Misfortunes of the English, Orange Tree

Another new script which appears to have been chosen using the pin and blindfold method. I always understood that a basic principle of drama was “Show don’t tell”, but a depressing feature of many new plays at this venue (Amsterdam, Last Easter, Two Billion Beats and the truly appalling Rice) has been the device of falling back on the cast simply telling the audience the events, thoughts and feelings, rather than the writer actually dramatising them – the effect being to simply lecture the audience. Well, this latest consists of NOTHING BUT cast narration – out of 90 interminable minutes maybe three or four felt genuinely dramatic. And though ostensibly about a group of English schoolboys in the 1930s the idiom is relentlessly 2022, because, presumably, this illustrates/highlights an ironic/symbolic difference/similarity of/to...oh, I don’t know what. To be fair a few lines evoked chuckles, and the cast are energetic and enthusiastic, but then but there is a bizarre and self-indulgent “event” towards the end which drains away what little energy or impetus there might have been. At the end the long-suffering audience applauded tepidly – surely they’re going to simply stop coming back? Is no-one at this theatre in charge of quality control? Has anyone there heard of dramatic tension, of plot development, of structure and subtext? Of the need to actually involve an audience and take them seriously, rather than simply talking at them?