Review by Victoria Minett, 大象传媒 Coventry and Warwickshire website team.
Occasionally, sometimes more often then that, you can't help but feel there's something of an Emperor's New Clothes mentality around some arts critics.
Sometimes when they all start raving about the quality of a film, band or play, you discover they were bang on.
However, in the case of this particular play the critics who have been falling over themselves to tell the world how good it is should hang their heads in shame and get their bumps read.
In a nutshell, we're "transported" (though frankly you couldn't be whisked off anywhere by the more-brown-than-was-needed set) back to post Apartheid South Africa.
There we meet Allison (Jennifer Steyn), mourning the death of her husband, the writer Dawid Olivier (Marius Weyers), and his mistress Marta (Denise Newman).
We learn more about Olivier, painted as a brilliant man, through the discussions between Allison and Marta - and from some ethereal appearances from the man himself as the action moves back and forth in time.
He was forced out of his beloved, native South Africa to England, but then was able to return home to die.
Now, I can spot allegorical content as fast as the next man and so it wasn't that I didn't understand what was going on that spoiled the enjoyment.
I'm afraid it was the actors who sent the piece spiralling to new depths of drama.
| 听 |  | The cast of Sorrows and Rejoicings.
|
For emotion, read shouting. For passion, read shouting. For asking whether you want a cup of tea, read shouting as loud as you have done before.
Warwick Arts Centre doesn't boast the largest auditorium in the world I know, but you could've been in St Paul's and it still would've hurt.
The movements on stage by the actors too let the whole thing down.
They were hurtling about and making shapes like theatre students just embarking on their improv classes.
There were some good points. The text was excellent, as you'd expect from as good a writer as Fugard, and the clever links between the days of Apartheid and the lives of the characters were exceptional.
And that just makes it harder to believe the writer also directed this.
But I have to say, for the performance itself, don't believe the hype.
| 
