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In 1497 Vasco da Gama set sail from Portugal and became the first European to find a sea route from the Atlantic to the Indian Ocean. It was a journey that was to lead to the European empires of the 16th century.
But it was also a dangerous exploit. Only a third of the crew survived the epic voyage. It didn't get any better, either. Just over 50 years later, a Portuguese nobleman called Luis Vaz de Camoes was sent on the same journey as a punishment for fighting. He only made it back 20 years later, having been shipwrecked several times, made and lost a fortune, and having written a poem that was as epic as his journey. Os Lusiadas was a celebration of Vasco da Gama's voyage, a paean to the growing Portuguese empire and a political tract.
Wireframe, which is well-known for creating theatre environments, has taken the poem and turned it into a puppet piece in which the protagonists are fashioned from wood, rope and cork. The sailors rise from their watery graves to tell their stories. They are reduced to asking the way to India as home becomes a distant mirage made of smoke and mirrors.
The evening is highly atmospheric, but the script assumes an intimate knowledge of the story and lacks real drama or poetry. Disappointingly, Wireframe fails to make effective use of the Museum of . . . , which has played host to a number of exciting site-specific and promenade performances. This is the story of an epic journey where the audience goes nowhere except to sit in the recreation of a traditional theatre to watch a puppet show that takes place at a distance. Actually seeing what is going on is a problem.
Puppetry is enormously fashionable in the theatre at the moment, but it takes real skill to use the medium successfully. If the manipulators are going to be visible, they need to have the acting skills necessary to deliver the lines and convey feeling. They don't here, and the result is a performance that fails to connect with its audience either emotionally or as a piece of storytelling.