Review – Game of Themes

Game of Themes has a relatively simple concept. Over the course of an hour, Adam Rudegeair uses his considerable skills on the piano to serenade his audience with renditions of iconic music from science fiction and fantasy TV shows and films. Largely drawing on 80s and 90s works, Adam brings out all the franchises you’d expect and even a couple you wouldn’t.

But it’s missing a couple of things.

Most importantly, Adam needs to either introduce the music he’s playing, provide the audience with a printed program, or be sure the un-introduced pieces are absolutely iconic in their own right. As it is, especially given that these are Adam’s own transcriptions and arrangements, it proved quite difficult to figure out where certain pieces came from, and that got in the way of the enjoyment.

Secondly, as nice as Adam seemed when he did briefly venture to talk in to the mic, he needs to do much more of it to lend the show a sense of personality. Without that human touch, the show felt a bit like a YouTube playlist at times: it’s the personality of a show like this that makes it worth seeing and, right now, it’s not really there.

Don’t take all this to mean the show is bad, far from it! Game of Themes is a good debut show, if it comes with some rough edges that need to be smoothed out.