Counter Culture

Category     Cabaret
Genres     music, sci-fi
Group     Mechanisms / PBH’s Free Fringe
Venue     Whynot? ?
Event Website     themechanisms.com
Date     15-24 August
Time     17:30
Duration     1 hour
Suitability     18+
Warnings     Strong language.
Country of Origin     England

This is a clever retelling of the classical Olympic Greek tales of Ulysses, Heracles, Orpheus, Oedipus and Ariadne as seen through the eyes of a bunch of bloodthirsty space pirates calling themselves the Mechanisms.  Does this work as a cyberpunk musical?  Surprisingly, it does. It brings a touch of the first Mad Max movies to the original Greek tragedies richly overlaid with grim gallows humour.

The players have added together an array of fiddles, banjo, keyboard, beatbox and bass guitar to go with some terrific folk and blues songs to create a performance that comes close to perfection.  The ancient Greek Choruses were never like this.

Reviewed by David Kerr