Comments on: Review: Cruel Tales Of Youth (Queer Up North) http://www.whatsonstage.com/blogs/manchester/2009/05/23/review-cruel-tales-of-youth-queer-up-north/ Sat, 21 Nov 2009 14:00:21 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.2.2 By: Peter Rivendell http://www.whatsonstage.com/blogs/manchester/2009/05/23/review-cruel-tales-of-youth-queer-up-north/#comment-8307 Peter Rivendell Sun, 24 May 2009 09:37:30 +0000 http://www.whatsonstage.com/blogs/manchester/2009/05/23/review-cruel-tales-of-youth-queer-up-north/#comment-8307 A review that manages to make the show sound much more exciting and enjoyable than it actually was... Cruel Tales of Youth was certainly visually striking, technically impressive and more or less lived up to its promise as 'theatre poetry' but I found the experience emotionally quite bleak. The lack of any kind of coherent narrative or real drama or sense of connectedness between the performers - or the audience - left a show that was interesting to listen to, occasionally stunning to look at but that said nothing much more than that some teenagers in some time-frozen European cityscape are dispossessed. I think we knew that. A review that manages to make the show sound much more exciting and enjoyable than it actually was… Cruel Tales of Youth was certainly visually striking, technically impressive and more or less lived up to its promise as ‘theatre poetry’ but I found the experience emotionally quite bleak.

The lack of any kind of coherent narrative or real drama or sense of connectedness between the performers - or the audience - left a show that was interesting to listen to, occasionally stunning to look at but that said nothing much more than that some teenagers in some time-frozen European cityscape are dispossessed.

I think we knew that.

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