Week 29 - Enlightenment; Blood and Gifts

The Hampstead Theatre just started its first season under the new artistic director Edward Hall with Enlightenment written by Shelag Stephenson. This season is meant to turn around the fortunes of the theatre which in the last few years lost it's track (not difficult to do that after grandees like Mike Leigh and Harold Pinter worked in the glory years). And what a weak start Enlightenment is! The story is intriguing enough – Adam has gone missing on his gap year travels, his middle class parents are in agony until he returns with memory loss. It turns out that the returnee is not their son and a pile of lies unfold while we find out what happened to the real Adam. However, it is ruined by flat acting (a wife slaps her husband and he just goes on talking – no reaction at all), clichéd characters (a psychic for humour element, an over enthusiastic and slightly dumb TV producer, a swearing former Labour minister) and fatigued moral message (we are good only when it suits us). Hopefully the season will get better once Mike Leigh comes back to direct Ecstasy in March.

The National yet again did not disappoint. Blood and Gifts by J T Rogers was a perfect political thriller. A young and eager CIA agent is sent to Pakistan to help the Afghans to fight the Soviets in 1981. Through his story the audience get to see the corruption of the Pakistani army chiefs, the humanity of the Soviet ambassador, the British inability in the special relation and the motives of the Afghan war lords. The play explains what happened in the ten years war that exposed the weakness and lead to the ruin of the Soviet Empire. Blood and Gifts is brilliant because we see many allusions to today's fight and the main character's personal story is interlinked with the happenings in the world.

Also this week: finished The English Patient by Michael Ondaatje, enjoyed a super educational and inspiring tour of the National Gallery (daily at 11.30 and 2.30 – can't recommend enough!) and watched a dance performance Monger by Barak Marshall at the Barbican.