Review – Scenes from an Execution, National Theatre

Scene: Sixteenth-century Venice. A glowing white cube descends from a vertiginous height containing a narrator type chappie (Gerrard McArthur) pretentiously called The Sketchbook (no, us neither). Or should white cube be White Cube? Scenes from an Execution is about art. Ah! Penny just dropped!

Obscene?: Artist Galactia (Fiona Shaw on fine form) is semi-naked sketching her naked younger lover and duplicitously compromising fellow-artist Carpeta (Jamie Ballard – also good). She’s a supremely talented artist (he’s not) and sensualist with a bit of a gobby mouth (Battleaxe Galactia?). They thrash about on a rock together. We’re later told she’s pretty nifty with her tongue. Carpeta seems to confirm this.

Review – Waste by Granville Barker at the Almeida

The credit must be thoroughly crunching.

After rattling around in in the less-than-full Donmar auditorium at Monday night’s Creditors the Whingers witnessed another rare event last night: the Almeida auditorium less-than-packed to the rafters.

Perhaps the theatre-going public just couldn’t get excited about Harley Granville Barker’s Waste. Perhaps, like Phil, they assumed it to be a piece of agitprop about the sin of not recycling.

If they did believe that, many of those who turned up were clearly disappointed as the auditorium displayed even more empty seats after the interval. Perhaps it was due to Phil’s new fragrance.

The Whingers had some sympathy (how often do you hear that?) with them; they were themselves slightly ambivalent about returning for the remainder of the marathon (4 act 3 hour) show.

Return they did. But did they make the right decision?