Daily Information's Reviewer wrote:

As Master of Ceremonies, Peter Dandy describes what Nighthouse Theatre hope to achieve with The Hollow Opera. He claims it is "a discordant opus, a place of no purpose;" a play "confusing the mind whilst claiming emotion". These are grand surrealist aims: to create a space where anything can happen, and where the emotional commitment of the audience to the characters is not influenced by any lack of intellectual commitment to the text. Tonight Keir Ashe and Ellis Creez proved that you cannot achieve these aims without investing energy, confidence and commitment in your performance.

The Hollow Opera consists of two short plays. The first, The Croaking written by Kasra Hemmasi, is a fifteen-minute homage to Beckett. Two characters, a prim military Sergeant and an amiable prisoner-clown, Boto, sit listening to the croaking of the frogs. Or the toads. The difference is important, it seems, for the Sergeant believes that all the frogs were eaten by the crocodiles. It was a curiously enjoyable piece, and Ashe and Creez played their parts with a degree of enthusiasm; Boto simple and compassionate, the Sergeant duty bound and controlled. I felt during the twenty minute interval that followed that The Croaking might well be the prologue to an interesting and engaging piece of theatre.

The second play, Hellfire and Brimstone, dispelled that hope. Written by Ashe and Creez, who also took the two principle roles, it told the story of a schoolteacher who makes a Faustian pact with the devil to exercise some control over his pupils. Keir Ashe's Mr Foxon was intended to be an apathetic teacher. An apathetic character still requires a huge investment of energy from an actor - Ashe approached his playing of the part with the same apathy he had intended for the character he wrote. He was a mumbling, stumbling, navel-gazing vision. Both actors seemed to suffer from the same lack of confidence and preparation, with imprecise movement and no assurance of when or how to deliver lines. On more than one occasion Ellis Creez appeared carrying his script from which he read (badly - "I suspect… um… no, the suspect"). I would have hoped that Ashe and Creez had spent enough time writing and developing their play that they would be able to learn it with relative ease.

It was a shame that a play whose intention was to evoke emotion rather than thought was so devoid of the sort of energetic playing that can excite an audience. Especially so because Creez and Ashe's script contained interesting ideas. Purgatory was portrayed as a bureaucrat from a "place of waiting". He asks Foxon to get in touch when he has "reached an indecision". At the end of the play, Foxon challenges the Devil to a War-and-Peace-reading competition. Quick visions of heaven (a rock and roll angel) and hell (a red-dressed dominatrix) provided some much needed energy.

But ultimately, Ashe and Creez should have more respect, both for their audience and for their own script, than to present the play to us in this unfinished state. With tight direction, thorough preparation and an ear for comic timing, The Hollow Opera might have been very funny - this performance was embarrassing.

Harry Smith, 22 / 2 / 01