Back from a mini tour of Yorkshire and Stockport and cheering for supporting act Indignation Meeting
Yule fare past its sell-by date
PIC CAP Triple trouble: Unique Spencer, Dan Starkey and Douggie McMeekin in The Night Before Christmas Pic: Darren Bell
ALISTAR FINDLAY is mesmerised by this multiple ‘Visions of Scotland’ assault on the audience’s eyes and senses
The Star's critics ANGUS REID, ANDY HEDGECOCK and MICHAL BONCZA reviews I Am Love, The Penguin Lessons, Freaky Tales, The Thicket
MAYER WAKEFIELD has reservations about the direction of a play centered on a DVLA re-training session for three British-Pakistani motorists
New releases from Steve Knightley, Jupiter & Okwess, Jason Palmer, Lisa Knapp and Gerry Driver, Kin'Gongolo Kiniata, Ingrid Laubrock/Tom Rainey, Dan Sealey, Simin Tande, PAZ
Peter Mitchell's photography reveals a poetic relationship with Leeds
A uncomfortably misogynistic authorial voice that sometimes seems to lack insight troubles FIONA O’CONNOR
The Night Before Christmas
Southwark Playhouse
HEARD the one about the loser, the gay and the prostitute in a storeroom? Add an imprisoned elf and there you have Anthony Neilson’s 1995 play, an extended joke running to just over an hour.
Neilson's trio comprises Loser Gary, played with a winning child-like naivety by Douggie McMeekin, who's a divorced trader in dodgy goods and unlikely to be able to see his son over the holiday period. His mate Simon (Michael Salami), a cynically angry gay, is set on vociferously denouncing the plasticity of Christmas, while a foul-mouthed prostitute (Unique Spencer) is out to get a Power Rangers toy for her son whatever the cost.
Don Starkey’s elf, working for an international gift agency out of Hartlepool, is caught breaking into Gary’s lockup and is forced to give away the secrets of Christmas and grant three wishes in order to be released. That in a nutshell is Neilson’s exploration of Christmas through three sets of very jaded eyes.
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