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An awesome and ridiculous film that leaves you thrilled beyond the point of your natural endurance
2012
Theatre
The show has suddenly become quite wonderful, and the galvanising factor is the terrific stage debut of Melanie C
Blood Brothers
Music
The British pop music industry may be eating itself but if Muse are the pick of what it can offer the world in 2010 then British music is in rude health indeed
Muse
I was smitten by both Gilberts enormous luxuriant moustache and the intelligence and nuance of this highly entertaining play
I totally recommend Babbo to anyone who is looking for really good and traditional Italian food
Always been a fan but never seen them live. I was ecstatic to be part of this epic event. WOW!
London,
Fiona Mountford's rating
Reader rating
Dir: Gerrard McArthur.
Cast: Duncan Bell, George Irving
Description: Gerrard McArthur directs Howard Barker's witty exploration of a world overturned. Performed by The Wrestling School.
Trains: BR: Dalston Kingsland 
Phone: 0207503 1646
Website: www.arcolatheatre.com
Extra info: Food, Pub
Short on top: George Irving as The Barber and Duncan Bell as The Visitor
There can be no denying that Howard Barker is something of an acquired taste. Far better appreciated abroad than here, this playwright has, for the past 20 years, had a company, the Wrestling School, devoted to mounting his own works, which he himself has tended to direct.
It’s no wonder the Barker oeuvre can often seem in desperate need of a breath of fresh, creative air, and this hangs heavily over the latest offering.
The theme is thuddingly clear from the first line. “Do you like bad news? I do,” says the devilish Visitor (Duncan Bell) to the Barber (George Irving), while seated in the swivel chair of an old-fashioned shop.
The Visitor, almost orgasmic with rapture at his role as a harbinger of doom, reiterates insistently the not-goodness of his tidings. We might not know much, but we can conclude that it’s very bad news indeed.
When he can get a word in, the Barber rightly guesses that the impending announcement concerns the death of his son.
The piece is inspired, as only a Barker play could be, by Thucydides’s account of the destruction of the Athenian military in the disastrous Sicilian expedition of 413 BC, and thus there is ample description of rout in the armed forces.
The Barber proceeds on a rampage of destruction around his shop, but we can’t shake the enervating suspicion that the whole thing is purely an academic exercise with no drop of real, felt human emotion propelling it along. It’s the sort of drama that would struggle to stand alone without its programme notes.
Somewhere under all this lies buried a valid point about our current sensationalist news agenda, which delights in veering from disaster to disaster in a kind of tragedy porn.
Yet there’s little that Bell, Irving and director Gerrard McArthur can extract from the streams of would-be elegant lines anchored in no sort of reality. At only 70 minutes, Dying can still induce a dramatic death wish.
Until 22 November (020 7503 1646, www.arcolatheatre.com).
Details are correct at the time of publication - please check with venue before booking.
I went to this play not knowing a thing about it. I had no idea about the Greek inspiration behind it. To me, the play felt very real but then I come from a war-torn country. It is frustratingly sad that a play about the deadening of feeling, told with a precision that is beyond most contemporary British playwrights, should fail to ignite empathy in reviewers. For 70 minutes, I felt transported to hell and back, all through the power of words that demanded I build images out of them. If you lack the skill to listen in theatre, this play is not for you. It’s not surprising if certain members of the public, abused nightly with trivial television, fail to appreciate this brilliant work but one is entitled to expect better from the so called critics. This play will be relevant in 50 years, in 100 years, in 1000 years and long after most of the currently fashionable playwrights have dropped out of the history books.
- God_Almighty, Kinshasa, Congo
