I have just returned from the second play that I have left during the interval. The last one was Macbeth in Malaysia, uncut and performed in full, very poorly, with some nods to Chinese opera. It was dire and, at the interval, the GF and I realised that we were only two hours in and the second half was three hours long, so we furtively just walked out.
This one was by no means as bad, but it didn’t feel like a good way to spend the evening, especially since I was with the GF’s mother and felt bad at having asked her to join me. The first half was an hour but felt like two, so a second half of equal length would have been taxing, to say the least.
It’s a shame, as the subject matter could have been quite interesting as it was set during the last days before Nigerian independence. As it was, it was totally inert and very didactic. There is a sort of theatre or film or television where the point is not to unfold and explore but to make the audience complicit in disapproval, and this felt that. So you had the missionary couple and their blatant racism, with glances towards the audience, and you had the CIA agent giving a cheque, etc, you had the collection of US racist memorabilia on the walls, you had a white man putting on a minstrel mask and dancing to Song of the South (or something). It was all hardly saying something that the audience at the Young Vic, over half of which was black, didn’t know anything about. And, my personal bugbear, it was a play set in Nigeria which seemed to be a play about race in America.
I don’t think the audience was ever really engaged either, except with the one good bit, which had a Nigerian aunty who clearly resonated. There were laughs, and people leaning forward to watch, while the rest had nothing.
Strange as that director is one of the great men of the London stage, but it was also a play he’d written, and one could tell.
Anyway, we left at the interval and I really should be working now.