End is the title chosen by David Eldridge for his new relationship drama. Clive Owen and Saskia Reeves star as Alfie and Julie, a pair of wildly successful creative types who live in a mansion near Highgate. Both are 59. Alfie is a retired DJ who made a fortune touring the world at the height of the ecstasy craze and Julie earns a living from crime fiction. But she’s bored with detective stories and wants to publish her memoirs and to write a state-of-the-nation novel set during the 2012 Olympics. Despite their amazing careers, both characters are moaning dimwits who swear constantly and have nothing of value to say about their lives, their professions, or anything else. Listen to them discussing an unseen character named Boring Tone. ‘Boring Tone was so effing boring after speaking to him I needed a lie down,’ says Alfie. Julie concurs that Boring Tone was indeed remarkably boring.
The National shouldn’t employ a dramatist who can’t write decent dialogue. The producers of a daytime soap opera would hesitate to broadcast such banalities. The two windbags spend 90 minutes of stage-time gassing about this and that while shuffling around their cluttered kitchen which looks rather dowdy for a fashionable corner of north London. Their costumes reflect their crushed, listless personalities. Alfie wears a stained tracksuit and plastic slippers while Julie sports a dull blue frock with mismatched brown trainers.
The story centres on Alfie’s cancer diagnosis and his refusal to have chemotherapy. Julie overrules his decision and urges him to try conventional medicine and to fly with her to Tijuana where miraculous remedies are available for dying millionaires. Alfie isn’t convinced. Meanwhile they witter on at each other. Alfie recounts a West Ham match in far too much detail and he gives a faintly pretentious description of an acid-house gig full of stoned kids dancing, sweating, and collapsing on the floor. He appears to have killed more than one partygoer during his career. Julie tries to surpass this vapid drivel by reciting speeches about her childhood and her first impressions of Alfie which sound like excerpts from her autobiography. Since he knows this stuff already, why is she repeating it?
The plot comes to life briefly as Alfie shuffles out into the garden and listens to the couple next door enjoying noisy sex. During this, Julie suffers an emotional meltdown for some reason. She snatches ‘a teapot that survived the Blitz’ and smashes it on the floor. Then she takes an expensive Peruvian cushion and screams silently into it. Not sure why. Alfie returns and describes the neighbours’ mating session as if it were a televised horse race. Quite funny. But not connected to the rest of the script. After 75 minutes of aimless poppycock, Julie reveals a piece of news that renders all the foregoing natter meaningless. Why didn’t she mention it earlier? Sadly, there’d have been no play without this act of concealment. Amazingly sloppy writing. It’s good to see the National hiring a world-class talent like Owen but why did they lumber him with this sack of bilge and relegate him to their smallest stage? Embarrassing.
The producers of a daytime soap opera would hesitate to broadcast such banalities
Ride the Cyclone is a Canadian musical by Jacob Richmond and Brooke Maxwell, which opens with a horrific accident. A wonky fairground ride claims the lives of six teenagers. An angel appears and offers the dead teens a chance to live again but only one of them can return. Each must persuade the others to vote in their favour.
The set-up feels like It’s A Wonderful Life but with six characters instead of one, and the show turns into a parade of musical autobiographies. There’s no room for relationships to develop because the characters are already dead and they have no responsibilities to maintain so it’s hard to care if they live or not.
Some of the personalities are predictable. Mischa, a Ukrainian refugee, acts like a gangster in order to scare his enemies but beneath the aggressive swagger he’s a cute, vulnerable kid who just wants to marry his sweetheart. Noel dreams of becoming a cabaret artiste and he swaps his ordinary clothes for a sexy stripper’s costume as he belts out raunchy musical numbers. Enjoyable but undemanding. Ocean is the daughter of back-to-nature hippies who fed her cheese sandwiches made out of breast milk. That’s more original. And there’s a wild-card character, Jane Doe, whose decapitated corpse was found at the site of the accident. Perhaps she’ll get a second shot at life. But when the result is announced, the story fades into nothing.
This show has a hidden secret, however. Youngsters love it. At a preview, some of the fans were dressed in old-fashioned knitwear and patterned frocks, just like the characters. If you share your home with teenage misfits or mopey students you could use this show to coax them out of their shells.
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