Red Jungle Fowl

• Eddie Harrison
• 11 August 2014

This article is from 2014

A school-trip to Brazil goes wrong in this disappointingly low-brow farce

A group of posh, sex-starved British teenagers and their uppity, vain teachers head over to Brazil during the 2014 World Cup to perform A Midsummer Night’s Dream with impoverished favela children in this unlikely comedy drama from the Tea For Ten Theatre company.

While writer James Huntrods and director Tom Birch claim to be drawing on their own experiences, the details seem contrived; after one of the teenagers goes missing, the group contact the local television companies for help, yet still go through with the Shakespeare performance because the funding for their trip depends on ticket sales? Such ‘square peg-round hole’ plotting would be easier to understand if the characters were fresher or the treatment of their situation more original; boorish, randy boys, naïve girls, a Joyce Grenfell schoolmistress type and other hoary stereotypes abound; all treated with off-hand contempt, leaving the audience with little to care about.

And with four actors playing umpteen roles with little more than a change of hat to clue the audience in on which character they’re meant to be playing, any on-stage energy is dissipated in high-minded but disappointingly low-brow farce.

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