Until 4 0'clock yesterday I knew nothing about Dead Beet, then I went
on Radio Oxford and mentioned I was going.
"Oh
fantastic," enthused the presenter. "That's the play with
Ellen Bassani in the lead role. We had her on yesterday. Did you
know she's been almost blind since birth?"
"Oh
blimey" I thought. What if it's bad! What will I write?
So
here I am, the day after the night before聟 Brace yourself I'm
a well publicised git.
Although
Ellen had walked into the wall a couple of times and talked to the
wrong end of the telephone it wasn't spoiling things. What made
me shudder at the prospect of a second half was the script.
Poor
old Gregory, is a diabetic trying to learn Braille from Sian (Ellen)
before he goes blind. He has diabetes, he's impotent and he also
seems to suffer from a weird type of autism making him completely
socially retarded.
This
means that the moment the hint of a "love thing" starts
bouncing between them you want it to stop. Was I missing the subtle
dark humour? I don't think so, by the interval I wouldn't have given
two hoots if they'd both married a tea pot and gone to live in Peru.
It
wasn't just the script. Why the tortuous quantity of scene changes?
And if you're going to make nine million scene changes don't make
them each a minute long! Assuming there were twenty scene changes
that's twenty minutes we sat in the dark, left to talk about where
to eat afterwards. This could have been used as a poignant theatrical
device to evoke the sensation of blindness, but it wasn't.
I feel
bad now, especially as it was Ellen's acting debut. But even though
what she did was in many ways incredible it's probably a good idea
if everyone responsible for this play sits down and has a long hard
think about what they've done.
Right
I'm off to do penance in a Christian monastery.
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