Reader Reviews
Herding Cats (Hampstead Theatre, Inner London)
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 | Lucinda Coxon examines our compartmentalised lives, jobs that bury our identities, bosses we loathe, fantasies we stifle, the phones we hide behind, and she sums up just how lonely all this can make us. It's a brilliant play, funny yet unremittingly bleak. It's knowing yet compassionate. It's not for Daily Mail readers. One character, Saddo, played with nuance by David Michaels, is a sadistic incestuous paedophile, but faking jollity in a Santa suit on Christmas day, even he evokes sympathy. He is perpetually filling the ear of phone sex worker, Michael, with his fantasies, and Michael, played by Philip McGinley with an empathetic centred calmness, begins to like him. Michael's flatmate, Justine, played by the underrated Olivia Hallinan (who expresses both subtle and fierce emotional changes on stage, moment to moment, every bit as convincingly as Judy Dench) also comes to like someone she initially hates, her boss, who we hear about but do not see. Coxon understands that if your life is barren enough, the things you hate can become the things you love: she emphasises this by depicting in the action a T-shirt in which the logo 'Love' humourously becomes the logo 'Hate' in a mirror's reflection. Just as public hatred for Jade Goody morphed with time into ubiquitous fondness, Michael and Justine equally become fond of characters they probably shouldn't. And just as in Jade Goody's case, that fondness ultimately proves troublesome. All three actors are fantastic, the production is stark and spooky, and Coxon's voice is pointed, hilarious and despairing. Excellent! - steveatplays | 28 Dec 11 |
