A Hero of Our Time
Adapted from a novella by Mikhail
Yurievich Lermontov, A Hero of Our Time charts the
romantic exploits of Grigoriy
Aleksandrovich Pechorin, an impetuous
army officer serving in the Caucasus. Pechorin is irresistible to
women yet contemptuous of them, over the course of the play cruelly
toying with the affections of both a former lover and an innocent
young woman on holiday in the region.
While
Kudos Theatre presents a solid telling of Lermontov’s story (the
first time it has been adapted for the stage, it should be noted),
A Hero of Our Time unfortunately does not achieve
the level of urgency that the action-packed plot deserves. Despite
being played by an able cast, the drama’s characters are too vaguely
drawn to care about, meaning that just at the point that the audience
should be most rapt, we begin to lose interest.
The
physicality in this production feels entirely extraneous: rather than
adding anything to the drama, it only succeeds in distracting
attention from the dialogue. The use of mime, in particular, feels
like a token gesture, employed inconsistently throughout the show in
an unimaginative and amateurish fashion. This is a shame, because with a little more attention
paid to creating well-rounded characters and a little less time spent
pointlessly crowbarring moments of lacklustre physical theatre into
the show, A Hero of Our Time could be a very
satisfying piece of work.
