Ben Hur Live review, The O2
Rating: 3/5. The O2's multi-million pound spectacular thunders into town with chariots a-blazin', but it's all style and no substance
18 September 2009
Rating: 3/5
Presumably the 200 or so birds we were promised were off sick last night - only a few doves showed up to the finale but, given the scale of this multi-million pound extravaganza, you could have missed the rest among the hundreds of extras.
Taking its lead from the hugely successful 1959 film, this labour of love 15 years in the making feels uncannily like a hybrid of Time Team and Cirque Du Soleil. Academic - it's in Aramaic and Latin with a bit of narration- and acrobatic in equal measure, it turns the life of betrayed wealthy Jew-turned-slave Judah Ben Hur (Sebastian Thrun) into a series of blockbuster set pieces.
A slave ship fight with pirates (straddling quad bikes on a dry ice ocean) is ingeniously designed, and hundreds of dancers and acrobats make a Roman orgy sexy without frightening off the front row parents.
Ben Hur's centrepiece chariot race is terrific to start with, but there's just not enough room in The O2 to do it justice without giving the horses, every one as glossy as a four-legged Cheryl Cole, a collective heart attack.
It's spectacle over heart, stopping it from being brilliant. The wooden cast, gamely struggling to make Latin and Aramaic translate some kind of meaning, might as well not say anything at all, especially while suited-up narrator Stuart Copeland darts incongruously around the set like a time-travelling Jerry Springer. Ooooh is great, but it's even better to have a bit of aaaah as well.
Ben Hur Live, to 20 September, The O2
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