Morning:
8°c
Latest: Gordon Brown apologises for his poor handwriting and for misspelling the name of a dead soldier in a letter to the young man’s mother
More...
With a single dessert and just two glasses of wine our bill was kept in check - but the effort of doing so was not much fun
Babbo
Film
This is a film with beautiful performances and a visual style that urges you towards reflection
Bright Star
Theatre
Although the first half of Kwei-Armah’s production is pacy, funny and intelligent, the energy level then drops off
Seize The Day
I loved this film from start to finish. Take the girlfriend, tell your mum - I'd see it again tomorrow and will buy the dvd.
I saw this last night and can't remember the last time I was so moved in the theatre.
I have been to many of London's so-called best Japanese restaurants and none have been as good as the food that I've had at Aqua Kyoto
London,
Nicholas de Jongh's rating
Reader rating
Dir: Lucy Kerbel.
Cast: Andrew Barron, Aaron Foy, Harry Hepple, Gemma Soul, Rosie Thomson
Description: Joel Horwood's play offers a modern look at rural teenage life, as it follows a pair of 16-year-old best friends. Not suitable for under-16s.
Trains: Tube: Shepherds Bush 
Phone: 0208743 5050
Website: www.bushtheatre.co.uk
Fantasy night out for the boys: Harry Hepple, Gemma Soul and Aaron Foy
There’s an old-fashioned charm about Joel Horwood’s sparky, new-fangled comedy in which rural teenagers Wheeler and Fitz, fishing for crabs in Walberswick, are scooped up by Gemma Soul’s Dani, a posh little sex-pot from London.
A would-be wild night out, with a feast of sex, drugs and rock’n’roll on the chaps’ fantasy menu, is never properly or even improperly enjoyed by this mis-matched trio.
It all ends in predictable detumescence with Dani dismissing the boys, whose friendship terminates, to their “backwater villages”.
Meanwhile, true to traditional form in works about the timeless, youth/middle-age gap, various parents suffer a grey night of the soul, anxious about their kids, glumly aware that fun is a thing of the past, best enjoyed by their aspirationally cool offspring.
Premiered at this year’s Edinburgh Festival Fringe, I Caught Crabs was applauded for its “ability to get inside the heads of teenagers”, as though Horwood was some surgical mindreader who pierced contemporary
teenage skulls and made history by deciphering their enigma codes.
Such hyperbole ignores the fact that the playwright cannot have long left his own teenage years.
Horwood has, though, genuine comic flair of the situational and verbal sort. The evening’s pleasure is gleaned from the sight and sound of dimmish, downcast Fitz (Aaron Foy’s fine professional debut) and far smarter, more life-wise Wheeler (Harry Hepple) dancing, drinking and clubbing with Miss Soul’s imposing, minimally dressed, titillator.
Lucy Kerbel’s 70-minute production, with a helpful, static design by Takis and duet of narrators, who take the parental roles, looks under-done on the cheap.
Closes 6 December (020 8743 5050).
Details are correct at the time of publication - please check with venue before booking.
