Genesis Inc(Hampstead)

I've also been wondering about this as I've continued to stick to my new resolution not to book ahead for so much in the main house. It sounds as though it could be great but also a turkey. Though having held off booking for Describe The Night, I regret not managing to see that - Sod's Law.

One of the worst things I have ever seen, and that is saying something. Bewilderingly unfocused and offensive and meandering and predictable and sophomoric. Arthur Darvill sings well and looks nice and that is about it. Harry Enfield looks embarrassed to be part of it, as well he might be.

Could BurlyBeaR please merge the 2 threads?

Reading Barney Norris' twitter thread today it sounds like Sansom is a nightmare to work with. Maybe that's the problem with this play too?

Plays which receive mixed reviews quite appeal to me (I know others may disagree, as would the theatre and the professionals involved) and besides, I'm often most disappointed by productions about which everyone else has raved. So I'd be interested in seeing this and deciding for myself, as I would have done with Describe The Night had I been able to fit it into my diary.

It's likely that some advance bookings will have been made both by Hampstead regulars and by others wishing to see some of the cast members, though "names" actually deter me unless it sounds like a good production regardless. So let's wait and see - I don't think we can write this one off yet.

Saw the first half of this yesterday, (booking / timing error) no great issue as was glad to get out.

Everything I hate about the Theatre, middle class angst with a token gay man and prole.

One good line from the token prole, a black woman with kids as we all know the poor can have children without trying, your middle class kid will grow up to have a disorder whilst in reality they are just thick.

A subject matter that deserves a better play, the drive to have children is debilitating and the desperate are seen as sitting ducks who can be manipulated with false hope for an exorbitant price by the fertility industry.

Well. This is an absolute rambling mess. And not even a hot one. It's like the Writer just had loads (and I mean LOADS) of ideas and didn't have a clue what to do with them so just chucked them all in the play with no thought for clarity, sense or intelligence and hoped for the best. Someone somewhere should have taken a pair of scissors to it. Preferably cutting all of it.

The cast do their best God love 'em but I guess it's hard when your characters make no sense at all from one scene to the next. Arthur Wilson probably comes out of it best.

The subject IS an interesting one and while that overwhelming and desperate NEED to have a baby (and not to adopt) and the willingness to lose everything in the pursuit of that is not something that I have any real affinity for, I'm sure that it could be tackled in a more interesting way. These characters certainly didn't make me feel any sympathy for them though and the addition of a talking fallopian tube didn't help matters either.

But on the plus side Clare Perkins does give us one of the worst Australian accents I've heard in a long time to perk things up. At least I *think* it was supposed to be Australian.

Well it was certainly a lady part of some description.

Not that I recall. It might have been Indian..

You don't see it, you just hear it. I really don't think it's worth suffering the whole play for.

Am I being thick? I don't immediately see the connection between England making the last eight at the World Cup and a play about fertility.

Precisely, and that makes the whole "to celebrate England's success" thing rather tawdry. 

Well it's better than saying "we're not selling many tickets so we need to shift 'em but please come and see our show anyway, it's great". It's basic marketing really, I don't think it's necessarily tawdry.

Theatres can't win it seems. People aren't happy if they don't sell cheap tickets and they're sniffy when they do.

It's a world gone mad.

I'm flying on Saturday afternoon but would definitely be looking for a matinee if I was in London, so maybe this is not bad marketing. I went for a pizza in Soho last night - it was delightful quiet and serene.