Midnight Movie by Eve Leigh, Royal Court Theatre Upstairs, 30 November 2019

No, still don’t get it…

Whoops.

I booked this on the back of us very much enjoying Eve Leigh’s unusual piece, The Trick, earlier this year at The Bush:

But where The Trick had been unusual and a little puzzling, Janie and I both found Midnight Movie impenetrable.

Here is The Royal Court’s verbiage on the piece.

The trailer also provides some clues:

In many ways the play is in the tradition of dream plays, so it would be wrong to complain about the lack of plot and confusing switches. But this piece seemed, to me, so very disjointed, it was hard to get anything much out of the experience.

It is laudable that Eve Leigh and the Royal Court have tried to produce a piece that specific speaks to people with physical challenges, but the notion that the central male character was substituting internet experience for the physical experiences his body would not allow, really struggled to make that point through the material.

Janie really hated the piece.

I tried to go with the flow but couldn’t get anywhere with it.

It is only 70 minutes long, but it felt like so much longer.

We both had out own physical challenges by the end of the ordeal – those narrow arse-ache chairs had us John-Wayning out of the theatre.

We saw a preview, so there’s a chance that the piece has been tightened a little ahead of press night, but I doubt it.

Early signs from the reviews is that the opacity of the piece shines through, as it were.

A rare miss for us at the Royal Court.

The Village Bike by Penelope Skinner, Royal Court Theatre Upstairs, 25 June 2011

We really enjoyed this play and production upstairs at the Royal Court.

Here is the Royal Court resource on this play/production.

This was a really entertaining and thought-provoking play by the very promising playwright Penelope Skinner. I think this was our first sight of one of hers; Linda at the Royal Court a few years later – click here or below – confirmed our suspicions that she is a special talent.

Linda by Penelope Skinner, Royal Court Theatre, 28 November 2015

The Village Bike had a very fine cast for an upstairs production, not least Dominic Rowan and Romola Garai, both excellent. Indeed the whole cast was excellent, as was the set, directing, the lot.

Most but not all of the reviews rated it excellent – here is a search term that finds reviews and the other resources you might want.