Not My Number

To the National Theatre with suave T, candid  K and stable C. We have front row seats in the circle for Mike Bartlett's 13, which at one point was billed as an atheist, sci-fi epic and later described on the NT website as a Flash Forward type drama: "Across London, people wake up from an identical, terrifying dream."

Of course we couldn't refuse such hype, particularly when tickets were only £12 each, so expectantly we sat down, obediently we switched our phones to silent or vibrate and eagerly we waited for the spectacle to begin.

"Let's not make a judgement yet," said C in the interval, almost 90 minutes later. "It could all come together in the second act."

"Well, for twelve quid front row seats it wasn't too bad," was the general opinion when we emerged into the evening twilight, "but hardly memorable."

This being the National Theatre, the acting could not be faulted. The problem lay with the writing - a state of the nation piece complete with the obligatory personal dramas being played out against a backdrop of social unrest. The key question was should Britain join with the US in invading Iran to prevent it going nuclear? with opposing viewpoints championed by the prime minister (female, not that it mattered) opposed by a messianic champion of the people - and of course they had a common tragedy in their past.

Mixed into the plot were an atheist academic, a grandmother with Alzheimer's, a god-fearing mother afraid of her own daughter, and young couples finding and losing each other and several other story strands, none of which were more than mildly interesting. The London they represented was almost all Caucasian - very unlike the London in which I live. The shared dream was an irrelevance which was never explored and if there was a conflict between atheism and faith it was so brief that I was unaware it had passed. This was drama that tried to say everything, and ended up by saying almost nothing. And as a backdrop, as in previous NT productions, the set once again revolved and rose and fell from scene to scene - less because these movements were integral to the story than, it seemed, because the designer wanted any excuse to play with his or her toy again.

Tomorrow I'm going to see Beowulf, an adult pantomime at the Rosemary Branch Theatre. It'll be interesting to see how it fares in comparison...