King Charles III

Beware of unmissable plays. Don't believe the hype.

This one had great reviews and is pretty much sold out. The premise, the ascension to the throne and how King Charles might find his role was an interesting one. Regrettably the play less so. I suppose it might work if you were particularly anti-monarchist and could work round the gaping holes in the plot. But it was no way funny enough to make me leave my brain at the door, and therefore it was a little painful.

I actually didn't mind the play being written as if it was a new Shakespeare history play, although I think some of my colleagues found the verse grated. I found the fact that the characters were based on sort of cartoon versions of the Royal Family grated a bit more, but that too would have been fine. (Although its interesting how quickly a modern play dates. The Prince Harry was very much the playboy almost teenage image he had not so long ago, not the 30 plus heroic organiser of the Invicta Games and all round good egg he has suddenly transmuted to in the public eye.)

What makes the play creak so badly (unless you leave your brain on "off") is that various characters in the play just don't work in any logical way, so the plot just doesn't make sense, which if it was a farce you wouldn't mind. But various people make statements or take actions which just don't make the slightest sense, but then they can't make any logical sense or the whole premise of the plot wouldn't work. So the conservative leader both prompts Charles to act in a certain way (which would have been plausible) but fails to take any action to take advantage of what he has done, quite the opposite. And the Harry character having dropped the royal tag after falling for a young revolutionary, just then does a double-flip on the day of the coronation and doesn't have the love of his life on the guest list, despite her turning up on the day. Basically this has the sort of character development you get on cheap soaps, where the good guy becomes the bad guy the next month, because no one works on continuity.

But on the plus side, excellent night for celeb spotting. David Tennant was sat two rows in front of us, sporting a fine beard. And I bumped into Ian Hislop on the way to the toilets.