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clare_nce to the theatre last night to see a play called "Our Boys", starring Laurence Fox and a wide variety of other people who've been in genre shows but whose names escape me.
It was rather good.
The basis premise was that of a group of young men in an army hospital for a variety of reasons at a date in the 1980s have nothing but time to kill. Very slowly, the audience learns the reasons why they're there and finds out what happens to them.
The most puzzling character for most of the play is the one played by Laurence Fox (I don't remember his name, unfortunately). We're told that he's been there for a long time – it was either 23 weeks or 23 months, but initially all that appears wrong with him is that he's lost a finger and we're told he has something wrong with his blood. The finger was sent to the USA for "tests".
We only find out right at the end that he was involved in an IRA bombing, lost part of his jaw and was otherwise injured and accidentally caused the death of his best friend. Fox gives an excellent performance of someone who's actually slowly losing it – contrast to earlier in the play when he was pretty much together. (Except for the bit where he threatened to cut someone's toes off with a knife, but then the toe-possessor had behaved very badly.)
So, yes, I recommend this play if you can still get a ticket.
Irrelevant observation: I noticed that the group of theatres of which the Duchess forms a part is called "Nimax", which made me think it some kind of theatre-related Dr Who monster. Perhaps an impresario with extra horns.
clare_nce to the theatre last night to see a play called "Our Boys", starring Laurence Fox and a wide variety of other people who've been in genre shows but whose names escape me.It was rather good.
The basis premise was that of a group of young men in an army hospital for a variety of reasons at a date in the 1980s have nothing but time to kill. Very slowly, the audience learns the reasons why they're there and finds out what happens to them.
The most puzzling character for most of the play is the one played by Laurence Fox (I don't remember his name, unfortunately). We're told that he's been there for a long time – it was either 23 weeks or 23 months, but initially all that appears wrong with him is that he's lost a finger and we're told he has something wrong with his blood. The finger was sent to the USA for "tests".
We only find out right at the end that he was involved in an IRA bombing, lost part of his jaw and was otherwise injured and accidentally caused the death of his best friend. Fox gives an excellent performance of someone who's actually slowly losing it – contrast to earlier in the play when he was pretty much together. (Except for the bit where he threatened to cut someone's toes off with a knife, but then the toe-possessor had behaved very badly.)
So, yes, I recommend this play if you can still get a ticket.
Irrelevant observation: I noticed that the group of theatres of which the Duchess forms a part is called "Nimax", which made me think it some kind of theatre-related Dr Who monster. Perhaps an impresario with extra horns.