Wayward approach

Always recommended is the Arts Theatre, one of the West End’s loveliest venues. Being a small-scale joint, it’s not much of a cash-mine and its crusty fabric is in urgent need of a refit. The place keeps closing for repairs and then reopening a year later completely untouched. I like that. The bar is pricey but bright and spacious, and you can walk in off the street for a drink. The louche underlit auditorium has an air of cosy intimacy because the stalls have no central aisle and are arranged, church-hall-style, in one big square slab. The seats themselves are like old armchairs and as you sink into the bald velvet upholstery the rusty springs bleat pathetically back at you.

The Arts has ended its latest hibernation with a poetic monologue, Two Graves, set in the murky world of London gangsters. Jonathan Moore portrays a young racketeer who takes revenge on the fraudster who double-crossed his father. The poetry has a rough, pleasing, vibrant pulse and it scarcely matters that the author, Paul Sellar, employs a wayward rhyming technique, using whatever schemes take his fancy and often lapsing into free verse. In Edinburgh the play won high praise but despite Moore’s powerful performance it’ll probably struggle in the West End. Too static, too male, a bit nasty as well, and not nearly showy enough. In mid-week there were scarcely 50 bums making the seats bleat.

Mike Goodenough is the best thing in Accidental Death of an Anarchist. A big chubby charmer full of swagger and gusto, he brings a hint of Jimmy Edwards’s scary bonhomie to the role of the Maniac. Goodenough is one of those fat people who has an almost acrobatic nimbleness about their movements, and though he weighs about 20 stone he skipped around the stage like a Ukrainian acrobat going through her floor exercises.