Gareth's Culture and Travel Blog

Am I the only one who finds it somewhat ironic that the premiere of this anti-woke play is at the theatre that cancelled Terry Gilliam, resulting in the ‘deprogramming’ of Into the Woods?

Jonathan Spector’s play is set in a very liberal American school, where everyone is keen to please and upset no-one. The task the governors are undertaking when we join them is determining what ethnicity categories should be included in their website’s drop-down box. You quickly get a flavour of the culture of the institution we’re observing, on Rob Howell’s brilliant Day-Glo set.

The big issue that faces them, though, is on the horizon, when an outbreak of mumps pits the anti-vaxxers against those who don’t want to put their children at risk. It becomes very personal as the child of one of them is a victim of the disease. As with most things these days, it escalates very quickly from a debate and disagreement to outright war, in this case one that will lead to a dramatic change in their culture.

Though it’s refreshing to see such arguments aired in a theatre, its uproarious humour risks burying the debate of what are important issues in modern society – polarisation, divisiveness, bandwagons, lack of healthy discussion, comments taken out of context, jumping to conclusions……That said, it delivers as a satirical comedy, with fine performances (but why so many American imports?) though you can’t hear what they are saying in the funniest scene involving a zoom meeting, as they are upstaged by the ‘chat’ exchanges projected above.

Sitting in an audience made up of mature members of society who lapped it up, I couldn’t help wondering what a much younger audience would make of it. Go for the laughs, particularly if you’re tired of the woke new world. I suspect a sequel called ‘bloody health & safety’ would go down just as well.