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By
Jon Surtees
High expectations gave way to deep disappointment at the Burton
Taylor Theatre, when the much vaunted play by former Spitting Image
writer Mike Coleman turned out to be rather akin to being battered
around the head by a satirical wrecking ball.
The
subject for the play was one close to many workers heart, the ridiculous
jumble of goals, initiatives, targets and standards exacted by many
a Government department and the way they enacted upon the life of
'The Smith's from Stevenage'.
Masquerading
as an Ayckbournesque domestic drama with a 'hook', England Inspects
shot itself in the foot so comprehensively that it was unable to
ever generate much more than a limp of momentum.
The
target of the satire was clunky and obvious. Almost all jokes made
were based on an assumed knowledge of the Parthenon of rubbish that
passes out of so many inspectorates and standards agencies.
However, by the very virtue that these were 'in' jokes, it was perfectly
clear that these sort of rules have become such a joke to so many
people that they satirise themselves by their very existence. For
Coleman do them such a service as writing a play about them seemed
to rather trump up their importance and undermine one of the main
points he was trying to make.
Occasionally,
great performances can supersede bad writing. In England Inspects
this is not the case at all. The family in question appeared to
all have based their performances on the 成人快手1 Sitcom, My Family.
This is not a good thing. The two children were horribly stereotyped
angry, clever clever, teenagers, who, judged by their chemistry,
appeared to merely known each other and their parents from the minute
the play began.
If
chemistry was lacking with the children it could at least be hoped
that their parents had met before. Lamentably this did not appear
to be the case. Any attempt made at sympathy for either character
was severely hampered by their complete inability to care for each
other for anything longer than a 2 minute period.
The
dialogue was marred by cut-in, unnecessarily sexually crude one-liners,
which appeared more at home in a Jim Davidson after dinner speech
than in anything trying to call itself serious drama. The fact they
were delivered in such a barren way only added to the crushing inevitability
that they would raise nothing more than a small titter.
The
'hook' Coleman uses in a vain attempt to make the play original
is somewhat marred by the admittedly grotesque Inspector Chubb character
being played as Tony Slattery impersonating Peter Mandelson. The
PowerPoint technique used is clever but not nearly enough was made
of this. Perhaps a continuing presentation during the pseudo dramatic
action might have distracted people's attention long enough to find
something else to think about in this dismal attempt at modern satirical
humour.
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