Karagula

I am seeing Monday

I hope it's good

Ridley at his best

Is unsurpassable

I'm seeing it! I'm pretty excited about it.

Oh and they need to do something about the running time
.. Started ten mins late. But didn't finish till 11:15. Was seriously worried I'd be getting nightbus home!

I am sorry to say

Utter mess
In the worse possible way in every sense

The ONLY worthwhile part was bumping into a fellow forum member (1st time ever!!!)
Sorry I ran off

I had to get out of there
The seating was awful and I have a crick in my back

The "play" is not even a work in progress

Where do I start?

Firstly, why the annoying venue?
It's not convenient for anyone

It's not a proper theatre and the area is hardly renowned for the arts

The "auditorium" is a concrete area in a shed

Like a more crappy version and smaller than the old Southwark Playhouse (which I was very fond of)

The seating is hard plastic chairs the sort you might torture people strapped to

And this is sheer torture

The "staging" means you are constantly straining your neck to look to either end of the "traverse"

Where there is some scaffolding

I can't be bothered to outline the plot as it is so terrible but we get a combination of non linear scenes with a wildly fluctuating timescale showing some sort of parallel worlds

It would be a lie to to say any of it is high concept

It really isn't

The acting is okay (God knows what some of the performers are doing in this, I would rather sign on)

The staging is abysmal

Clunky and cheap and awful special effects

The jugular is referred to as a vein and a character dies within 1 second of stabbing herself in this

The aforementioned microphones still didn't work in one scene rendering the idea of that particular time as being futuristic as laughable

Quite how this is the most ambitious staging ever in the fringe f*** knows
It's worse than most primary school nativity plays

I am well used to Philip Ridley and this is the first play of his I haven't liked

It was a nasty shock

There is a lack of any sort of focus, any prudent editing and a lack of budget and vision to try and bring his fantastical ideas to look half convincing
I had no sense of scope or amazement

After almost 1H and 45M I felt no connection to any character

There was way too much doubling and tripling up of actors

And I just could not take any of it seriously- I wanted to run into the "stage" area and tell everyone to go home

To be quite frank I think it's a pisstake and borders on criminal that they think this show justifies a £28.50 ticket price

I have to add

About 1/3 of the dialogue is inaudible

And this is just due to a combination of atricious diction and execrable space

However

This is supposed to be a professional show

The sh*tty sound and microphone issues just aren't on

There is no excuse

Although they look like 1980s walkie talkie headsets

I found it uncomfortable that the vast majority of the fundamentalists of Mareka (who are portrayed negatively) were all played by black actors and were made to behave like hysterical gospel evangelists

It was the worst sort of stereotyping and I found it clumsy and offensive in fact

This sort of thing TOTALLY justifies leaving as soon as one can

I thought about dashing across the stage several times to make a getaway mid action

But was in fear of being taunted

Honestly if I had spoken for 20 minutes and done my Beyoncé dance in my night dress

It would have been way more entertaining

I can't imagine any of the critics are going to like this

Likely the big names aren't going to be going anyway and they will send their subordinates to numb their bums on those awful torture chairs

Will do it for FREE

To save you all the mercy of this show instead!!!

On this note

Anyone seeing Queen Bee at Wembley in July??

Im going to Beyonce. Which night parsley?

Same date for me.

Parsley, yes, just got home now. Nice to meet you. At least I had those other chaps to chat with in the interval lol.

It ended at 11pm. Baemax will be over the moon.

For those who want to know what this is like, think "Planet of the Apes 2," the one where mutated humans with telepathy worship missiles. What is this play about, you may ask?

Well, Mareka (ie America, and if you don't guess it right away, they do American accents to make sure you do) is a land of milkshakes and mind control, where an infantilised fattened populace parrot platitudes and religious dogma, unaware that their masters really rule over them with fear and the gun.

Ridley's intention is to create an epic story of resistance to Mareka, which reveals not only the phony origins of religion and the hypocrisy of the nation state, but also the cyclical nature of violence and history.

However, his vehicle resembles the science fiction of Dr Who, without the Doctor and his companions for rooting interest. Worse, the doubling of actors, in this production at The Styx, makes it difficult to follow the very few distinctive characters that you might care about.

Truthfully, you could watch some old Dr Who Tom Baker episodes, for example, "The Face of Evil," and learn the much the same things as here, but with charismatic entertaining leads to guide you through the story.

Ridley can and will write an effective takedown of America, religion, history and humanity one day, I'm sure. This isn't it.

2 stars

It's got a terrible review by the Telegraph in which they ask, is this the worst play of 2016. The location is okay, I have no problem with it. Though the three hours would mean bopping on the tube after 11pm. The price seems a joke for this sort of venue.

I think I'll give this a miss and trade Ridley for Ripley instead.