M Paradise

I often go to West End theatre and consider myself fairly cultured, so I can’t quite understand why my experience of this play was so underwhelming in light of other rave reviews. It was 3 and 1/2 hours and there was so much of it that was dry and extraneous - they either glossed over or completely omitted the more interesting parts of the story. The acting was impressive, but it’s one of those plays where there are only three actors who play an entire entourage of characters, which became slightly confusing and annoying toward the end. And the end just kind of ends… before ever really delving into the 2008 financial crisis. There were a lot of people who had fallen asleep around me, one woman snoring quite loudly which was funny as it kind of summed up what many of us were feeling. It wasn’t the worst play I have seen, but it rather felt like someone reading a Wikipedia page that only offers a limited perspective and skips over some key concepts, so interesting and informative but not really entertaining.