Witch and Mansion – REVIEW
Image: WITCH at Sydney Spiegeltent, Oct 2023. Photo: Tim Levy
The Sydney Spiegeltent is a magnificent venue that is able to evoke an immediate ambience and make the air tingle with expectation. Its circus-like structure and intimate stage make it perfect for particular types of show, to wit, comedy, acrobatics, burlesque, cabaret, dance – everything Bass Fam Creative excels at.
Their current dual productions, Witch and Mansion, now on in the Sydney Spiegeltent, follow in the tracks of the incredibly successful Matador and Oracle which each independently wowed audiences at various recent fringe festivals. Witch and Mansion, do not quite reach the heights of the aforementioned shows, feeling like slightly watered-down versions of what Bass Fam usually offers. They are, however, in their own way entertaining.
Witch is an entree and a kind of narrative prequel to Mansion. Both shows are set in a large house which has an inherently supernatural vibe. In Witch, this vibe lures a group of seemingly well-to-do women to gather inside the house and explore its and their own hidden sins. A tale of ever-diminishing inhibitions is told through dance and circus routines.
Mansion picks up the narrative some years later, when a woman and her adult children move into the house after the death of their father. They too, are seduced by whatever malevolence imbues the house, shamelessly flaunting their moral decay through dance, circus and burlesque.
There is more emphasis on dance and theatricality in these shows than in other Bass Fam productions.
You can attend both shows or just one or the other. Witch is a shorter, uninterrupted show, which won’t make it feel like a long night if paired with Mansion.
