Shopping and F**king - Hull Truck Theatre Friday 14th November By Cilla

I'm not sure when I've been more confused or out of my depth or maybe too tired or something - but I didn't enjoy this evening at all. Maybe I should have been more suspicious when I saw the St. Johns Ambulance team with their resuscitation gear sitting in the audience. After it was finished, I turned to my friend Ruth and said 'Can you explain that to me? I didn't get that at all? What was the story?' She looked back blankly and said 'I was hoping that maybe you could tell me'.

I knew nothing about this play before I saw it. Nothing. I had no preconceptions. But it was really dreadful. Was it the performance or the play? I have found out since that the Northern Theatre Company is an amateur one. Maybe I could take that into account. But was it the performance or the play?

The story seemed to be about some young gay men assaulting and abusing one another. There was a girl in the story too but I never did really figure out her part - other than to be the only one with any balls or brain in the story at all. I felt she was some kind of token female.

I wondered about the person who wrote this play. Mark Ravenhill seems to me to be a gay man who hates gay men and has a weird perception of women. I thought it gratuitous and frankly meaningless - shallow and trying to cover for its lack of any purpose or real story by using sex, drugs, violence and homosexual sex to add colour.

I almost felt that Emperor's New Clothes Scenario. I was glad I told people that I didn't get it. If this was supposed to be a story of contemporary gay life, then it's the pits. But I don't believe that for a minute. It's a shallow portrayal of everything shocking the author could think of at the time. Not real life at all. It's a bad story with a lot of drugs, violence and staged anal sex to spice it up.

I spoke to a friend of mine, a professional actor, who expressed no surprise at all that I would find this production so deplorable. She had something very serious to say about the theatre company itself:

The worst form of deception is to fail to advertise the fact that an amateur company is performing and to charge similar prices as a professional performance because, no matter how good they think they are, the gap between an amateur company and a professional one remains enormous. The public is duped into thinking that this is the standard for theatre, putting them off seeing professional work. Can an amateur company be expected to faithfully convey the work of the writer? If not, are they not doing the writer a disservice? The audience will never be able to see that work for the first time again. Of course, we want and need and applaud the amateur companies, but we should be able to make up our own minds and we cannot do this without being furnished with the truth and the facts in the first place.

Continued on www.thisisull.com...... The Humber Mouth Homepage.

Humber Mouth Reviews - Wed 12th Nov Imetexture Red Gallery By Steve Hall
	I struggle with sound art. That's not a criticism, more an admission of a little personal blind spot. You see, what I need, I think, when I'm taking in a piece of work, is narrative - some kind of key of ideas which lets me unlock the work, lets me understand where it's going, what concerns and what issues it intends to deal with. By this I don't necessarily mean spoken words, or one of those little cards galleries stick next to their paintings - Read more...

Reviews Humber Mouth - An Audience with Joan Bakewell, Hull Truck theatre Monday 10th Nov By Steven Hall.
	Joan Bakewell is a wonderful speaker. That should come as no surprise really, she is one of the great pioneers of TV journalism and in her time she has interviewed everyone - from Margaret Thatcher all the way to Marcel Duchamp. But knowing that someone is a great speaker and actually hearing them speak are two different things. Bakewell's tone, delivery, her pauses and her pitch were all perfectly perfect. It was great just to listen to her voice. Read more...

Reviews Humber Mouth - Jeremy Hardy vs the Israeli Army. By James Russell.
	Leila Sansour is a Palestinian. Her parent's home was destroyed during an operation carried out by the Israeli Defence Force (IDF). Jeremy Hardy is a stand-up comedian, and a long-time supporter of left-wing causes. Read more...

Reviews - Sun 9th Nov Ibsen vs. Strindberg. By Steve Hall
	By Humber Mouth Critic Steve Hall On Sunday night you go to see Ibsen vs. Strindberg at Kingston Rowing Club. Not quite knowing where the venue is, you order a taxi. Your taxi diver drives you to the end of Beresford Avenue, which ends in a line of trees and darkness. Naturally, you are confused by this. You say something like: Read more...

Reviews - Creative Afternoon with the Hull and East Yorkshire MIND Step Up and Arts in Mind projects.
	Sat 8th Nov Reviewed by Michelle Dee The Way of Things and Look at You - Look at Me! The lights went down to murmurs of excitement and expectation inside the Live Arts Space for the premier of Caroline Mendelsohn's, "The Way of Things," a captivating film exploring the idea of change. The film was made with the help of pupils from Issac Newton, Henry Cooper and Thoresby Schools. Read more...

Reviews - Writers Day: Russell T Davies, Jill Dawson, James Nash, Lee Karen Stow.
	By Humber Mouth Critic Steve Hall Russell T Davies is a giant in every sense of the word. Physically he stands at around six foot five, with his personality and infectious enthusiasm being even larger. And of course professionally he is taller still; he’s simply one of the best, bravest and most imaginative scriptwriters to have made television in Britain in the last ten years. Read more...