Hi...you're probably wondering what this blog might be about.  In which case, it's relatively easy to explain.  I'll be reviewing things that I like (not connected to film, other sites for that), but just things that I see at the theatre maybe, or musical performances, maybe even books.  Just anything that takes my fancy, alongside the occasional thought or observance.  

So with that being said...let's dive right into it (so to speak) with a review of a rather touching and brilliant show I saw as part of the "City of Culture" celebration that my home city of Kingston-upon-Hull is currently in the midst of.  

This whole year in 2017 has all sorts of various celebrations going on, but this particular one I was drawn to more than most due to its theme of environmentalism, mystery, and the use of theatre and a technology of particular interest to me...that of VR.  

VR seems to be an emerging technology at the moment, and curious directive (who I'm really interested in now) take a unique angle on it which made for a show unlike any I've ever seen before, and which I now see as a new form of storytelling that could take all sorts of interesting angles.  

So...what it is about? put simply it's essentially a missing persons story with a mystery at the heart of it, and an overarching theme of lost innocence, recalling warmer days when childhood was spent with friends and having a great time.  

This ties in with the theme of the loss of the Great Barrier Reef itself in which one of the main characters goes missing, and which forms the central aspect of the story.  Ashley Richardson is a young girl who vanishes after stealing a boat which belongs to the father of Lilly McCullen, friend to Meera Clarke, the main character.  Ashley is revealed to have had a troubled past, and her friendship with Meera comes under focus in the present, through a series of interviews carried out by local police, to establish what exactly happened that fateful day.  

The actual interviews take place in a theatrical setting, with Tessa Parr playing the now grown up Seera, and the disembodied voice of Sarah Woodward as DCI Fiona Webb providing the probing answers searching for clues to past mysteries, adding an element of ghostly narrative and overarching authoritarian procedures (at least to me).  

We then see the "evidence" in video form from the past in the VR helmets, which adds an incredibly immersive feel to the production, putting us, the viewers, right in the heart of the memories of these characters as we see glimpses from their past as they talk and converse in more "innocent" years.  The performers playing these roles do a very good job of creative believable chemistry, and their lives are given added poignancy and emotional weight by the mingling of different layers of reality as can only be done in this way through VR really.  

The whole thing is a triumph of theatre, sound design, and visual panache, with an incredibly level of attend to detail at every moment, leaving the viewer with very direct feeling of connection to this story that stays in the memory banks in a unique way...almost a feeling of being involved with the story yourself, in a way that simple theatre and cinema simply can't achieve; the barrier being distinctly separate as you watch characters in front of you.  

Here, you see them, and  feel involved as their lives unfold in front of you, leaving you the viewer to become immersed in their world as memories of yesteryear linger long after the jury is called, leaving you with a longing for your own childhood, distinctly different from reality as it may have indeed been.  

A virtual reality, perhaps, and one that through this production, can be accessed and experienced to the most beautiful of degrees.  

The production leaves you with a question, but one that I don't think needs an answer...just your, perhaps bittersweet recollection of a previous past and time.