Forced Entertainment - "The World in Pictures"



Somewhere, amid the frequent downfalls of fire-proofed theatrical snow, the ragbag of dodgy costumes, the swirling music and the improvised scenery there’s a bold attempt to tell the Story of Mankind.

Complete with cavemen in bad wigs and over-enthused performances this epic narrative sets the tone with its beginning – a recreation, in the form of a ‘volcano dance’ – of a scene from the 1970’s movie depicting prehistoric life; One Million Years BC. Attempting to steer us from cave to shopping mall this ill-advised version of the Story of Man proceeds to unravel amidst a storm of variably inaccurate advice and lewd interjections from the narrator’s disruptive ‘chorus’ of colleagues.

Omitting much more than it can ever find words or time to describe The World in Pictures finds its shambolic, mock grandiose and comical way from way back then to right here and now, somewhere along the way finding an articulacy and a pathos that its stumbling beginnings do not hint at.

By turns a disarmingly low-key thought-experiment which slowly takes us to another place and an illustrated lecture on the contents of the contemporary world, The World in Pictures deftly moves beyond the confines of its narrative, to touch on memory, mortality, the past, the future and the intricate detail of our own lives.