There is a great show lurking inside Breaking News. As a concept the piece by German-based Rimini Protokoll is revolutionary – a guide around the world’s news, as it happens, in the company of multi-lingual experts.
Unfortunately, the show has some major flaws. The best part – the live news feed with the eight experts breaking in to talk about exciting stories in their part of the world – is only a small part of the performance.
The rest of the two-hour show (with no interval) is clogged up with far too much information and unnecessary interruptions.
Rather than create a new show for the English audience, the company has largely translated its German performance.
This included expert dissections of the German news programme Tagesschau, which was of limited importance to a UK audience more interested in the workings of BBC, ITN or Sky News.
All the German-based multi- lingual experts were engaging when talking about their passions, especially the different ways of receiving news in the Arab world, but listening to a live feed being translated in faltering “International Broken English” was a frustrating experience.
The tale of the first reported news story, the Greek/Persian war, which had been inserted into the show to give it some structure, halted the flow.
And it was also impossible to follow, not helped by the non-actors’ reciting.
All in all Breaking News felt like a missed opportunity.
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