![]() There is an underlying attempt at inclusiveness in This that can be applauded – the creative team is refreshingly diverse and multicultural – but the work is crying out for a singular galvanising artistic vision, one a sole playwright might have been able to deliver. The result is a work that feels smug, glib and self-satisfied. Woods and his team of writers are constantly attempting to subvert cultural assumptions they end up reinforcing. But then we are encouraged to see the people above as a kind of eulogised migrant community of squatters, ennobled and yet still othered, still exoticised. People hurriedly cross this wasteland to get into the house above, in a commentary on the myopia of the middle classes. So many ideas are suggested, then either abandoned or indulged into meaninglessness. ‘People hurriedly cross this wasteland to get into the house above, in a commentary on the myopia of the middle classes.’ Photograph: Jeff Busby The satire has an uncanny tendency to be simultaneously abstruse and obvious – as in an extended scene of a woman ranting outside the foyer doors about racism and cancel culture – and it is somewhat of a relief when the audience is ushered upstairs to a new space, a long corridor fitted out to look like a Covid-testing site, all plastic chairs and people in PPE. Unfortunately, like everything in This, the gags outstay their welcome and become increasingly tedious. Some of this parodic material is very funny, especially Kerith Manderson-Galvin’s self-obsessed festival program director and Ben Grant’s clowning with a microphone stand. We can tell they’re cast members by the overacting in their hushed conversations, and this faux-corporate parade eventually coalesces into a series of speeches satirising the uneasy relationship between art and money. This begins in the theatre foyer, with a string trio playing pleasantly above us and the various officials buzzing around officiously. ![]() ‘Unfortunately, like everything in This, the gags outstay their welcome and become increasingly tedious.’ Photograph: Jeff Busby
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |