Happy Prince, The

The Space @ Jury's Inn    11-16, 18-23 @ 14.05    Peculius Stage Company

I'm guessing this handful of handsome, healthy young people rehearsed this piece in the common room of their school, a good deal more spacious than the postage-stamp they find themselves in here, eight floors up in Jury's Inn. They would also have no way of knowing there was no stage, or rake to the auditorium so that any business below waist-height would be invisible to anyone behind the front row, especially little kids. And there's a lot of sitting down in this production.

So cramped is this space, the cast bump into each other a lot hunting around for the props, of which there are far too many. On the plus side, they are very nice to look at, they sing well together (although the recurring theme of "nah-nah-hey-hey" was a little incongruous to this reviewer), and this is one of Wilde's masterpieces, a rich fable of society and a great choice.