Great Local Shows - Theatrical Reviews
| Title | Treasure Island |
| Organization | Falcon's Eye Theatre |
| Date(s) of show | April 19 - May 5, 2013 |
| Reviewer | Dick Frantzreb |
| Review | Falcon's Eye Theatre at Folsom Lake College
has created a realistic pirate adventure. You enter the small theater to
the sound of gently lapping waves of water, and a waterfront scene
projected on a sheet. Then you see the deck of a ship. It's a tilted,
square wooded platform that sits on a large turntable – And before you
know it, there is a big fight among eight or so people on the "deck" of
the ship, complete with sword-play. From there, the performance pretty
closely follows Robert Louis Stevenson’s novel, Treasure Island.
I found the whole experience very engaging, as did (so I believe) the other adults and fairly young children in the audience. The costumes seemed authentic, as did the accents and language. Although some of the dialogue was a little hard to pick up, it was easy to follow the plot, and there was a lot of action – and good acting. Projected images on a large sheet (some of them animated) helped create a sense of place. Live music and a variety of sound effects set the different moods. And interestingly, these were provided by performers just off the center of the stage on either side, but for me, at least, being able to see them didn’t detract from the realism of the experience. Nor did the presence of the stage hands who rotated the stage for scene changes. The actors, nearly all men, did a lot of shouting and brought their best pirate voices to the occasion. It was a strain for me to accept a woman (slight of built, at that) as the ship’s captain, though her acting was good. For all the rest, I thought the characterizations were quite strong. For this, as for every production I’ve seen from the Falcon’s Eye Theatre, I was impressed by the creative use of sound effects, music, costumes, and set – and excellent acting – to construct a rich experience for the audience. |
