Seminar

A second successive post where I find myself saying one should ignore the critics. Seminar hasn't had such great reviews (well not in the Standard anyway), but we really enjoyed it a lot. The whole play surrounds writing classes given by an aging American writer to four aspiring young writers. The students have paid a lot of cash for the utterly withering comments of the author turned tutor, who delightfully (for the audience) crushes most of his charges work and dreams with acerbic with. Roger Allam is just perfect as the pompous bully of a writer, but eventually we see he may be right all along.

There rare plenty of laughs, at 2 hours its a very comfortable length and the pace of the play is such that one's mind never wanders. And creative writing classes are a nice topic for satire. Plenty of scope. Very entertaining.