Perform at the Minack on a sunny

Director: David Kershaw
Cornish Theatre Collective & Penryn Community Theatre

It’s fair to say that perched on the cliffs at Porth Curno, The Minack theatre almost always steals the limelight and only the most outstanding of plays can compete with its natural glamour and good looks. Perform there on a sunny day and you’ll have a fight on your hands for the audiences’ attention. But with pirates, gunpowder and an 8,000 strong harem, Prince of the Burning Sun promised to do just this.

Based on a true story, the play revolves around Thomas Pellow, an 11 year old boy from Penryn who leaves school to join his uncle’s vessel only for it to be attacked by Barbary Corsairs on his first crossing of the sea. He and his shipmates are then sold into the burgeoning slave trade in Morocco where he strikes up an unlikely relationship with his owner, the power-crazed Sultan of Morocco, Moulay Ismail. In fact, the play commemorates 200 years since the abolition of slavery in the British Empire, and highlight lesser known elements of the slave trade, such as that which Pellow and an estimated one million other Europeans were sold into.

However, despite a powerful story and a strong premise, the play failed to deliver. Some of the actors weren’t charismatic enough to hold the audience’s attention in such a stunning venue, and the script lacked real humour with laughs limited to somewhat generic jokes relating to pants and props. Luckily the innovative special effects saved the day. The gunpowder fuelled battle scene in the second half was particularly effective and the regular beheadings were entertaining.

John Telfer as Sultan Moulay Ismail, TJ Holmes as Thomas Pellow and Jenny Northcote as Queen Lala Zidana stood out amongst the cast, and, as ever at The Minack, if the play failed to hold the audience’s attention the backdrop never did. (Chelsey Flood)