Review – Waste, National Theatre

Harley Granville Barker‘s banned-in-its-day (1907, revised 1926) “controversial masterpiece” Waste took us rather by surprise when we visited it seven years ago at the Almeida. It took us a while, but we eventually warmed to it rather unexpectedly.

The brevity of the title is not reflected in the running time of the play which comes in at nearly 3 hours and is somewhat talky and unlike our previous viewing doesn’t have much of a set to look at.

Review – Tribes, Royal Court Theatre

To paraphrase Lloyd Grossman,”Who’d want to live in a house like this?”

Unsurprisingly some of the Royal Court audience had taken a break from their middle class, liberal-minded domiciles to recognise themselves on stage, laughing appreciatively when ghastly, opinionated academic pater Christopher (Stanley Townsend) asks his returned-to-nesters when they were going to f*ck off.

Review – Rope, Almeida Theatre

Picture it. Two handsome young men – one urbane, the other highly-strung – commit an unspeakable act as a supposedly intellectual exercise, then contrive to shamelessly flaunt their terrible undertaking before an unwitting audience.

But that’s quite enough about the Whingers.

Review – The Female of the Species

At the end of last week’s cliffhanger episode our heroes zeros had vowed never – but never – to go to the theatre ever again until they could once again wave at a Dame of the British Empire through a proscenium arch in a crumbling West End theatre…