Nasty people

Apart from regular cockneys, people who live there pearly kings and Reggie Kray types, there exists a new breed - the rudeboy happyslapper.

This specimen gains delight from randomly attacking people (usually by slapping his small flaccid microphallus in the victim's eye) whilst a companion films the incident on his (stolen) mobile telephone. Rudeboy happyslappers live in the shittier parts of London - most notably Shepherd's Bush, Peckham, Holland Park and Mayfair. As with terrorists they come in a multitude of guises - one should take as much care with a chav wearing Burburry as a pinstripped banker. A notable feature of the rudeboy has been his evolution to adapt his skin colour to his nocturnal habits.

Werewolves of London

In the seventies some Excitable Boy took a vacation in London and visited well known places such as Soho and Kent. He claimed to see numerous amount of werewolves there. Although many individuals believe his claim to be true, the mainstream view is that he was in the wrong. Former Prime Minister Tony Blair had the following to say, "He's acting like a fucking headless Thompson gunner" Maggie Thatcher said the following, "next thing we know the mad lunatic will be going home with a Russian waitress". . Throughout his life the man in question stuck by his "Werewolves" claim. He was bedded in a psychiatric hospital for several years. He was released in 2003 and was brought into intensive care because his shit was fucked up. He died of that disease where ya a lump somewhere and ya get sick and ya have to go the hospital a lot.

When Women Rule, Things Are Just as Complicated

By CHARLES ISHERWOOD

Published: November 10, 2009

In the future foreseen in “What Once We Felt,” a new play by Ann Marie Healy that opened on Monday night at the Duke on 42nd Street, men are extinct, but Maker’s Mark is still readily available.

Skip to next paragraphThis state of affairs may strike you as blissful, tragic or simply implausible — possibly a little of all three? — but do not expect Ms. Healy to explain why bourbon has survived while half the human species has died out. This peculiar and ambitious but thoroughly unsatisfying play strikes lots of provocative poses but fails to communicate a coherent or compelling vision.

The central character, Macy O. Blonsky (an overly shrill Mia Barron), is an aspiring novelist late to a lunch date as the play begins. The future world of Ms. Healy’s imagining includes comforting features of our own — like the trendy bistro where Macy is to dine with her agent, Astrid (Ellen Parker) — but also some new inconveniences. To get to the restaurant, Macy must produce her electronic identity card to be scanned by a glum worker at a checkpoint.

In the wake of something referred to as the “Transition,” the population has been divided into two castes, “Keepers” and “Tradepacks.” Keepers are the upper classes, who can move about freely and have the right to “download” a baby (but only one) by ordering a pregnancy-inducing pill online. Tradepacks are second-class citizens denied medical care, largely segregated from the Keepers and allowed to perform only menial jobs.

The politically disengaged Macy, whose only interest is seeing her writing published, becomes embroiled in a potentially dangerous plot when she agrees to the condition her agent has suggested to ensure that “Terror’s Peon,” Macy’s (abysmally titled) book, will become the last novel in the world to be published in actual print.

Claire Monsoon (Opal Alladin), the powerful editor who favors electronic books about talking dogs and self-improvement, will bring out the book on fusty old paper only if she can borrow Macy’s identity card in order to become pregnant. Unbeknownst to the pillars of the glamorous, Keepers-only world in which she wields power, Claire is actually a Tradepack!

It may seem tedious to dwell so insistently on the mechanics of Ms. Healy’s plot, but “What Once We Felt” really does not offer much else to dwell on. Macy’s book is described as a work of “biting satire and dystopian leanings,” a blurb that could as easily be used to plug Ms. Healy’s play, which aims for the kind of territory covered more cogently by the British playwright Caryl Churchill in “Far Away” and “A Number.” But Ms. Healy spends so much time setting out the parameters of her particular dystopia that incidental matters like the creation of substantial characters, a consistent story and a philosophical argument get lost in the ominous murk.

Running in counterpoint to Macy’s tale is a grimmer one about that stony-faced worker at the checkpoint (Lynn Hawley), a Tradepack who kills her mother with a knitting needle to end her suffering, in the process becoming a symbol to an underground rebel movement. (Granted, Tradepacks have no access to pills, but wouldn’t a pillow be a more merciful way to go than a knitting needle?) We also glimpse the attempts by a Keeper couple to have a baby, and hear the sad soliloquies of the last surviving Tradepack (Ronete Levenson).

The handsome, expensive-looking production, for Lincoln Center Theater’s LCT3 series, features a sleek set by Kris Stone, chilly lighting by Japhy Weideman and a notably subtle and effective sound design by Leah Gelpe. The director, Ken Rus Schmoll, moves the story along fluidly, and elicits some fine work from the all-female cast, notably Ms. Parker’s astringent Astrid, whose acerbic laments for the old days of martini lunches and “witty alcoholic writers” and “books that actually created conversation” occasionally lighten the mood.

Then again, they may inspire gloomy reflections that those halcyon days are already history.

From: www://theater.nytimes.com/2009/11/10/theater/reviews/10verge.html