“They weren’t lies, they were well researched stories that later turned out not to be true”
Just a quickie for this unexpected revisit. I hadn’t intended to go back to this Richard Bean play, which made a rapid transfer from the National Theatre to the
Theatre Royal Haymarket after its up-to-the-minute emergence on the schedule after the culmination of a certain trial involving a certain Eastender-star-bashing redhead. But the offer of a good ticket and the chance to see Lucy Punch – of whom I’ve heard much but never seen on stage – tempted me once again into this murky world of tabloid junkies.
My original review can be read here and if anything, I think I might have been a little kind to it. The play hasn’t aged well, even in the six months since it opened as the fast-moving world of political, institutional and journalistic scandal moves on so quickly IRL that this fictional version already seems quaint. Add in that its bite has been evidently neutered by legal threats and its intelligence barely scrapes the surface of the ethical issues at hand, and it’s a bit of a damn squib for me. Punch was good though.
Labels: Aaron Neil, Andrew Woodall, Ben Mansfield, Dermot Crowley, Harriet Thorpe, Jo Dockery, Lucy Punch, Maggie McCarthy, Richard Bean, Robert Glenister, Rupert Vansittart, Sarah Annis, William Chubb
