Delphi: The Musical – Edinburgh Festival Fringe

Delphi: The Musical continues at the Auditorium at Bedlam Theatre until 30 August (except 17, 24).

Star rating: three stars ★ ★ ★ ✩ ✩

Delphi, the site of the Oracle for four centuries, has fallen on hard times. It’s broke. Backstage everyone is fraught. What to do? Improve the spectacle? There’s a certain rivalry between Pythoness, the diva-like High Priestess who is the conduit for Apollo’s wisdom, and the pragmatic Sophie. Perhaps the imminent arrival of two emissaries from Rome will save the day? This all depends on the whim of their boss, the never-seen Emperor, who’s will, when it is revealed, has strong reverberations of Trump. Which doesn’t bode well for the Oracle…

This is Delphi: The musical, with book and lyrics by Richard Alger.

The stated aims of Theatre Movement Bazaar, the company behind the show, is to create works which emphasise physical action, merging dance, text, cinema and media.

It is richly choreographed (by director Tina Kronis). Indeed, hardly a word is spoken (or sung) without its concomitant gesture, like a sort of hip Noh Theatre, but there are times when it feels like all life has been choreographed out of it, an impression emphasised by the cast expressionlessly directing everything to the back of the audience, even in the most intimate scenes.

This gives the whole a comic book aspect. Maybe there’s a satirical point to this – or maybe it’s linked to incorporating cinema and media: there are a couple of occasions in which a sudden move by a character is accompanied by a whoosh or a zap.

These formal stylistic strictures mean that, although they’re all acting their socks off, there is little onstage chemistry between the cast.

The singing is excellent, the music and songs (by Wes Myers) sing-alongable, bouncing from jazz to rock to classical (a nice bit of rap from Narcissus, staring wide-eyed out front under an incongruous red wig), but they’re all remarkably short. They stop just as they get going, and each ends with the same photo-op pose to cue applause from the audience.

It’s an enjoyable enough show, and there’s obviously a lot of work gone into it, but I wish the nine-strong cast (Alex Bravo, David Guerra, Prisca Kim, Isaiah Noriega, Nikhil Pai, Paula Rebelo, Lamont Oakely, Mychel Scott and Eddie Vona) had been given an opportunity to let go a bit.

James Bryce