Osbourne, a critic with a gnarled soul, goes along to see a fringe play and writes a bilious notice: 'A miserable night spent in the company of a talentless team.' Then comes a knock on the door. The disgruntled playwright and a dim-witted actress, after an apology or revenge, inveigle their way into his flat.
Robert Shore's The Critic isn't the roadkill of a play Osbourne describes in his write-up. There is one clever thing about it: the reviewer finds himself trapped in the production he's just panned.
But the basic problem is that the script, arch where it should be gangrenously funny, never goes beyond a theatrical in-joke or answers the question of why the audience should watch knowing dreck. Strangely, Shore, (a regular Metro reviewer) doesn't have much to say about the relationship between critic and artist. The playwright moans 'imagine what we went through'; the journalist whinges 'nobody asks what it's like to be a critic', and that's about it.
Harry Meacher is hammy in a red silk dressing gown as the reviewer who once wrote a turkey called Mesopotamia, Mon Amour, and the whole enterprise, directed by Conrad Blakemore, is reminiscent of the camply comic cult Hammer film, Theatre Of Blood.
With its built-in self-defence mechanism, The Critic doesn't take any risks.
Until Dec 17, Pentameters Theatre, above the Horseshoe Pub, 28 Heath St NW3, Tue to Sat 8pm, Sun 5pm, £12, £10 concs. Tel: 020 7435 3648.
Tube: Hampstead.
The Critic
Pentameters Theatre
Three Horseshoes, Heath Street, NW3 6TE
