Lloyd Evans Lloyd Evans

Bourgeois frippery

Regime change at Hampstead Theatre. The era of special measures is over and Ed Hall, son of Sir Peter, has taken charge. Hall’s debut show is daring in its complete lack of audacity.

issue 16 October 2010

Regime change at Hampstead Theatre. The era of special measures is over and Ed Hall, son of Sir Peter, has taken charge. Hall’s debut show is daring in its complete lack of audacity.

Regime change at Hampstead Theatre. The era of special measures is over and Ed Hall, son of Sir Peter, has taken charge. Hall’s debut show is daring in its complete lack of audacity. Shelagh Stephenson’s new play Enlightenment is the sort of bourgeois frippery we were used to yawning through under the previous administration. We’re in a posh house in Angstead Garden Suburb where two yuppie liberals are struggling to cope with the disappearance of their gap-year son in south-east Asia. Mum consults a psychic. Dad invites a TV producer to make a shock-doc highlighting their plight. When a confused drifter turns up claiming to be the lost Odysseus, Mum lets him stay in the spare room as an ersatz offspring.

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