Why is there no one at the National Theatre preventing these duds getting staged?

Wallace Shawn is a lovely old sausage. A stalwart of American theatre, he’s taken cameo roles in classic movies like Clueless and Manhattan. He’s also a playwright whose new script has received its world première at the National Theatre. Lucky chap. He spent three or four years writing Evening at the Talk House and it reveals a peculiar methodology. A play normally features a central character grappling with a personal dilemma, which leads to suffering, change and self-discovery. Shawn doesn’t bother with any of that, he just lays on a gang of theatre types who spend two hours spouting cascades of circuitous chitchat. The show opens with a speech by a rich and successful American TV producer who tells us how rich and successful he is. His paragraphs of orotund superiority last 20 minutes. He recalls that a few years back he wrote a little playlet whose cast are keen to meet up and discuss the old days. A restaurant, the Talk House, is hired. Seven luvvies appear (some British, some American) for cocktails and group hugs. They then wolf down a load of canapés and exchange gossip about this show, that show and the other show.

It’s clear that Shawn has dispensed with two key dramatic instruments here: purpose and conflict. His characters have nothing to gain or lose from each other. And they have no aims to fulfil either. At the first read-through it should have been clear that this wasn’t a play but a collection of words arranged on numbered pages so as to resemble a play. But wait. Something else is going on. The characters at the Talk House refer to ‘Ackerley’, who appears to be a leader elected every three months. Has a state of emergency been declared? There are hints of violence.