Home > The Magazine > Arts

Tuesday 2 December 2008

Dare to dream and make your ultimate trip a reality

The latest culture as recommended by our staff

Michael Henderson

Michael Henderson suggests

Email registration

Free weekly email update

Great products and special offers for Spectator readers

Click here for great value events

Click here for exclusive articles, offers, tasting notes and discussion

Old hat

Lloyd Evans

Wednesday, 16th January 2008

La Cage aux Folles
Menier Chocolate Factory

The British Ambassador’s Belly Dancer
Arcola

Angry Young Man
Trafalgar Studio

I went to the press night of two short plays by Ben Woolf only to find that the second had been cancelled. Not, I hope, because the first wasn’t good. It was fine. A perfect example of its type. Exuberant, clever, weightless student whimsy. Mind you, the audience reacted to it with gales and hurricanes of laughter, which it scarcely deserved. That’s why I usually avoid the official openings of plays. Theatre is stagy enough without the added histrionics of a press night. For some reason, producers always kid themselves that the critics will be fooled by a house packed with cronies and claqueurs humping and howling with simulated laughter. Come on. We’re not that thick. And nothing is so obvious and so off-putting as the fake guffaws of coerced siblings, ambitious, dagger-eyed mothers and hooting, braying, last-gasp grandparents. Ben Woolf’s frenetic comedy follows the progress of Yuri, a Russian immigrant lost in London who falls in with a gang of thugs and upper-class conmen. There’s an interesting formal innovation: all four actors play all of the parts which means that each of them plays Yuri. It should be confusing but it works superbly. In the show’s best running gag one of the actors has the task of adding atmosphere but he hasn’t read the script. His last-minute impersonations of dogs, statues and other decorations are pretty funny. Woolf and his troupe are charming and talented so let’s hope they soon advance beyond the smug cleverness of the student rag. Angry Young Man (misleading title) is like dining on candyfloss.

Previous page 1 | 2 | 3

More articles from: Lloyd Evans | this section

Print this article | Email to a friend | Permalink | Comment

Post this entry to: del.icio.us | Digg | Newsvine | NowPublic | Reddit

A perfect cadence

Stephen Pettitt

This year, on 11 December — and I wish more people knew about it than actually do — the American composer Elliott Carter celebrates his 100th birthday.

Forgotten wonders

Andrew Lambirth

Byzantium 330-1454
Royal Academy, until 22 March 2009

Out of the ordinary

Carolyn Bartholomew

Carolyn Bartholomew talks to Tilda Swinton, an actor who has made a career out of being unconventional

Life lessons

Kate Chisholm

Talking to my dentist, as one does, we discover a mutual enthusiasm for Radio Three’s Composer of the Week (Monday to Friday) and especially its presenter, Donald Macleod.