If you are finding some of the big West End productions out of your price range and a tad jaded, you would do better to explore some of the smaller theatre venues London has to offer.  My latest find is maybe the smallest, certainly the most intimate at just 32 seats.  It is in a famous theatrical street housing the Old Vic and the Young Vic – perhaps it should be subtitled the Nursery Vic in The Cut?  Stoke on Trent has taken the New Vic.  It is spitting distance from the Vaults and The Union Theatre.

Calder Bookshop specialising in theatre books and texts as well as philosophy and politics with a beautiful resident cat called Puppy, has been there from 2011 and tucked behind the bookshop is a performing space.  I wanted to see the play there because of its title The Critic, note: Not the Blogger or the Influencer!

The play opens with Hugh (Gary Heron) phoning a friend, well a colleague or a rival critic, with some jubilant news as to his selection for a safe Tory seat, but first he has to clear the skeletons out of his closet.  He phones Monique his girlfriend and masseuse to arrange a celebration breaking into rather poor French. We are in Hugh’s luxury flat, the walls dripping with expensive and original art and we have just met this self centred, self absorbed divorcé.  On the table are copies of his latest book, Alternative Therapy drawing attention to his appearances on BBC’s Question Time.