Sunday, December 28, 2008

David Hare's Gethsemane

Travelling up to the National Theatre yesterday at 10am
to trade some Christmas Theatre tokens for £10 day tickets
to see 'Gethsemane' at 2:30pm at the Cottesloe, was very
productive.

The cast list includes the talented Tamsin Greig who
I recognised from TV's 'Love Soup' and Gugu Mbatha-Raw
who again I recognised from TV ('Spooks').

The plot concerns New Labour; Government; Cabinet; the Home Secretary's wayward
16 year old daughter, scandal (she slept with a journalist)
party donations quasi bribery, blackmail, wars, failure to resign
and a bit of religion.

The most memorable
piece of the latter came towards the end where the
daughter (Jessica Raine) made plain that her mother
and others couldn't even make their biblical quotations
accurate. She pointed out that Jesus' Gethsemane moment
was when he wanted the burden lifted from his
shoulders but carried on anyway whereas her olders
and betters were refering to that moment as if a new
begining change of direction was heralded.

Greatly absorbing and well worth seeing though
perhaps "The Road to Emmaus" might be more accurate a title.

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