Travis' Prophecy

Synopsis

Nine-year-old Travis escapes domestic abuse through his growing psychic powers and with his friends from "the other side". Obsession and loneliness drive him to misuse his gift as he grows older, dispensing advice to the wide-eyed vulnerable and destroying lives with sleight of hand. Travis desperate attempts to win the affections of his childhood sweetheart, Saskia, become more dangerous than he could ever have imagined, as he meddles with a dangerous force he does not truly understand. When the final card is dealt, NO-ONE can escape Travis Prophecy's not even the audience.

Our Review:

22 June 2001

When Brute Culture's director Amanda Caswell-Robinson began exploring the project of Travis' Prophecy, she observed that the "power given to tarot card readers is similar to that given to therapists". The theory being that whilst many use their talents to bestow good intentions, the minority abuse such positions for their own gains.

By modern notions of the healing industry, almost all the characters here would have been packed off to trauma treatments long ago. We open with the child Saskia (Kathryn Ford) cowering from the physical abuse heaped on her mother by Ian Mayhew's oppressive father figure. Then we burst into Dennis Potter territory as a line of singers emerges to pastiche a 1950s tune. In the background, the father's stick swishes and cuts until the parents collapse exhausted onto the sofa. Meanwhile, the singers form a human barrier between wounded child and devastated mother.

Elsewhere, the troubled boy Travis is already spreading his tarots on the de...

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