Dumb Show

Synopsis

Joe Penhall’s black comedy tells the story of Barry, aka ‘Mr Saturday Night’ a TV comedian and presenter, who has never quite been able to grasp the celebrity lifestyle he so desperately craves. So when two corporate bankers lure him with the promise of serious money and the perks of fame, he greedily takes the bait. But celebrity comes at a price and Barry becomes the victim of a major tabloid sting.

Our Review:

8 September 2004

In Joe Penhall's first play since Blue/Orange in 2000 that took the triple set of Evening Standard, Olivier and Critics' Circle Best Play Awards, the playwright has returned to provide another intricately constructed drama in which three characters face off against each other in a central moral crisis. But whereas Blue/Orange unfolded in a hermetic but fascinatingly revealed world of psychiatry, Dumb Show is plucked from a world we are complicit with every time we absorb (let alone perhaps relish) the tabloid revelations of celebrity lives, preferably in freefall, from Michael Barrymore to John Leslie and others.

Here we discover Barry, the television star of a show that he himself says is "made by idiots, for idiots, because of idiots", being courted by two financial advisers from a bank seeking his custom and appealing to his greed and vanity to do so. There's even talk of a very substantial fee - "a substantial financial" a...

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Latest User Review

USER: Whatsonstage.com (81.152.117.243) - 6 October 2004:

Great set, some great writing - but overall slightly underwhelming. Douglas Hodge is well worth seeing as the love child of Jim Davidson and Paul Ross. Anna Maxwell Martin never really convinces. ...

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