150

"Wales' two national theatre companies - National Theatre Wales and Theatr Genedlaethol Cymru - team up for the very first time, with one of the country's leading artists, Marc Rees, and broadcaster S4C to create ​a visual and storytelling feast.

Performed in English, Welsh and Spanish, {150} will bring to life key moments in the story of the 150 Welsh men, women and children who settled in Patagonia in 1865, and the lives of their descendants today.

This multi-platform production, combining live performance in Wales with a specially commissioned film from Patagonia, will be staged in the Royal Opera House stores near Aberdare - a vast building not normally open to the public, close to the homes of many of the original settlers.' (NTW publicity)

 

       We were not in a good mood arriving just in time as signposting was inadequate if you were coming through Abercomboi.  We gathered with others as the show started from outside the 'theatre.'

       This production is very ambitious and all credit to the NTW in continuing to look for unusual and dramatic settings for their productions of an epic nature. Last year's production of Mametz set in the Usk countryside and woods resembling the battlefields in France, was absolutely superb. All of our emotions and senses were brought into play.

       150 is in another dramatic setting; the stores of the Royal Opera House, dark, eerie and huge. The lighting and staging effects are amazing. However, without a script writer, the production is a series of dramatic fragments, it lacks cohesion and is difficult to follow. I had no sensory experience of the scale or the hardship of the pampas, apart from the scattering and pouring of oats and being told it was hard. I had little emotional engagement with the historical characters or their struggle.  This is mainly demonstrated by a few key incidents in the history of the Welsh colony that are repeated in different ways through dance, music, oration and sketches by school pupils.

         Interjected in the history is a video telling the contemporary story of a young Patagonian woman who has journeyed to Wales, worked in Pobol y Cwm, the Welsh language soap, and returned to Patagonia, confused about her identity and where she belongs. This works quite well as we have a character who we get to know and see her struggle mirroring in reverse the struggle of the early Welsh migrants.

       I came away disappointed. It would have worked so much better with a script pulling it together and staged in a place where our senses are invoked of the pampas, the bravery and courage of the pioneers, in a place perhaps such as the nearby scrubland of Hirwaun.

       Tickets available today, the last day from www.wmc.org.uk