Tourist attraction

Well
Apollo

Hit Me! The Life and Rhymes of Ian Dury
Leicester Square

In Blood: The Bacchae
Arcola

So what does the theatre critic make of the recession? No one’s asked me, actually, so here goes. Leaving aside the obsessive 24-hour media coverage, there’s little trace of it in the real world. Immunise your bonce against the gloom-rites of the newspapers and you’ll see that the impending ‘slump’ (dimple, actually) will prove to be the briefest and shallowest downturn in economic history. By next Christmas the factories will be pumping out skiploads of new consumer junk, the FTSE will be performing dizzying feats of alpinism at the 6,000 mark and the present media-orchestrated collective trance will have become a distant memory. How do I know? I’m in the West End a lot and I’ve never seen it so busy. Indigenous spendaholic Britons are being joined by bargain-grabbers from Europe and Russia and there are plenty of well-tailored, absurdly over-polite Americans too. (Why are they so polite? It seems rather tactless of them to vex a savage people with displays of superior manners.) The visitors are drawn by sterling’s elegant swallow-dive on the currency markets and the attendant opportunity to snap up million-quid apartments at half price. Wise heads in the West End have noted the American influx and the Yank-traps are being trundled into place. At the Apollo there’s a gigglesome weepie written by Michigan stand-up, Lisa Kron.

The play’s title, Well, has not been chosen well. Though it draws attention to the main theme, sickness, it’s such a frictionless little syllable that it tends to slither irretrievably through the cushions of the mind. The play examines the troubled relationship between a lifelong hypochondriac (Sarah Miles) and her daughter (Natalie Casey).