I know I've said it here before but Black Lung really know how to take all that is average in theatre, set fire to it and take a dump in its handbag.

 

I saw Avast and Avast II: The Welshman Cometh on Friday. They were scary, funny, touching, beautifully acted, and the set made me forget where I was but without rotating painfully in four separate subsections. They were amazing. And Avast wasn't even as good as I remember it being the first time (reviewed, if you can call it that, somewhere in these pages).

 

I read a bad review of these shows in the newspaper. The review said something about how the shows were both monstrously immature and in fact were really just boys with smelly bedrooms doing Dada mixed with Beckett mixed with Monty Python. Of course, there are elements of truth to this criticism, because it's the sort of criticism that can be levelled at any production involving the sentence That's so gay - that's gayer than the time you said, "Dad, I'm gay", and I have to say, if you can't take Avast and Avast II The Welshman Cometh on their own terms, you've obviously started to enjoy David Williamson plays at the MTC and you should send the younger reviewers (say, the forty-year-olds) along to review the real stuff. Brilliant, bracing and gutsy theatre. I wish they had something on every week so I could send everyone along.