The Moon Pact Trial
There is some element of truth in all fiction, and in most stories recounted as truth there will be some evasion or exaggeration, an aggrandisement of events otherwise unwitnessed or the wounded party emphasising their innocence even as they shift the blame to others, but what can be made of the circumstances of the staging of the Moon Pact Trial?
His black costume having been misplaced, Pete Mitchelson’s one-man performance is more casual than it might normally be, but in the dimly lit dungeon of the Banshee Labyrinth he can at least be seen, manic as he runs back and forth across the stage and clambers upon the seating to recreate and express the nightmare he claims to have inside knowledge of, a play within a play, a horror within a comedy.
A ritual within a text of translated runes over three thousand years old and presumably never performed in the long interim during which civilisations rose and fell, for an actor facing an ugly divorce and making ends meet as a high school drama teacher an offer of paying work no matter how unusual is to be welcomed, reuniting with former associates Jenny and trust fund darling Andre to play “the outsider,” a conservative and regressive force in a recreation of what cynics might dismiss as “witchcraft fetish nonsense.”
Rotating through the characters and the tangled story of the creative and black arts, Mitchelson presents a show ambitious for the basic space, his energy and emotions shifting as challenges rise, conflicts of interest and concerns over strange coincidences with the even stranger woman he meets in the theatre bar, the physicality of his performance compensating for a voice which is sometimes almost lost as he burns his way through The Moon Pact Trial of demonic orgies and dancing with the damned.
The Ritual continues at the Snug at the Banshee Labyrinth on Niddry Street until Sunday 24th August
