Romance

Synopsis

A satirical farce set in a modern day courtroom exploring subjects ranging from the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, sexual fidelity, and world peace.

Our Review:

15 September 2005

In 1997 a little musical arrived in London from Broadway called Romance Romance, and it quickly inherited the name that gossips there had dubbed it, "No chance no chance" (and promply lived up to it, folding just seven weeks later). David Mamet's new play, simply entitled Romance and now at the Almeida after its New York off-Broadway premiere in February this year, could in turn be accused of having no substance.

This paper-thin courtroom farce has neither an anchor in reality nor a respite in humour. Hot on the heels of visiting the scene of an American military courtmartial in Aaron Sorkin's A Few Good Men, Mamet's play now takes us to a far more implausibly constituted New York courtroom, where a Jewish chiropractor (Nigel Lindsay) is on trial. We never discover why: there's something to do with his having been in Hawaii on 10 November the previous year, and a drawing in his diary of a rabbit is put forward in evidence, ...

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Latest User Review

217.36.28.3) - 20 October 2005:

Two stars awarded for actors making the best of what they had to work with. Unfortunately, they did not have a great deal of scope. This is a play of bon mots, it goes nowhere and has little substance. As a lesson in comic acting it is excellent but as drama, I think not. Disappointing and, by the end of the evening, rather irritating....

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