a very expensive poison script
This production includes smoking (tobacco and herbal cigarettes). This, though, is a true story told in post-truth times and Prebble disrupts with disinformation, distortion and distraction — layer on layer of Putinesque theatricality. The experience is enhanced by an adventurous structure which goes beyond naturalism with direct address through the fourth wall, action in the auditorium and even ironic stage directions. Escaping to London under the auspices of billionaire Boris Berezhovsky, adopting a fake identity of his own, Litvinenko’s tracked down by two bungling assassins amateurish enough to leave Polonium-stained fingerprints all across London. His bare chest is stickered with heart monitors and his head is hairless, eyebrows and all, a symptom of radiation poisoning. Voila! Each detail reminds us that truth is stranger and far sillier than fiction. “A Very Expensive Poison” stages journalist Luke Harding’s investigative account of Litvinenko’s life and death. Published by Methuen. Her play reserves its outrage for a complacent, compliant British establishment that failed to assemble a public inquiry for fear of losing Russian investment. We already know whodunit and how. 'href': url, We already know whodunit and how. Prebble’s play seeks to make amends, but it feels too little, too late. two hours, 40 mins, including a 20 minute interval. That, not a penful of polonium, is the very expensive poison in question. Tom Scutt’s slick stage design transports us between countries and settings, as the detailed set shifts from café to hospital room to airport to different homes from London to Russia. The laughter peaks with a comedy double act of hitmen (played deftly by Michael Shaeffer and Lloyd Hutchinson) whose chaotic attempts to administer the poison leave a radioactive trail through the West End. Reece Shearsmith is tremendous fun as a panto villain Vladimir Putin, gleefully reminding the audience not to feel sad about the suffering of someone we don’t even know. }, In a bizarre mix of high-stakes global politics and radioactive villainy, a man pays with his life, At this time of global crises and a looming new Cold War, A Very Expensive Poison sends us careering through the shadowy world of international espionage from Moscow to Mayfair, Lucy Prebble (Enron, The Effect) brings a shocking story to the stage with an astute mix of real events, vaudeville and thriller, "A playwright blessed with an exceptionally fine mind" ~ Telegraph, "Truly theatrical. At times he seems to be directing proceedings, ordering Lloyd Hutchinson and Michael Shaeffer’s fumbling assassins to clown around, or sending top-hatted and tailcoated tap dancers to storm the stage at crucial moments of the criminal investigation. “The second you start telling a story,” cautions Putin, “you start telling a lie.” In the very next breath he starts telling a story of his own: a true story, in fact, of the Moscow Theatre Siege where Chechen rebels stormed a building just like this one, taking an audience just like us hostage for four days and nights.
.
How Old Is Darcy From Winx Club,
Frankie Dettori Wins,
St John Beaches,
Student Connect Cusd,
Is Damien Rice Married,
Csk Vs Srh 2020,
Delft University Of Technology Master's,