Review - The New Electric Ballroom , Riverside Studios

So long and thanks for all the fish!

I know it's poetic, the wordplay dazzling, the playing wonderfully committed and the Beckettian resonances undeniable but someone make it stop!

I left Enda Walsh's play last night feeling like I'd been punished. Enda why do you want to hurt me?

Is it because I got out of my small town, have managed to enjoy a reasonable sex-life and have never baked or even wanted to bake a cake!

The New Electric Ballroom is referred to as a companion piece to The Walworth Farce , last seen at The Cottesloe, but in reality Enda ( or would he prefer in this case Edna?) has merely gender swapped the roles. Where there were three emotionally batty Oirishmen holed up in a room in South London, their daily routine of manic story re-telling interrupted by a woman from the local superstore, now we have three equally batty ,but not as amusing, sisters visited by a gentleman caller delivering fish.

It's all about family, and memories and thwarted sexuality and was funnier when it was men wearing the frocks and the Margo Leadbetter wigs.

Rosaleen Linehan, Catherine Walsh, Ruth McCabe and Mikel Murfi, giving fantastic performances, remembering a lot of words, all strip down to their gender-appropriate underwear at some point, the only male member ( a word I use with intent) of the cast is tenderly hosed down in a plastic bowl before donning a shiny suit and giving a spirited rendition of the Billy Fury hit "Wondrous Place". And yet not even a surprise occurence of on-stage urination, last seen performed by Jane Horrocks in Macbeth could spoil the tedium.

One brave member of our audience attempted a break for it at about an hour in, (no interval, perhaps a tip picked up from The Walworth Farce - which had one) but was foiled by the Riverside's one sided exit policy, and ended up running round the auditorium like a character caught in an Enda Walsh play.

The Silver-Fox, having accompagnied me to TWF and declaring he'd rather watch Bobby Sands paint his cell with his own excrement again than revist Mr Walsh's brand of Irish whimsy, was happily curled up at home, so my fellow inmate for the night was the Unconfirmed Bachelor . When asked to comment on the entertainment Unconfirmed moaned slightly and asked to be returned to The Norman Conquests where he had been happy and he had cared what happened to the lovely people on stage.

On a brighter note we did have a lovely converstaion with Grumpy Old Woman and Camberwell novelist Jenny Eclair who gave us a head up on Dido Queen of Carthage at The National which she disliked so much that her only memory was the three hour duration and a tacky yellow curtain badly pinned to a clothes rail. The world's biggest brain Sir Jonathan Miller was sitting three seats along from Unconfirmed and myself and with some skilful hanging around afterwards UB was able to get exclusive access to some overheard dialogue that went something like:

Lady Sir Jonathan Miller: "they were all very good weren't they"

Sir Sir Jonathan Miller: " lot's of energy, yes"

Maybe there will be another opera that we'll have to avoid coming to the ENO shortly!