Blind Hamlet – Upstairs, Assembly Roxy **

This underdeveloped play on form has a story of a writer going blind and his words played through a Dictaphone on stage. Written by Nassim Soleimanpour, the stage is devoid of actor apart from the stage manager who helps out with the proceedings and audience members begin to fill the stage and culminates in a game of Mafia. It explores the ideas of interactions between strangers, being and justice, it also touches upon the concepts of blindness. But the games are over simplistic and the single round of Mafia is not enough to demonstrate its purpose in a social context sufficiently. And at £15 for a forty minutes show with no actor or set is quite overpriced for the festival standard. There are hints of great ideas in there but it needs a lot more work for it to be a fully formed production.