1000 Tiny Birds

Project Dictator

Bristol Old Vic, 2023-10-30

I am by one account a good boyfriend, and so when Alasdair says that there’s a clown show about totalitarianism, I dutifully go along. It’s not that it’s something I couldn’t like, it’s just, yeah. In the event, I think it’s something I enjoy maybe even a little more than he does. It’s very much a show of two halves. The first is a rather broad satire of the idea of how dictators come to power, the populism, the preference for blind happiness over confronting the real problems, and the people under fire to protect that fragile state. It’s not particularly incisive, and if it had been dragged out longer, would have been worse. The second half, though, split via a sheer curtain, goes decisively more sinister and abstract. If pushed, it’s a comment on what art is allowed to be in such a regime, the complicity of it, the danger in not following along. Not weird for the sake of weird, there is meaning, but I’m not sure what exactly. Fascinating to watch a girl in what seemed like an A level drama trip watch the show, at times - originally I assumed bored, but no, more… concerned. I wonder what her essay said.