FOR CULTURE-LOVERS a great benefit of living in the world’s leading city is that entertainment tends to come to it.
No need to trip off to Edinburgh, Berlin, New York… wait long enough, and if the act is good enough, some promoter will probably stage it in London, somewhere.
In the case of Product, by Mark “Shopping And Fucking” Ravenhill, that somewhere is Dalston.
The satire on social attitudes on Islamic terrorism and orientalism opens at the Arcola this month.
The play has, it is almost trite to say, become more topical since it premiered at the Edinburgh Festival a decade ago.
You may, however, be put off by its being a monologue. But a mitigating factor is that the actor in this story of a disastrous pitch to a Hollywood producer is Olivia Poulet, who impressed as Tory spindoctor Emma Messinger in BBC’s The Thick of It. She was also in the movie version, In the Loop, and in Killing Me Softly and Whatever Love Means.
The Daily Telegraph called the Edinburgh version “a gleeful send-up”.
Hamish Scott 120415
* Product, 50 mins long, Arcola, 24 Ashwin Street, Dalston E8 3DL (020 7503 1646), Mon 27 Apr 2015-Sat 23 May 2015, 8pm, Sat matinees 3.30pm. See website for prices of tickets, available from the theatre.
* Emboldened underscored words in most cases indicate a hyperlink, a reader service rare among websites. If a link does not work, it is probably because the site to which the URL refers has not been maintained.