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New Moon is nothing if not an international advertisement for the hungry virtues of virginity and young people can’t get enough of it
The Twilight Saga: New Moon
Theatre
A smart, prickly and rewarding view of sexual and emotional confusion
Cock
Restaurants
Kitchen W8 is a bargain for this area, if such sophistication is what you crave
Kitchen W8
Too long and drawn out but very entertaining with excellent special effects
This is a peculiar play and does not work for me. Some of it is very funny but there are real flaws
Alex has a strong powerful voice and was faultless, she is far better now than she was on the X-Factor
London,
Nicholas de Jongh's rating
Reader rating
Dir: James Macdonald, Jonathan Burrows (associate dire.
Cast: Pip Carter, Lisa Dillon, Callum Dixon, Noma Dumezweni, Susannah Fielding, Amy Hall, Daniel Hawksford, Mairead McKinley, Daniel Poyser, Sara Stewart, Giles Terera, Jason Thorpe, Simon Wilson, Sarah Woodward
Description: Physical theatre without words in which across an empty town square, figures appear, one by one, ordinary people, involved in everyday, crazy moments of life. Written by Peter Handke, translated by Meredith Oakes.
Trains: Tube/BR: Waterloo 
Phone: 0207452 3000
Website: www.nationaltheatre.org.uk
Nothing to say: the actors in Peter Handke's wordless 100-minute play valiantly try to bring life to an array of characters who flit in and out of view in a futuristic square
Words fail me. Fogginess envelops my brain. My emotions have crashed to a standstill. For Peter Handke's wordless, hundred-minute dumb show, in which infinite, non-speaking characters keep the stage filled with brief, pointless bursts of activity and animation, has left me aposiopetic - a condition in which the sufferer is unable or unwilling to say anything.
Numerous audience members evidently enjoyed Handke's silent tribute to the infinite bustle of human existence and the eternal imminence of death, to both of which states no significance is attached. I could raise no more than the occasional ghost of a smile. Are these passing figures - old women with wheelie baskets, a policeman, the man with a stocking in his pocket, the black guy with stetson and whip, the air crew and flight attendants who are treated in moments of witty mime as if still on board a plane - hallucinatory figures in the landscape of Handke's mind? "Is there much to discover in it. I don't know. I wanted to begin stories, keep beginning them," the author says unhelpfully.
So 27 highly talented actors, trapped in this fantasia, valiantly try to lend individuality and difference to hundreds of characters who merely flit in and out of view. Often alone and detached, as if victims of the spiritual alienation hinted at in the title, they walk and parade, rush, stagger and amble across a stage which Hildegard Bechtler has created in the likeness of a futuristic Mediterranean square, fringed with sinister, windowless buildings. All human life and death - in the shape of a coffin - is here: the strutting blonde and the transvestite, a road sweeper and Papageno from Mozart's Magic Flute, complete with bird-cage and feathery costume.
Yet neither beautiful nor evocative images startle James MacDonald's immaculately choreographed production. Occasional noise, church-bells and thunder, break the silence. An old man howls. Snatches of music resonate. It is only in the climactic tableau, memorably lit by Jean Kalman, that the evening acquires any emotional vitality. The actors cluster together on stage, their faces streaked with fear as an uproar of alarms signal danger, yet no sense of communal feeling binds the characters together. The repetitive strain of the evening, my failed battle to achieve either intellectual or emotional engagement with this murky Handke, left me feeling caught in a waste of time.
Until 12 April. Booking: 020 7452 3000.
Details are correct at the time of publication - please check with venue before booking.
I'm across the ocean in Canada. So I haven't see the play, and perhaps I never will. Sure sounds interesting though. Am I the only person in the world who is tired of hearing people talk? Hmmmm....
- Sandra, Windsor, Ontario, Canada
I see just about everything at the National, and a lot of it is thoroughly average, but I have never walked out of a production before this one. I even wanted to leave noisily, wanted to boo and hiss my complaint that such an important theatre could mount such an execrable play. No words would be fine, but no words and not a thing to say? In the foyer, as we left, I asked one of the ushers if we were the first walk-outs. "So far. Tonight." he replied with a smile, demonstrating the only wit and comic timing that we had seen that evening.
There is much more of interest in watching the real world go by in nearby Trafalgar (or any other) Square. If you've already bought tickets my advice is go but steer clear of the auditorium - there's more fun and intelligence to be had in the foyer with the stewards.
It's called "The Hour We Knew etc." but had the temerity to last for nearly twice that length. We gave it 55 mins and that was far too long.
I had thought that "A Matter of Life and Death" had been the low point in my National going experience but far greater depths have been plumbed with this one.
- Japonesa, london, uk
