Well

Synopsis

Lisa is a New York performance artist who used to be very ill. Her mother is a Middle American housewife who healed her racially divided neighbourhood, but just can’t get well herself. Lisa’s trying to tell us about it, but it turns out that putting your attention-averse mother onstage with you is a really bad idea.

Our Review:

2 January 2009

Even allowing for the fact that this is a West End filler between Rain Man and Three Days of Rain – a brief shower, perhaps – Well is a bad news addition to the West End list, a self-conscious stand-off between mother and daughter that doesn’t justify its theatrical promotion from a small studio space to the middle of Shaftesbury Avenue.

Whatever real edge the piece might have once had has been blunted in transit from New York, where the author and performance artist Lisa Kron played herself in a solo show – with other people – about issues of health. It’s a rant about allergies and Jewishness, not unlike, in shape and content, Joan Rivers’ stand-up vehicle last year. But, boy, does it push its luck on the “meta-theatrical” front with its endless nudge-nudge at the audience. Pirandello this ain’t, but he’s guilty.

Kron, played deftly and even delightfully by Natalie Casey from Two Pints of Lager and a Packet of Crisps on televisi...

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Latest User Review

karen - 25 January 2009:

very good performance from Casey, but that was the only positive. there is no break, if there was i wouldnt return to my seat. ...

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