Stemming from H.G. Wells’s homonymous short novel, The Crystal Egg Live is an ambitious project that aims reviving a passion for literature, with the use of theatrical performance and the powerful visual language of cinematography. In doing so, Old Lamp Entertainment directs its attention in particular to the millennials, who have grown detached both from the stage and the literary tradition.
Breathing life into this Victorian sci-fi story, a cast of eight, floats around the audience, invited to gather in one of the tunnels inside the cavernous Vaults. This appears to be a public square devoid of its central monument. A tramp – impersonated by the play's adapter and producer Mike Archer – informs me that we are in Seven Dials, where the council has unscrupulously removed the column to sell it to a different borough. As a result, many of the shops have been forced to close and all that's left is a violinist, playing a heartbreaking melody in the distance.
When a fight between the trump and a younger bearded man called Charley (Desmond Carney) breaks, we're all invited to take a seat inside a shop, full of antiquities and oddities. The business belongs to Mr. Cave (Mark Parsons), a gaunt man with a visible limp and a vicious cough.
