HALF AN EVENING WITH CATE BLANCHETT AT THE BARBICAN

I thought I would try doing domestic bliss this morning.  I had an excellent scrub and foot massage by Katherine my visiting beautician,  followed by a visit to the car wash.  In the car wash there was a tall blonde girl reading while her car was being washed. I spoke to my friend in the car and said I was going to speak to her.  She said she was going to the theatre at the Barbican.  (The girl looked like an old hooker, with bad plastic surgery and too blonde straw like extensions. Sort of pretty in 1985).  The play is called Big and Small. I asked who was in it, and the stranger said Cate Blanchett.  On the strength of that  I bought a couple of tickets in the hope I would be bowled away, as I was last week after seeing the Master and Margarite.  The play was written by a German playwright called Botho Strauss thirty years ago, and now well directed by Benedict Andrews.  The piece is a reflection on society that nobody bothered to listen to.  Little communication, nobody caring, Cate working hard to keep everybody in the audience interested. I laughed, the audience laughed, trying to support her. The words were not there. She did her best, spraying her underarms and pussy with scent. The audience laughed again. We worked hard. The set looked good, the actors worked hard. If only the man next door to me had not said it was about Alice in Wonderland. A tent moved across the stage, a woman injected herself, a man tried to fuck her, her husband moved in with another woman, and Cate lived above, in a building where an old couple thought she was somebody else. She was chucked out.  The problem is I did not care. I liked the acting, I really liked Cate in a non kiss arse way, I really liked a  lot about the play, but to be honest: what was the point? We know the story. We know nobody gives a damn.  I suggest you buy a ticket and share it between two people, take a good book  and have dinner in shifts. I love the Barbican Centre and I love Cate.