This play benefited from fantastic acting, particularly from James Corden, and from the quality of production with a wonderful set etc. It is essentially a farce and so fundamentally either you like that sort of thing or you don't. However, even if you fall into the latter camp, the production and acting made it a rewarding way to spend a Covid evening.
At the outset, it is all slightly confusing, being the tale of a man who serves two people related by one having killed the brother of the other who is also the former's girlfriend. She seems perfectly happy with the killing and is now posing as her dead brother in order to collect a dowry from the father of the dead brother's girlfriend. It was really quite useful to have this as a stream rather than live theatre in order to consolidate the situation in my mind.
The first half involved James Corden apparently involving members of the audience and this worked very well. However, this technique was dropped in the second half which became a more conventional playing out of the contorted situation and its eventual resolution. To be honest, I found the second half lost my concentration a bit but, all in all, thank you National Theatre for putting this on as a contribution to the lockdown.
No comments:
Post a Comment