Points of view: theatre, comedy and news
Apart from Will Robbins’ penchant for the odd pun or one-liner, the majority of the muted humour in With the Best Will in the World lends itself to a rather stilted hour where we constantly fight to stop our thoughts from wandering elsewhere.
Written by Nadia Fortini and directed by Catrin Ody, this particular play is set over the course of an all-nighter, as interns Lola (Natasha Vincent), Penelope (Maya Moravec) and Chad (Anzi DeBennedetto) clean out the physical office space and position that they’re competing for. The relationships between these characters are very quickly and deeply established, and over the course of the show, they constantly shift and develope, to the point where the subtext of interactions between characters pretty much screams at us. There are quite lengthy periods where we are lulled into a kind of rhythm by the repetitive tasks - it suits the show well in creating a kind of realism in terms of establishing setting and context within a limited space and time, but these moments perhaps go on for longer than necessary and quickly move from novel.
The journey of self-discovery and realization that Alexis Gay’s Unprofessional tries to takes us on is instead a forced show that tries to be more interesting than it actually is. Underlying Gay's main narrative of her time working in Silicon Valley and the professional culture that she experienced, is a an exploration of the correlation between self-worth and outside approval through the lens .
Gossip Girl, Succession and now Trust. All of these shows are part of a curiously morbid fascination that fiction has with the upper-classes; the wealth, status and drama of the world that these characters inhabit. Written by Nicole Sellew and Natalie Westgor, on the surface this show seems to attempt to analyse privilege and its harms, but the constant drama, lack of remorse and severe unlikeability of all of the characters means that we’re subsequently pulled into a melodrama.
Pepper & Salt 