Review – Endgame / Rough For Theatre ll, Old Vic

If Waiting For Godot is known for being the Samuel Beckett play where nothing happens, Endgame is identified as the one with old couple in the dustbins.

But first we must dispose of the amuse-bouche Rough For Theatre ll, which precedes the dustbin play. No, we’d never heard of it either. But we can tell you it’s a play where a man called ‘C’ stands on a windowsill seemingly about to commit suicide.

Impressed We never see his face, but Jackson Milner, in a mini coup de théâtre, stands on that sill like a statue for the whole 25 minutes of the play’s running time. Milner is so convincing that at times Phil suspect he might actually be a very lifelike prop. Did Beckett write plays purely to make his actors suffer?

Review – Annie Get Your Gun, Young Vic

Roll up! Roll up! See Annie Oakley, the best little sharpshooter in the west!

Roll up! Roll up! See possibly the most misguided, misfiring musical revival to go off half cock EVER.

Roll up! Roll up! Begin to forget what showbusiness is, never mind whether or not any other business might bear some resemblance to it.

Review – The Good Soul of Szechuan with Jane Horrocks, Young Vic

Picture it. A school in some forgotten corner of rural England many, many years ago.

A fresh-faced, young boy takes his first tentative steps into the spotlight. A green one, as it happens.

He is thrilled. He is wearing a dress. He is a god.

To be specific, he is Third God (there is no fourth) in Bertolt Brecht’s The Good Soul of Szechuan.

That young boy – hard as it is to picture looking at him now – was Phil.