Review – The Spoils, Trafalgar Studios

Phil was trying to remember other plays he’d seen where the writers also appear in their own efforts. Harold Pinter in No Man’s Land, Ian Kelly in Mr Foote’s Other Leg and Eric Potts in panto. And since he avoided Matthew Perry’s End of Longing, that was as far as he got.

But in The Spoils – which should probably be titled The Spoilt, or even The Soiled (but that would need an appropriate spoiler alert) – Jesse Eisenberg has endowed himself a humungous part as Ben, a privileged, bullying, dope-smoking, needy, self-absorbed, childish, racist monster, probably somewhere on the spectrum, who is also prone to very strange dreams. That we manage care about him at all is something of a miracle, even if he pushes this beyond the limit in Act 2 when he turns being a complete shit into an art form.

Review – King Charles III, Almeida Theatre

Naughty Mike Bartlett.

This of course the same Mike Bartlett who once presented us with his Cock. Naturally we had a lot of fun with that title at the time and like childish schoolboys will always whip it out to play around with when the opportunity arises.

But it seems Bartlett is having even more fun with his “future history play”, King Charles III.

His playwriting credits are going to have to be very carefully organised in the future to avoid them being listed as Love, Love Love, King Charles III, Cock.