Same Deep Water As Me & the Conjuring

Same deep Water as Me is a play set in a personal injury lawyers' office in Luton. Being a lawyer and born in Luton one can perhaps see why the subject matter appealed to me. But it was more the case that I thought it would be a good laugh, and the Donmar Warehouse rarely puts on a duff play.

What I hadn't expected was quite what a dark side the play would have. Or quite the degree of bad language. I doubt the first act had many a sentence of dialogue which failed to include the F word. In that I think maybe it was an accurate observation of White Van Man linguistics. It certainly did have a good number of laughs in it, but it was the moral relativism that was interesting: the excuses made and the way everyone was drawn into a motor accident insurance scam.

Kevin was the bad guy here. Drew up the scam and justified it by being hard up and big corporations making money at the expense of little guys like him. So all he had to do was get the personal injury lawyer involved, and old mate from school with a dying father. And then there was this lawyer's partner, and Kevin's wife...They all get drawn in. One would like to think one would never be sucked in like this, and the circumstances couldn't arise where I would, but can one sympathise? Well yes. Just about.

The Conjuring is a horror film. My mate and I went to it for the worst of reasons - the late showing of the film we wanted to see was 35 minutes from starting, and the Conjuring was just about to start. That was it.

Now I say its a horror film. But actually it was only half a dozen gags away from being a spoof. Indeed just a tiny bit of re-editing could turn it into a half-decent comedy. It contained just about every horror cliché one could find, heavily drawing on the Exorcist, but also on just about every other ghost/possession film too. Creaking floorboards, self-rocking rocking chairs, screaming children, dead birds, creepy dolls, exorcisms, thunderstorms. All really tedious and never for a moment convincing. Ok, a number of incidents that made you jump, but then that can be achieved by creeping up behind someone and clapping your hands. That doesn't make it entertainment. That was about the level of it. The fact that on a Saturday night I doubt the entire audience hit double figures tells you everything you need to know. The empty seats must have read the reviews which we hadn't!