Friends like these

From the advertising blurb it sounded very God of Carnage – y, so I was keen to take a look, but our visit to Amongst Friends at the Hampstead Theatre was a bit doomed from the start. Firstly the Jubilee line was closed so we had to take a circuitous tube journey, wading through a tide of homeward bound football fans. Then, when we arrived at our seats we found a trio of pensioners complete with walking sticks and hearing aids already installed. Upon investigation, yes, Hampstead Theatre had managed to sell the seats first to me, then again to the interlopers. As they had possession, there were only two seats remaining in the whole theatre, and to wrestle them out of the place altogether would be a bit undignified, we decided to accept the compensatory half time G&Ts and back row of the stalls as a bit of a result overall.. Until the play started that is, when it became apparent that the main theme here was going to be good actors brought to their knees by a dodgy script. We silently willed them to make the best of it, but by the second half it was clear there was nothing that could be done.

So, what was the problem? Well, the biggest issue was the script stuffed with every storyline that could be squeezed in. There was an interesting basic plot of two marriages under strain, and added to this were affairs, death of a (possibly fictional) child, an MP and Iraq scandal, hastily added lines about expenses, violence and crime, nervous breakdowns, drug addiction, blackmail, the angst of the real-wood-flooring classes, the scariness and pathos of the lower classes, ethics of publicity and privacy, agoraphobia, grief, suicide. The really sad thing is that there was an interesting play struggling to get out, but dying for lack of a good editor.

The actors all did a fair job actually… Helen Baxendale was wearing her brittle persona, which was fine for her character, and James Dreyfuss was impressive, with a real stage presence. Vicki Pepperdine did her best but her character was just not believable, irritating rather than catalytic, simplistic and just patronising.

My main feeling at the end was that this was a waste of a great cast, theatre and set. But overall, not a waste of our time, as our fantasy redrafting and editing kept us occupied all the way home.