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From The Sunday Times
July 31, 2005

Culture: Richard Brooks: Biteback

Richard Brooks

  • If you want to be amused by another political drama (well, in a loose sort of way), go to Who’s the Daddy?, the farce about David Blunkett and the shenanigans at The Spectator, which runs throughout August at London’s King’s Head pub-theatre.

    Next in the political stakes comes the National Theatre’s Playing with Fire, in September. David Edgar’s old v new Labour drama has a central plot about a female party worker sent up north to sort out a failing local authority, where she has to confront race riots and asylum seekers.

    For years, Edgar was a Royal Shakespeare Company stalwart; the company premiered several of his hard-hitting political plays. Now the National is his port of call. Last week, David Hare damned the RSC as “not being theatrically relevant” today because it fails to put on new dramas. He’s not quite right, as it stages some new works at the Other Place in Stratford. But until the RSC again puts the new on a main stage in Stratford or London, its reputation as something of a no-go area for contemporary writing will continue.

  • Cate Blanchett was at the Duke of York’s in the West End the other evening to see Eve Best as Hedda Gabler. Maybe she was looking for ideas about Ibsen’s heroine, as she will play the role on stage in Sydney later this year.

    Also, some who had paid just £10 for a ticket last Saturday were moved to empty £40 stalls seats. Lucky them, even if they were benefiting from the London bombings, which have driven hordes from the West End.

     

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