A certain amount of vacuum

The School of Computer Science and Engineering has produced some extremely well-done spexes, but it’s been almost a decade since last. So I was quite happy to see that they’d now joined forces with the School of Media Technology and produced an all-new spex. Clearly I had to go see it.

So, this Friday I found myself in one of the off-S:t Eriksplan cellar theatres with an excited crowd of what apparently was mainly friends and parents. The audience was very pleased with the show, but, alas, I must say this must have been the same kind of pleasure proud parents feel at Lucia shows at day care.

The actors certainly knew their lines, but they completely lacked in timing on stage. Then again, the dialogue was wooden enough that it really didn’t make much of a difference. With delicious irony, the finale was a version of “With a little help from my friends” and the actors certainly could have needed a bit of help trying not to sing out of key.

That said, it was not all bad. Actually, I’d say that the choreography made up for much of the other deficits and there was a “One office and five drummers” that was quite excellent. There were a few clever restarts as well, one involving doing “bullet time” dodging—live on stage.

Still, I found myself thinking back to the glory days of D spexes. I hope a new generation of witty and creative script writers will soon be born.