Review – The Effect, National Theatre

People ask us why we go to the theatre so much. Often we ask ourselves why we go at all.

Lucy Prebble‘s first post-ENRON play The Effect provides an answer: it’s a distraction from the fact that we’re all going to die. Everything is.

Review – Death and the Maiden, Harold Pinter Theatre

It feels strange yet curiously inevitable to be typing “the Harold Pinter Theatre“.

This is the playhouse formerly known as the Comedy which has lost a name with a dainty spring in its step and been lumbered instead with something distinctly flat-footed. Why couldn’t it have followed the Novello or Gielgud and just taken Mr Pinter’s surname?

We seem to be going down the New York route where full monikers are the norm; great clunking names which keep the neon sign manufacturers’ businesses going: on The Broadway one can partake of entertainment at the Gerald Schoenfeld Theatre,the Bernard B. Jacobs Theatre and Samuel J. Friedman Theatres to name but nine.

Ah well, at least we don’t have anything like the American Airlines or Foxwoods Theatres (the latter named after a casino) but it is surely only a matter of time. The Dorfman Theatre cometh (nothing to do with the author of the play we will be speaking of).

As a name the Pinter Theatre has a ring, or at least a slight tinkle, though the Whingers haven’t decided how they’ll reference it yet. The Harold Comedy (after Tom Stoppard’s supposed witty jibe)? Or perhaps just the Harry or ‘arry? Maybe the H.P. offers a saucier tone?

The Whingers were unable to resist being part of one of the smaller footnotes in theatrical history by patronising the renamed theatre’s inaugural show: Death and the Maiden which is played straight through in 100 minutes. Now, much as the Whingers embrace plays which run without interval it seems strangely inappropriate to open the Harold Pinter with a show that doesn’t stop midway to take a long pause.

Review – Earthquakes in London, National Theatre

Andrew’s excitement was palpable. “They’ve turned it into a bar!” he trilled as he took his seat in the auditorium. “They’ve finally found a use for the Cottesloe!”.

And indeed it seemed at first glance that they had. Designer Miriam Buether has transformed the National Theatre‘s ghastly Cottesloe space almost beyond recognition. How astute and splendidly cunning of her to turn it into the place in which the Whingers would feel most at home.

A long, orange S-shaped bar-cum-stage snakes around the groundlings, some of whom are perched on natty red bar stools while others stand (and later slump) behind them in holding pens.

Less limelight-hugging patrons such as the Whingers sit in galleries surveying the proceedings from above.

Review – Enron, Royal Court

Like Andrew on a weekend break, Enron comes with an absurd amount of baggage: it picked up suitcases full of rave reviews at The Chichester Festival Theatre and hat-boxes full of predictions that it will scoop Best Play in the awards season.

Its West End transfer was announced before the sold-out Royal Court season even opened. Everyone’s talking about it.

But sadly for the Whingers that pesky old Black Watch effect is back. How can anything possibly be as good as all those critics said it was? It just can’t. And so it proved to be with Enron, the story of the energy company that fooled everyone into thinking it was better than it was.