Gasp-worthy, clunky, an ethical downside? Critics react to The Hunger Games: On Stage | Theatre

The Super Bowl optics are all there from the off: a wardrobe of nice gaudy glory (the Sixties, with twists of commedia dell’arte, the Palace of Versailles and alien-chic, designed by Moi Tran), a fast-changing set by Miriam Buether and energetic choreography from Charlotte Broom. The first half, prepping us for the gameshow, lacks rigidity, nonetheless. “We are just hours away from being mortal enemies,” Katniss says. But you don’t really feel the dread.

Arifa Akbar, the Guardian

Mia Carragher, daughter of ex-footballer Jamie, is an brisk central presence as Katniss Everdeen, the warrior who fights off rivals within the gory contest that’s the scores equal of Strictly Come Dancing in Panem, the grim state dominated by a foppish elite. But the truth that she’s required to relate a lot of the story whereas sprinting right here and there’s a distinct flaw.

Clive Davis, the Times

Playwright Conor McPherson and director Matthew Dunster have set this dystopian story in a colorless, delicately evoked model of Depression-era America, the place the inhabitants of District 12 eke out a dwelling amid coal-mining disasters and meals shortages. A refrain of townsfolk sway like sun-bleached garments on a washing line, powerless and adrift, in choreographer Charlotte Broom’s evocative motion sequences.

Alice Saville, the Independent

In the chrome-and-glass dystopia of Canary Wharf in east London, a lot of the cash seems prefer it’s been blown on making a hi-tech colosseum. Eight vertiginous banks of seating – a few of which transfer through the efficiency – open out right into a runway, or shut in to kind the killing fields … Martial arts, trendy dance, and hand-to-hand fight are what drive the pageant, heightened by strobe lighting and nasty white noise.

Patrick Marmion, Daily Mail

Set items stand up from beneath the arena-like stage, and props are lowered from above. Ian Dickinson’s sound design sends the flutter of birds’ wings across the auditorium, bringing us nearer to the motion; Kev McCurdy’s struggle course orchestrates gasp-worthy duels; and Chris Fisher’s illusions ship arrows flying into the bullseye of their targets.

Holly O’Mahoney, the Stage

Dunster and McPherson’s unexciting manufacturing fails to reimagine and revitalise its supply materials. Moreover, they don’t critique the queasy subject material. There’s merely by no means sufficient sense that we, the viewers, are complicit in what we’re seeing … Given that the story is about kids killing one another within the identify of TV leisure, the failure correctly to characterise the tributes themselves is nearly an ethical downside.

Claire Allfree, the Telegraph

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One side that can’t be faulted is the vitality, stamina and athleticism of the performers, a lot of whom come from dance backgrounds. Carragher herself should run tens of miles throughout every efficiency; her indefatigability is commendable, regardless that McPherson’s bewilderingly clunky script leaves her with far an excessive amount of exposition to plough by means of.

Fiona Mountford, the i paper

I wasn’t offered on the casting of a pre-recorded John Malkovich because the manipulative President Snow – it’s considerably disorientating to have a well-known American actor seem at huge scale on the screens each every now and then, and the scenes the place Malkovich is ‘talking’ to a reside performer simply really feel a little bit of an odd factor to be watching.

Andrzej Lukowski, Time Out