Simple and raw, pool (no water) reminds us of the power of the performer, of language and exposes the ugliness of competition. A very provocative piece of theatre and sometimes a little too close to the bone.
One has the sense no-one on stage knows how it will begin, until it begins. What will fill the middle. Will it be a soft centre, or something hard and brittle? How, or when, it will end. This is the rugged beauty of it. It's all about the journey.
In the care of Pinchgut Opera’s director, Erin Helyard, this music, formulaic as it indeed is in some respects, sprang off the page into an experience rich in emotions.
Blind faith and rational belief are always sparring partners in dramatic conflict and so it is here with the power play tinged with superstition and salaciousness.
Contradiction, conundrum, conflict, racism, misogyny and homophobia run through this play like a main circuit cable snaking through a moral minefield of explosive allegation.