark Storen here

DATES – 4 – 22 September 2012
Tickets available from: The Blue Room Theatre
www.blueroom.org.au
9227 7005
http://moxycollective.com/
http://www.facebook.com/TheMOXYcollective