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Ruthless People: Ruthless - Arches Lane Theatre

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What is it about the Madoff’s that writers can’t resist writing about? Sure, it may have been the largest Ponzi scheme to collapse (so far), but there isn’t much more to explore. Or is there? In Ruthless by writer Roger Steinmann, Ruth Madoff is imagined as a wronged, gun-toting woman anchored in the past while trying to move on with her life. It’s not entirely successful but a fascinating look at life and wig choices, It’s currently playing at the theatre now known as the Arches Lane Theatre in Battersea. Ruth Madoff, played by Emily Swain, is here wearing a wig. I thought it was an odd look until I reviewed how closely it matched the photo of her interview in  The New York Times .  Typically, it’s the sort of wig you might see worn by Ladies on a night out in central London, not someone who once had over $80m in assets. With Bernie in Jail and both her sons now dead - one by suicide and one due to cancer, she is setting a table for the men who have left her. And ordering p...

Theatre: The Shallow End


The Shallow End currently playing at the Southwark Playhouse is an opportunity to revisit this satire on British media with recent events of phone hacking, arrests, resignations and enquiries in mind.


The play is set at the wedding of a media mogul's daughter, who has just brought a broadsheet newspaper and it about to take it downmarket. During the celebrations the axe is about to be weilded on the old guard as debates about about the future of a newspaper in the digital age.

Playwright Doug Lucie notes in the promotion materials that the play was originally attacked when it premiered in 1997 as being hysterical and inaccurate. He notes today that the work probably doesn't go far enough with what is known now about the business. Drug use, sex and coarse language abound in this work. What is missing is the entrenched corruption and cosy relationships between the press, politicians and police. And the public's insatiable appetite for buying news of triviality, or selling stories about C-list celebs to the papers in the first place... Perhaps that is for another play...

Presented as a series of unrelated scenes, it does feel a little disjointed and overlong as a piece. And it would have been fun to have cast the characters to resemble the current crop of News International players. But it is quite fun to watch nevertheless and fascinating piece to revisit. It runs until 3 March.

Audioboo reaction with @Johnnyfoxlondon and Adrian from Melbourne Australia follows...

Shallow Boo: the Shallow end (mp3)

 

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