Minotaur (Unicorn Theatre)
"Children of Athens," King Minos of Crete addresses his audience. "Which of you will do your duty?" Around the auditorium, eager hands shoot up – ‘me, me, me’ – all of them desperate to volunteer. That their ‘duty’ is to offer themselves up as a monster’s lunch doesn’t seem to bother them too much.
One by one, small children – some as small as six or seven – are plucked out of the auditorium. They are to sacrifice themselves for their nation; reparations for a lost war. Rupert Holliday Evans circles the stage like a tour manager grabbing groupies for his band at random. As if weary of his task, he entertains himself by relishing its arbitrariness. What’s your favourite football team? Are you afraid of the dark? When’s your birthday? Cancel the celebrations…
Sure enough, a minute later, there’s a gaggle of kids on the stage, individually numbered and roped together: a herd of human sacrifices. It’s a thrilling moment: dark, dangerous and taboo. They laugh and clown, waving at friends in the crowd. We wait for the minotaur’s approach.
It is, far and away, the best moment in an otherwise plain retelling of the minotaur myth. Adam Peck’s straight-speaking adaptation focuses us in on fathers and sons, on revenge and on inequality. Minos is seeking justice. Athens and its king, Aegeus, killed his son. He wants the same in return: a son for a son. If not Prince Theseus, then seven others instead. And if Aegeus (Ben Adams) won’t select the seven himself, Minos will pick twice as many. Each of the 14 is someone’s son or daughter; each has friends and classmates in the audience.
Tarek Iksander’s production is measured and deliberate, and Louie Whitemore’s amphitheatre-in-the-round creates a space for moral reflection.
Strange, then, that it should leave certain elements so unscrutinised – not least the place of Minos’ two other children, his daughter Ariadne (Anna Elijasz) and his second son, the minotaur itself. Though they have a special relationship – Ariadne’s music soothes the beast – they remain secondary to the story. Peck and Iksander insist that this is a story about a hero, Theseus (upstanding Theo Solomon), and a monster to be defeated.
The minotaur has an unnerving presence. Under a rusty, angular, origami-style mask, it skulks around the space, dragging one leg, silent but for snorts and grunts. It sets the young audience squealing with disturbed delight, but we’re never asked to consider its fate, banishing beneath the king’s palace, waiting for death. Nor Ariadne’s neither, as a woman born to be married off.
Bits of the story get botched, too. The labyrinth itself gets lost. David W Kidd beams slabs of light onto the floor to create a maze that’s functional, but unthreatening. No-one falls victim to it or the minotaur itself. The use of string is anticlimactic: it’s unwound, but never retraced. It’s a simple staging that makes simple mistakes.
Minotaur runs at the Unicorn Theatre until 2 April.
