I made the mistake of reading the two and three star reviews for this new play before leaving home and so did not exactly hurry to the National Theatre. In the event, I had a better evening than anticipated. The play is somewhat childish and no work of Shakespeare but it does confront us, in its own way, with our contemporary condition. St George moves through three eras charging himself with slaughtering dragons - which one has to interpret as the 'things' that cloud our lives. In medieval times, the job was easy. The blight was a lion living handily in a cave that exacted its toll on the villagers. George engages in a great battle and slaughters this incarnation of the feudal barron. We move next to the Victorian industrial era where the dragon is harder to define but can still be seen as the simple profit-maximizing capitalist system. The dragon has metamorphosed into a top-hatted boss. Finally, we are in our present day. Here the dragon is the most difficult to slaughter. The 'thing' that bedevils us is now within us. The writer, Rory Mullarkey, presents us with hen parties, pub crowds watching football, and workers cleaning up rubbish. He presents us with, what could be summarised as, our God-less lives and - unless I missed something - rather leaves it to us to puzzle the solution.
So overall, I am not so sure the critics got it right. The play is a confrontation and perhaps its playful manner is a necessity to hold the mirror to us. The acting was excellent, especially John Heffernan as George. The play would, however, have benefited from some tightening. It does not take 145 minutes to make these straightforward points.
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