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Nicholas de Jongh's rating
, This Halloween trick is no treat
By
Nicholas de Jongh
20 Nov 2006
Charlotte Jones, famous for Humble Boy, has whisked up an indigestible, drearily derivative theatrical cocktail.
It consists of three light parts Alan Ayckbourn, to two of Edward Albee's hard, bitter stuff, laced with a dash of Jones. Set at Halloween, when the spiritual and material worlds overlap and departed souls reappear, ghostly things predictably occur.
Miss Jones contrives to bring social misfits to the home of Matthew Marsh's Max Villiers, ghost writer to super-trash celebrities and prone to pert wise-cracks and flippancies.
Max has just bought a £3,000 plasma screen on which flicker images only he can see. The Lightning Play, ponderously directed by Anna Mackmin, duly deals with the illumination or real seeing Halloween allows.
Awkwardly deploying flashbacks, Jones unnecessarily shows how Max, to his depressed wife Harriet's annoyance, comes to invite visitors.
Katherine Parkinson's plain, pregnant young woman, sporting a silly voice, Adie Allen's lonely hippie, sounding almost as grotesque, and a very lapsed monk set the silly tone.
In Albeeish fashion the taboo subject of the Villiers' dead son is dragged into the open, while the party-mood turns unbelievably rude and revelatory. Lez Brotherston's dysfunctional set with its unneeded, grand ceiling, could have funded five fringe productions.
Until 6 Jan (020 7359 4404)
Details are correct at the time of publication - please check with venue before booking.
Reader views (3)
Quite right Emma T, and of course, Nicolas de Jongh! What a facetious comment from Gareth Jones. NdJ is quite one of the best critics around, unswayed by some of the nonsense hype in theatre. The Lightning Play was a terrible affair - narrow, dull, mawkish, self-indulgent. I would have walked out were I not jammed right in. It was more than obvious that the main laughs came from the kind of smug, self-satisfied middle class audience members to whom this appealed. Everyone else just looked baffled and frustrated.
No wonder so many people are put off the theatre when a high-profile venue like the Almeida develops this kind of unimaginative rubbish.
- Mark Mayhew, London, Britain, 22/11/2006 14:24
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This is the worst example of smug, self-indulgent, sloppy north London middle-class comedy I've ever seen - what is the Almeida doing wasting time and money on this garbage? I wanted to get up on stage and slap each and every one of the characters. It was embarrassing to all concerned.
Nicholas de Jongh is totally right. Gareth - we must have seen different plays!
- Emma T, London, 21/11/2006 22:26
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Mr de Jongh on his own again. Yes, it has echoes of Ayckbourn, Albee and Abigail's party, but there is enough originality to make it her own play. Never less than compelling and often hysterical or gripping.
- Gareth James, London, UK, 21/11/2006 06:39
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