What I liked
This show could have been a pastiche mashup of Marlowe and Roddenberry, but instead the modern tropes are used to add spice to the classic, flavoring them to a new piquancy. The staging was masterful in costume, makeup and choreography, displaying the reality of the Klingons as the Star Trek universe never dared to do – they are the greatest drama queens of the entire galaxy, perhaps the universe. The acting is like the Royal Shakespeare Company powered by Chernobyl during the meltdown. I had to hold onto my seat to avoid being blown into the lobby.
What I didn't like
It all worked. One might be tempted to say the show could benefit from a larger stage, but then it would lose it’s intimacy – if space battles can be called intimate – and the in-your-face quality of extravagant sword fighting taking place just inches away.
My overall impression
Galactical theatrical brilliance! Who are these School of Night people who so savagely mount the classics, redigested for these latter days? Even better than last year’s Hercules Insane (my favorite play of HF18), Klingon Tamburlaine achieves the seemingly impossible, again and again. The Ruby Theater stage is not large; how then did they portray vast space battles and epic sword combat on the plains of the Klingon homeworld. You’ll have to see the show to find out, and you will be amazed. And the acting is beyond devastating: no one ever chewed the scenery like Klingon Tamburlaine!
