A Very Very Very Dark Matter - new Martin McDonagh

Telegraph 3 stars

The Stage 2 stars
“A very big disappointment”

Independent 3 stars
“Lacks intellectual nuance fails to live up to expectation”

Arts Desk 2 stars
“Poorly written and falls flat lacking in imagination”


Perhaps someone needs to
Write a play
About Martin McDonagh
And how his brain was replaced by excrement
After aliens took a dump in his ears

We can make the aliens from Africa

And add lots of swearing of course

After dwelling on it this evening

It really is a pathetic c*** of a play

And I cannot believe Bridge are so desperate
Or the “actors starring in it”

On the plus side
It’s running until Jan 2019
And there are loads of unsold seats

So I hope it hits the theatre where it hurts the most

One wonders what the f*** has happened to Hytner

Not a single major success or sell out play
(Julius Caesar was the only one with overall good reviews)

Aside from a Hollywood star doing a monotone
Sorry I mean monologue

Except that MM clearly thinks he's ennobling "Marjory" who is presented as some pintsized Congolese warrior on the order of Frances McDormand in Three Billboards === in his dreams, it must be said. The play is an embarrassment from start to finish: Ann Treneman in The Times loved it, which tells you all you need to know.

Excellent review for this in todays Times although they admit it will divide opinion, personally looking forward to this greatly.

Thanks for all the posts on here. Reviews on this Board do not usually influence my decision about what to see, but on this occasion I will take heed and give this show a miss. Some on here seem intent on convincing us that this is a hit even in the face of mediocre and poor reviews. Hangmen was brilliantly written but it contained a couple of racist jokes which I found dumbfounding and offensive. And from the silence in the audience I was not alone. I have no intention of sitting through a play where that bad racist joke is stretched out to 80 minutes. And in the words of the legendary @emicardiff please do not @ me. I don’t wanna hear it.

Another stinker review from the Arts Desk.

Has anyone seen Dark Matter and Andersen’s English ? I would be interested if one seems to copy the other

www.theartsdesk.com/theatre/very-very-very-dark-matter-bridge-theatre-review-black-comedy-falls-flat

A typically thoughtful review in Time Out makes me even more intrigued (and doubly glad that this is my anti-xmas festive outing):

www.timeout.com/london/theatre/a-very-very-very-dark-matter-review

Contains possible spoilers depending on what you consider a spoiler.

Very well said in a reasonable and considerate manner.

You can just not click on it, I think...

Thanks but I’m still not able to do it. Any other ideas? Otherwise, I guess I will just have to ignore it myself. And for the record I would have thought that a lover of McD’s “dark and edgy” humour would see the irony of accusing someone of committing a cardinal sin. Or perhaps it was meant to be a joke.

I hope you re read this after seeing it. The review is pretentious trying to explain it as a “savage but cryptic allegory” (), while bending over backwards trying to avoid admitting its nonsense.

Don’t know how to do spoiler alerts on
My phone so please do not read on if you want to avoid them

If the author is (who’s previous work I really like blah, blah, blah), was trying to say something, my guess it was this. We live at a time when it’s not enough to write off the cannon because it was written by Old Dead White Guys, we are rewriting history in a PC way. So you can rewrite the history of Dickens and Andersen to involve the atrocities in the Belgian Congo (events that happened after their time) and say they stole their ideas from a pair of dwarf sisters, and people will repair to the bar saying you’ve made really interesting points !

I would guess that McDonagh holds those two in high esteem and thinks it odd that we are so ready to place our current corncwrns on them. Somewhere, however he lost the plot.