If Zoe Lewis's play about the Glastonbury festival were being produced in a theatre, it would be laughed off the stage. Instead it is being presented in a cold tent in a muddy field, so at least you can say that it recreates something of the hardships of the authentic Glastonbury experience. That's about all it does do, though.
This is an evening that has all the subtlety of a mediocre, government-sponsored, anti-drugs, theatre-in-education piece for teenagers. It is so ineptly designed and staged that you wonder whether anyone involved has ever actually been to the theatre.
Damien Hirst's cursory design combines photographs of revellers with paintings of portaloos, cows and rolling fields. The odd totem pole aside, almost nothing has been done to create a total environment in the marquee. Two cumbersome revolving stages, like something from an old Alan Ayckbourn farce, constantly slow the action, which is already hampered by short televisual scenes. The entire evening has a sad, desultory air, like a party balloon gone flat. When, in one of the play's better lines, a character announced, "There is a lot of crying going on - it's the ecstasy," I knew exactly what he meant.
Lewis can write funny lines but not believable dialogue, and although she can create characters she doesn't seem to know how to develop them. As soon as you meet her characters you know everything about them: Marie is fresh-faced and open; Fred is a nice old hippie; Babe is an insecure supermodel, her PR boyfriend a mixed-up little shit; the security man is bitter and twisted, and alcoholic Nevin sad and in the end mad and bad. The lives of these people entwine in a farce-style situation so enervated that you feel tired just watching it slowly drag itself towards the inevitable tragic drug-fuelled conclusion.
The cast struggles rather valiantly to suggest that this evening might be worth your time and effort and theirs. It isn't. It is tragic, but not as anyone involved intended.
· Ends tonight. Box office: 0871 220 0260. Then touring to Manchester, Birmingham and Brighton.
