My Blood

The wonderful thing about theater is that we can really build the world that we want with it, to draw and establish connections between topics that in any other format would be tenuous. The exception to this rule seems to be ALL Productions’ My Blood, and its connection to the Oresteia is perhaps as distant as the Percy Jackson films are to the books. 

The plot focuses on the Atreides family, a wealthy family whose investment firm mysteriously survived the 2008 financial crash. Reeling from personal tragedy, siblings Chloe (Victoria Kinne) and Oliver (George Lyones) take matters into their own hands to hold their father, Adam (Gillies MacDonald), to account. 

”very disappointing to sit through”

The aesthetic in this show can only be described as gothic, dark academia, as the cast of characters deal with betrayal, conspiracies and loss, and this overwhelming sense of luxury. It’s just poorly written. There are issues with every part of the show that matters. The plot is long, dull and just so far out of the realm of reality that it’s just tiring to watch. The characters themselves are as two-dimensional as they came, stock figures that we quickly grow to dislike, with their relationship dynamics trying to replicate those of Succession than anything we see on stage. And because of this, moments that are meant to be more emotional than the rest slip us by, as we have not been brought to care about any of them onstage. The decision to include supernatural elements comes out of nowhere and is completely at odds with the realism that grounds the aesthetic of the costume and set design. Neither are these elements set up stylistically by utilizing tropes from Greek mythology or Ancient Greek plays that would signpost to us that we can expect a normalisation of these mythological elements. In particular, this lack of pretext makes Eve come out of nowhere, to the point where her role becomes confusing and profoundly irritating, adding nothing to the show and only making it worse. 

On a more practical note, the constant and lengthy scene changes interrupt the flow of the piece, and because there doesn’t seem like there’s a narrative, all of this adds to the assumption on our part that these scenes don’t line up, come out of nowhere, as there isn’t anything to link them together or no context given.  We also can’t hear the actors over the sound design, Lyones is particular is barely audible, whilst the rest stay mostly at a high volume that becomes monotonous and diffuses any real moments of conflict. 

The cast do their best with these characters that we’re subjected to over the course of this show. To their credit, they have the difficulty of having to recreate well-established tropes but with none of the nuance. 

My Blood is just bad theatre without any saving graces. Instead of being its own story, it’s trying to be something that has been done many times, and that it simply can’t achieve in its time-frame. For a show that promises so much, it is very disappointing to sit through. 

By Katerina Partolina Schwartz

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