Play fest: Rifling on a Monday
Riflemind at the Trafalgar Studios was the second play in my splurge. And it wasn’t as good as the first one. By a very lot.
Fortunately I don’t set as high a bar for a Monday night as for a Friday. There was no excuse for the high bar on the drinks prices though - at £11.60 for two glasses of wine, my companion and I had spent more than the price of the tickets by the time we’d each bought a round.
The play itself was a bit… well… ho hum. The actors all seemed very competent but it was as if they weren’t actually that involved in the plot. The only really enthusiastic performance came from an understudy.
But it was ok. The only bits I really could’ve done without were the drunken/drugged ramblings from the main character’s wife at the end of each act. As my companion said during the interval: drunken ramblings are pretty boring in real life - they don’t magically become interesting on stage.
Anyway the play closed on Saturday after only a month when it had been scheduled til January. Whether this was the result of the malaise or the cause I have no idea but either way, it has departed. I hope that isn’t a bad sign for plays in the west end again - I’ve received notices that two more musicals are opening soon.
