Pardoner's Tale - Unicorn Theatre
*****
BRINGING an ancient
story to a young and very 21st century audience is not for the
fainthearted.
But Tangere Arts is to
be totally commended for its take on The Pardoner’s Tale by
Geoffrey Chaucer, now on at the Unicorn Theatre.
Although written about
600 years ago, The Pardoner's Tale, which was once told at the Tabard
Inn, just a stone’s throw away from the Tooley Street theatre, has
been given a new lease of life and brought bang up to date by the
company.
It features actor Gary
Lagden and two musicians and foley artists, Hannah Marshall and
Christoper Preece, who between them tell the prologue and the tale in
all its fantastic detail.
They come onto the
stage wearing hooded robes, wafting incense and singing in Latin
which all adds to the atmosphere.
For the next hour we
learn who and what a pardoner was - a conman who for a price sold
so-called pardons which would excuse your sins, including not doing
your homework, and guarantee your place in heaven rather than hell -
and listened to his tale involving all the seven deadly sins.
Along the way he
delights and sometimes scares the mainly young audience with jokes,
pardons, music and song to help tell his story.
His tale involves three
drunken layabouts who encounter an old man as they set out to try and
kill Death. The old man says they will find him under a nearby tree.
However, when they arrive they discover a hoard of gold and decide to
split it three ways.
But they get greedy and
this greed inevitably gets the better of them - and Gary delights in
telling it in all its gory detail, brilliantly taking on the personna
of all the characters.
It was a fantastic
production, beautifully and imaginatively told which captured and
retained the audience throughout the whole hour.
The Pardoner's Tale is
on at the Unicorn Theatre in Tooley Street until January 31. Tickets
cost £16 for adults and £13 concessions. Call the box office on 020
7645 0560.
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