A Very Expensive Poison - Old Vic 2019

I don't think this gives away anything. 1 audience member is prompted to say something and another 3 to read out aloud something. Nobody is required to improvise or stand up ... so not too bad but I don't like any kind of participation

Just over 3 hrs tonight so they’re trimming already. Will make coherent thoughts in the morning but it needs a fair bit of tightening up and I’m not sure it entirely works but Iw was rarely bored.

I can count the three hour plays that couldn't have been shortened on one hand, does this justify it's length?

I'll be there on Monday either way I guess...

My thoughts weren't disimilar youngoffender, but then the first person I spoke at the cycle rack loved it - about 30 years and a nationality different to me. It just reminded me there are all kinds of audiences for all kinds of styles. It is shambolic in parts and head-shaking - but by my perhaps staid, conventional measure. Others think otherwise. It might even be somewhat ... generational.

I really enjoyed this. Informative, entertaining, never boring, the substance lags behind the style, as psychology and motivations are sometimes swamped by procedural elements and playful theatrical techniques.

Some spoilers follow. . .

Lucy Prebble takes the factual material surrounding the assassination of Alexander Litvinenko, and reassembles it, like a series of Russian Dolls, into layers that are peeled back, one after the other, until we get a final clear picture of what happened and why.

But she spends too much time on the what, and too little time on the why. Of course, if you know absolutely nothing about Litvinenko, this approach may wholly succeed for you, as we start in Litvinenko's hospital death bed, and move back in time, and again, and change perspective, and whatnot, doling out facts.

But if, like me, you saw news coverage of the case, back in the day, the procedural elements involving investigating all the different places Litvineko might have been poisoned just spark deja vu.

For me, it's what the news DIDN'T highlight that was most interesting, and this show does a great job of characterising the man himself, harnessing Tom Brooke's natural openness, and coupling that with a charming conviviality and forthrightness, to suggest a man with almost spectrum-levels levels of naiveté and can-do spirit. Brooke's characterisation expanded the story for me dramatically in a relatable, human and tragic way.

But the motivation and psychology of the Russian authorities and agents, and pretty much everyone else in the story, never receive the same focus and attention. When Michael Schaeffer bitterly delivers a surprising monologue about how 35 million dead Russians in WW2 got overlooked by the West, it resonates like a punch to the gut, partly because it's so powerfully expressed and written, but also because it's so lonely a speech, an outlier of how great the show might have been if we could have peeked more deeply being the (Iron) curtain.

Instead, what we mostly get are the kind of fun and surreal theatrical techniques from Enron: singing, dancing and movement, puppet heads, assassins as keystone cops, Peter Polycarpou hilariously singing as Boris Berezovsky, and most magnificently, a wry, dry and sly Reece Shearsmith, as Vladimir Putin, popping up like Punch and Judy, to fake news the whole show lol.

But while that stuff is fun, it's surface, and it never gets deep the way Shaeffer's speech gets deep, and all the stuff about this hotel room, or that bar, or this night club, feels more like a quotidian episode of "Law and Order" (dum dum).

I loved Brooke and MyAnna Buring as the central couple, Alexander and Marina Litvinenko, and felt they gave the show a lot of heart, but what I wanted from Prebble was a bit more head.

3 and a half stars.

I saw it last night and Steve has hit on pretty much everything I would have said. This is recent history 101; for me, I wanted it to be angrier, to connect the dots with now. To make the murderers and their superiors into comedy characters feels wrong, when we are living through its continuation; not just overtly with the Skripals but with the propaganda of fake news (the true one, not Trump’s attempt to kill the phrase by subverting it).

Does it make it more palatable? Yes, but why should it? The ending is fine but feels like an apology rather than the call to arms that the story needs.

I was also there last night and a bit lukewarm to it, which can also be translated as tepid.

If the producers change the start time, does that mean the theatre has an obligation to re-imburse you, if you cannot make it.

Unfortunately that won’t apply to the train, which can cost more that the theatre ticket.

I had a bumpy ride with this but ended up liking it and would probably give the same number as stars as Steve - if not for entirely the same reasons.

The first 20 minutes or so didn't work for me - at all. Like Steve, I knew a bit about the story so some of it wasn't new and the style was sort of 'Casualty' stuck on stage. Just when I was about to despair, I got hooked. Thought the Boris and Putin sections were fascinating and very well performed. The surreal stuff worked for me - the story is so wild and crazy, a wild and crazy style seemed appropriate. Highlights were the ends of both acts, the use of puppets and as Steve mentions Shaeffer's speech (25 million!) Lloyd Hutchison was his usually endearing self - I always enjoy his performances (okay I didn't see Salome.)

It's baggy in bits and there were a few weird technical things (some tinny music was playing up in the Dress Circle for about 8 minutes early on, for example.) The women in the play except for MyAnna Buring, who I wasn't entirely sure about, had very little to do, but that seemed to be the nature of the tale. Row D aisle Dress Circle for £10 were a steal - no restriction to view at all.

When we were leaving I heard people discussing it in relation to the Salisbury poisoning and it's sent me to the internet to look up some stuff I didn't know/had forgotten about - so that's got to be a good thing?

I see this one now has a gunfire warning. Would anyone mind saying what happens and when in a spoiler tag, please? And whether it's real gunshots, or sound effects.

Thanks. One gunshot I can cope with. How far into the show is it?

Where's the spoiler?!!!


I CAN'T SEE IT!!


WHERE IS ITTTTTTT??


Is it hidden behind a spoiler tag?

WHERE??!!


Oh.....no.....hang on........that spoiler is right there in plain sight for all to see.

As you were