Author: Tom Williams

Brewed is the story of six sisters inextricably obligated to stir a magical brew in order that one of them, Babette (Stevie Chaddock Lambert), may live. Cursed by necromancer parents for her sins, Babette’s life is now bound to the perpetual motion of the brew—held in an imposing crucible in the middle of their basement. Should at any moment the stirring stop, Babette—who is already a below-knee amputee—will die. Or at least it is believed that she will die.

In short, for all its ambitions, Amleth feels confused and without a clearly articulated vision. Pushing its source material beyond all recognition, we stop to wonder at its motives for adapting such a well-known work. Indeed, “more matter with less art” might have proven a helpful maxim.

MATRYOSHKA makes its point. But occasionally at the cost of considerable tedium. For by the time we’re running close to our second hour, the whole experience starts to feel like a nonsensical blur, not quite achieving an absurdist circular structure but nonetheless going nowhere, as though slowly following a geometrical line into an infinite horizon.

Still, Vigils is prone to some heavy-handed and clichéd ruminations on the nature of love, loss and renewal. And its efforts to blend the conventions of a realist drama with more mytho-poetic diction results in several awkwardly mawkish metaphors