Thursday, April 16/2009

National Theatre releases some ten pound seats each day for that day's performance, so we head over for 10 a.m. and get 2 front row seats for England People Very Nice. This leaves us over 3 hours until curtain time so we put up our umbrellas and go over to the Barbican library.

The play itself is a sellout and quite funny. It looks, as promised, at centuries of immigration in successive waves to Londons Bethnal Green neighourhood. The point, of course, is that immigrants have always arrived, been resented, and eventually integrated and been replaced by other nationalities. It's sensitive material potentially, but the playwright has taken the modus used in the Simpsons - use outrageous caricature bvut be fair and satirise all groups with equal ruthlessness. And there are the running jokes: periodically a character says that there is no hell and this is all the heaven we'll ever get, to which the answer is "what, Bethnal Green?!" It's a long play, but fun.