Nottingham New Theatre is presenting Wrecked, a piratical political satire loosely based on Shakespeare’s The Tempest, at the Edinburgh Fringe.
Wrecked is “an absurd political satire chronicling two days in the lives of six pirates and one dead parrot, shipwrecked on a tropical island”.
When there is no longer an authority to rebel against, the buffoonish buccaneers turn on one another, each vying for power. The play explores whether institutions can ever be anything but systems for oppression.
Creator / director Chris Trueman said, “using The Tempest and other Shakespearean classics as a base, we wanted to explore the idea that politics is cyclical by using romantic notions of pirates as swashbuckling freedom fighters with tragi-comic consequences.”
The piece offers six actors the chance to explore the characters through physical theatre as well as giving them creative input in generating dialogue and experimenting with clowning techniques to get the most number of laughs.
Nottingham New Theatre, “the only entirely student-run theatre in the country”, is staging Wrecked at Greenside @ Royal Terrace until Saturday 26 August (all even numbered dates except 20 August).