Serenading Louie
Donmar, until 27 March
Measure for Measure
Almeida, until 10 April
Genius detectors, busy in America, want us to meet the playwright Lanford Wilson. He hasn’t made much impact here possibly because his talent is so vast it can’t be hauled across the Atlantic. His 1970s play Serenading Louie focuses on marital infidelity in the suburbs, and English audiences are entitled to make comparisons with our home-grown chroniclers of bourgeois disenchantment. Wilson doesn’t stand much chance, I’m afraid. His static, pain-strewn narrative has none of the fun or sparkle of English suburban drama. And where Tom Stoppard, Michael Frayn, Alan Ayckbourn and Mike Leigh could manage one good line every couple of minutes, Wilson manages one every hour. ‘Love,’ says a maudlin cuckold, ‘is a neurosis we agree to have together.’ A frosty wife reflects on early encounters with her husband.
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