Jesus. It must take some sort of perverse talent to actually make Marat/Sade suitable for children. This was Marat/Sade Lite, the Disney version. Quite simply awful. Peter Brook's legendary RSC production aside, the prerequisite for any production is an unrelenting sense of danger, a terrifying fear that at any moment, these lunatics could jump out at you and attack you. But here, the lunatics were positively quaint and harmless, enacted with the most cliched, generalized mannerisms of a generic "madness." Walked out at the interval.

Hare's newest. Not extraordinary, but a very nice, surprisingly old-fashioned paean to Theater. A volatile Mother/Daughter relationship spanning 15 years: Mom is Esme Allen (Judi Dench), a well-known, larger-than-life West End actress, and her slightly naive, eager-to-please daughter is Amy (Samantha Bond). Also on hand is Dominic (Eoin McCarthy), Amy's ambitious, good-looking and totally obnoxious journalist-husband, who debates with Esme the place of Theater in contemporary culture. Already pointed out by many others: using the likes of Dame Judi to argue pro-Theater is stacking the deck, to say the least. But really, who cares? Dench's performance (the play was written for her) is utterly sublime. Narcissistic, occasionally monstrous, always hilarious, sometimes frail, and finally, broken and resigned. It's one of the greatest performances you'll ever see.