“Don’t be alarmed, dear”
Janie and I have seen rather a lot of Martin Crimp’s work over the years. This opportunity, to see Martin Crimp’s latest thing performed by the man himself, seemed like too good an opportunity to miss.
Which indeed it was.
Crimp can range from “weird but utterly gripping” to “so weird it is utterly impenetrable”. This piece was somewhere in the middle of that range.
The Royal Court Theatre describes the piece (and has some useful review clips and information about the play/production) here. If by any chance that link doesn’t work, you can read the essence from this scrape.
We found the piece fascinating, we enjoyed many of the vignettes and it got us talking about the piece and the issues raised by the 299 characters afterwards, all of which is a good thing. But within that whirlpool of ideas, while it was interesting theatre, there wasn’t any gripping drama.
Arifa Akbar’s review in The Guardian pretty much sums it up for us.
Chris Lilly also reviewed it on The Reviews Hub.
As always with Crimp, there is some superb writing in there. Janie and I will carry some of the one-liners with us for a long time…
…although the one along the lines of, “a man over the age of 40 wearing a leather jacket – alarm bells start ringing” was a bit near the mark, don’t you think?