The Sunday entertainment with the boy. Now I like Steve Martin, appreciate his brilliance, and I like the idea of Einstein meeting Picasso at a cafe in Paris, what conversations would ensue? How much potential is there in that?
Exactly.
There is, by the way, but we had rush tickets, as we seat ourselves I can't help but notice the audience much resembles another audience for a recent Noel Coward production we both saw. A bad omen.
The first 50 minutes of the play go fine, OK, some moments even good, but as the end appears to be drawing nearer and I'm stretching my legs Steve Martin begins introducing more and more characters, and more and more preposterous comedic events, he's not letting it end naturally. It's as if he's feeling obliged to give us a full 90 minutes of play for our money, regardless of how he does it, and the comedy grows increasingly strained.
And it goes from being not bad to not good in a hurry.
Enter Elvis.
Now it seems this is a plot device used by quite a few other playwrights as of late (think Jubilation's) the reasoning I can only imagine must go like this: "No play starring Elvis has ever lost money", or some other like-minded thespian superstition, because his presence, well, it lent nothing. In fact the boy and I have a shared joke that whenever Elvis enters the theatre it's probably time to get up and go, we couldn't as we were too tightly wedged in with the wheelchairs and seniors, but to leave would have been the kindest thing.
Elvis, Picasso and Einstein all have their moment. Load of bollocks. End play. Amusing in that sort of dark-joke's on you sort of way, we laughed a fair bit after the play, but seldom inside it. No bananas.
Kinder reviews here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Picasso_at_the_Lapin_Agile, YouTube version here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ep1WKTAfa0k&feature=related. If you like the YouTube clip you might enjoy it, it's all a matter of taste after all.