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TRIFFIDS, 3 Stars

TRIFFIDS
Arts Depot, Studio Theatre, North Finchley
19th March 2022

“METEORS! KILLER PLANTS! B MOVIES! Platform 4’s Triffids! A gig theatre adventure in music, sound and pictures… is an incredible collision of music, text and rich visual imagery, which embarks on a national tour this spring. Coming to Arts Depot on 19th March 2022, this production takes the audience deep into John Wyndham’s classic cold war novel The Day of the Triffids with a live soundtrack with instruments including Moog, Double Bass, Theremin, Hammered Dulcimer and… a Cactus!

Building on their past collaborations with local people, Platform 4 worked with the community at Highcliffe allotments, interviewing the many people on their sites. Asking them questions about weeds, climate change and their memories of Wyndham’s book gave a whole set of disparate answers which creator Catherine Church mashed together to act as interventions in the adaptation of the original novel. Platform 4’s Triffids! includes beautiful elegiac violin solos, melancholic wistful melodies inspired by a lost world to wacky, psychedelic 1990s acid house!”

Review by Richard Lambert, 3 Stars

An Arts Council Funded production from Platform4 Productions will be touring til end of March 2022.

This interactive gig has a stage full of instruments and a rear thin curved video wall. Traversing pop synth to melodic tones and drones to cacophony of musical noise the show throws everything into the mix. It very much reminded me of Mike Oldfield’s Tubular Bells.

It doesn’t have a strong story, and it is one that we all know anyway – how the story will start and how it will end, however it’s a delightful evening, enhanced with theatricality. Star of the show with terrific raconteur skills and presence is Jill Dowse. Whether acting or playing instruments her persona and charisma shone throughout.

This isn’t an easy show to perform and huge credit to the entire team. It’s a niche show that hasn’t quite found the following it deserves. I’m sure the talent involved will find the right show to become commercially successful and I look forward to seeing them again behind something that has a wider appeal that draws in the crowds.