Shooting Shakespeare, Forkbeard Fantasy, Salisbury Playhouse

Formed in 1974, Forkbeard Fantasy is now celebrating its 30th anniversary as one of the UK's longest-running multi-media performance companies.

Their unusual blend of straight theatre, film backdrops, mechanical gadgets, quirky sound effects, and some interesting visual trickery with characters seeming to step off the stage into the film screen, all combine to give the audience a very different theatrical experience.

The story relates the struggle during the early 1900s between the traditional theatre and the new "movies" - films with people and objects which could actually "move" on the silver screen.

This show concentrates on early attempts to film The Tempest. The script is peppered with quotes from Shakespeare plays, and the invention and relatively sensational spectacle of those times is conveyed effectively.

But somehow, despite all the tricks, the pace is often pedestrian, the characters are caricatures, the narrative less than gripping.

Ironically, much of the most interesting work is the action on the screen, rather than that on the stage.