Review of the Purple Theater’s production of Terry Pratchett’s The Truth

(I will be sending this to the great newsletter, the Discworld Monthly, in the hope that they might add it to next months letter! So pretend you don’t know who I am while reading this if you can)

 

On my trip to London from America I was able to see a Terry Pratchett play performed in the extremely friendly town of Ickenham.

The opening night performance of a four show run of Terry Pratchett’s The Truth was performed by the Purple Theater group at the Compass Theater in Ickenham.  In fact, the first play ever performed by The Purple Theater was a Terry Pratchett play in 1997 (Mort) so they have a long standing tradition of TP performances.

The Purple Theater has brought together a wonderful cast to bring the world of Ankh Morpork to life.

Craig Cameron-Fisher does a wonderful job as Lord Vetinari as well as Charlie (Vetinari’s doppelganger) beign at once ominous and authoritative as well as oblivious and drunk.

Andi Tuder does a superb job portraying Commander Vimes while Manveer Saleot and Tim Williams bring Mr. Pin and Mr. Tulip to life beautifully.  I loved Mr. Tulip who wasn’t my favorite character in the book but while watching the play I learned to love him the best.  The play is of course full of humor and hilarious one liners, so much so that some of the cast (Dominic Parford as Otto) couldn’t seem to keep a straight face.

Gaspod was so great.  Using a puppet to portray the (non) taking dog, the puppeteer provided great comic relief as well as moving the plot along smoothly and quickly.  The use of puppets throughout the show was charming and entertaining.

Now, this was community theater so elaborate scenery and costumes couldn’t really be expected but the cast did such a great job with their parts that it almost didnt matter.  The dark light effect was really quite good though I don’t know if you hadn’t read the book if you would understand what was going on.

There were some stumbling and awkward or rushed transitions but that is to be expected with the first performance. Sometimes they went so quickly through the story it was like watching the high school cliffs notes performance of your favorite book.  Part of me understand that because it is a long book and was a very long play but I missed many key parts I love from the book.

On a side note, the theater put together an amazing program (available for two pounds but totally worth it) that was made to look like a newspaper complete with want ads and character profiles.  It was full of great Terry Pratchett jokes that made me smile.

I was so glad to be able to get a Terry Pratchett related activity into my London trip since we get so little of them in the States.  Now I just need to find somewhere to rent Going Postal before I leave!