Alex at Leicester Square Theatre

Alex at Leicester Square Theatre

15 December, 2008
by: Jimmy

After a successful run last Christmas and a four month worldwide tour Alex, the play based on the popular cartoon strip of the same name, has returned to London for its final run at the newly revamped and rather wonderful Leicester Square Theatre (formerly The Venue).

Noticeably since Alex last played in London the world has suffered the most catastrophic financial meltdown since the Great Depression. So how has the veteran (in his own words 'dinosaur') banker been faring? Well, in short, he's missed it...

Robert Bathurst's one man show has a number of nice touches: the animation, stretched across several screens, is quite beautiful, a few of the lines are palpable hits (I'm assured by my City mole that is common practice for traders to sleep off their hangovers in the disabled toilets) and Bathurst is often wonderfully funny—a section in which he alternates between imitations of his smooth youthful French intern and a young female secretary 'from the North' is especially fun.

Even so after a bright start the play flags, hampered by a complex but ultimately tedious plotline and crucially by a couple of characters who seem terrible dated. Hardcastle, the crooked industrialist, with his matching shoes and suits is a cliché. Alex’s manager Rupert's liability to grumpiness over tiddlingly small seven figure sums surely belongs to earlier, more innocent age of finance. There is no mention throughout of impending or current recession.

Bremner, Bird and Fortune's recent three-part Credit Crunch special Silly Money was among the more riveting terrestrial TV I've seen this year. Above all it was noticeable that the jokes were drowned out by what Stephen Pile summarised as 'serious reporting, outrage and sheer disbelief'. Alex aims at drollery rather than satire but in trying to get laughs it faces an insurmountable obstacle: practices in the City of London have gone beyond a joke.


Book shows at the Leicester Square Theatre – Student tickets for Alex are available for £15.

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Jimmy