Writer:  Siobhan Nicholas

Director: John Ramm

Reviewer: Jo Beggs

The Public Reviews Rating:

In their younger days The Great Tourrinos toured the land, delivering magic, clowning and mind reading to audiences from Plymouth to Portree. It’s a hard life but tinged with just enough glamour to keep these two, Freddie (Chris Barnes) and his wife Grainne (Siobhan Nicholas) on the road. But the glamour suddenly turns to tragedy when a circus trick goes horribly wrong and their young son, a naïve accomplice in their William Tell apple-shooting spectacle, fails to avoid the bullet.

And with that the Tourrinos are no more, as Grainne walks off stage and out of Freddie’s life forever. Or so he thinks as, alone, he tours second rate stages up and down the country, now a sour old man telling bad jokes and crooning gloomy songs. But tonight is the night he’s dreamed of. The night she walks back into his life to resurrect the old act, to do the show one more time.

It should have stayed where it was. A glittering memory in an old man’s mind. Dolce Via is an hour and a half of dull, uninspired tricks, lacklustre clowning and stilted drama. It fails both to entertain with its showbiz turns or affect with its tragic story. In short, it’s a wearisome piece of theatre, which fails to live up to its enticing publicity or the company’s credentials. Chris Baines spent two years in America working with Barnum and Baily’s circus. Doing what? Here we get just five seconds of unicycling and a couple of predictable, poorly delivered magic tricks. Siobhan Nicholas’s previous drama, Hanging Hooke attracted critical acclaim as captivating drama. There’s little sign of that here.

Nicholas claims that Dolce Via is inspired by the films of Fellini and Charlie Chaplin yet it exhibits none of the surrealism of the former or comedy of the latter. Director John Ramm would do well to have taken more inspiration from the visual genius of either – the subject lends itself to both and yet without being informed by the publicity, the influences would have been impossible to spot.

What’s more Latecomers were allowed and clattered in, equipment hums audibly during quiet moments, the ambient lights have a cold, clinical glow. But good theatre should b able to overcome these shortcomings and when you find yourself distracted by them it’s a sign that something’s very wrong.

It would be hard to find anything to recommend in this poorly conceived and disappointing production.

Reviewed on Saturday 31st July

Dolce Via - Lowry Theatre, Salford, 5.0 out of 5 based on 2 ratings

Tags: Chris Barnes, Circus, clowning, Dolce Via, Guildford, Hanging Hooke., John Ramm, Lowry, Magic, Salford, Siobhan Nicholas, Studio, Take the Space, Yvonne Arnaud, Yvonne Arnaud Theatre