Critics are only human - we all make mistakes. And no one beats me up more for mine than me! So today it’s time to fess up, as they say Stateside, to one of mine: I’ve already admitted here to attending Waste at the Almeida (not so) fresh from a transatlantic return journey, and now I’ve discovered that I must have written my review, too, in an advanced state of jetlag, too.
In my Sunday Express notice, I referred to a fine ensemble cast that includes “Will Keen as the politician and the superb, graceful Phoebe Nicholls as his long-suffering wife. ” Except, of course, that Phoebe Nicholls is playing his sister, not wife.
I duly received this chastising e-mail yesterday from a friend, who calls himself “Mother” and who had seen my review in the new issue of Theatre Record: “You made the terrible mistake of letting your readers know that you were NOT PAYING ATTENTION! Phoebe Nicholls (lovely performance) played Will Keen’(great performance)’s sister not his wife, which makes a nonsense of that beautifully played last scene. I think your jet lag was worse than you let on, and I think that you owe it (not that it will make any difference to a sold out run) to see a strikingly good and beautifully acted production again and try to do both it and yourself justice. Mother is disappointed and a little cross!”
And so am I - with myself. But at least I am not alone: I did a quick trawl of other reviews, and discovered that the identical mistake was perpetrated by two other colleagues! In his Tribune notice, Aleks Sierz even draws the conclusion that it reveals that the play suggests that the English are not much good at love: “When his wife, Frances, finally confronts him at the end of the story, Henry shows a sublime indifference which makes you wonder why the couple haven’t gone their separate ways long ago. No, the chief erotic drive in the play - and the only thing that makes it bearable to watch- is its boys’ club politics: not sex, but power. When the men talk affairs of state, the pulse quickens. Directed stolidly by Samuel West, Waste is a perfect example of the ghastly lack of warmth between the sexes among the English upper classes during the first part of the last century.”
And in the Jewish Chronicle, John Nathan writes, “Phoebe Nicholls as Trebell’s loving but sexually uninterested wife outshines even Keen’s excellent performance.” Those two further wrongs, of course, don’t make it right that I got it so wrong, too - and of course our common mistake is now embedded for posterity in the pages of Theatre Record and/or the internet. So I apologise unreservedly and publicly to Ms Nicholls, director Samuel West and the Almeida’s artistic director Michael Attenborough.
Don't feel too badly about it, Mark. I made the same mistake too, and I can't think of any point where the play or production did anything to make me believe otherwise. (Was it tucked away in Act One? I confess I lost the plot there once or twice during all that concentrated exposition around the piano.)
Since I had left the theatre marvelling at Barker's boldness in painting such an unsentimental portrait of marriage, it's a slight disappointment to discover my mistake.