Reader Reviews
Wanderlust (Royal Court - Jerwood Theatre, West End)
Back to Show Details| Score | Comment | Date |
 | Last time I was at the Royal Court was to see the brilliant Clybourne Park. Seven days later I am left wondering about the judgement of whoever agreed to produce Wanderlust. Nick Payne's mercifully short play is supposed to be an exploration of sex and intimacy but is actually the sort of adolescent pseudo-porn we used to churn out at school to try (and fail) to impress our mates. The cast perform heroically given the tosh they are required to endure and particular plaudits must go to Isabella Laughland who manages to be remarkably sweet as Michelle, the most ridiculous product of Payne's peurile fantasies. Embarrassing on almost every level. - David Baxter | 09 Oct 10 |
| I suffer from Wanderlust, so I was expecting a play that examined this very condition. Of course, it’s a play on words which is about lust and how and why people wander. I don’t suffer from that. At its centre there’s a middle-aged middle-class couple struggling to maintain a healthy sex life. One flirts with and fantasises about an old flame and the other more than flirts with a work colleague. Set against this we have their teenage son’s sexual awakening and experimentation, which proves less trite than you might think. Cue stuff about love versus sex, funny stuff, clumsy stuff, embarrassing stuff but no profound stuff. It’s the charming teenage story which proves to be the heart of the play, though at 80 minutes, a playlet might be more apt description. There was nothing ground-breaking about the staging or the design and the performances were OK – except the teenagers, James Musgrave and Isabella Laughland, who seemed to find more depth in their characters than the rest and raised the bar acting-wise. A perfectly acceptable evening, but not one I’ll be talking about next month let alone next year, I’m afraid – and nowhere near as good as playwright Nick Payne’s earlier play ‘If there is, I haven’t found it yet’ at the Bush last year. - Gareth James | 28 Sep 10 |
