So last night I went to the 'Nash' [National Theatre Dahling] to see "Burnt by the Sun", a play which has been receiving 5 star reviews from various publications. The plot goes something along the lines of:
It's Russia. It's 1936. There's this family that used to have lots of money and stuff because the dad was a composer. Then that whole revolution thing happened so now they sit around their Dacha- which isn't theirs anymore, natch- and reminisce about the old days and sing a lot of operatic songs and are generally a bit annoying and make you think they maybe deserved to not have all the things they used to have because they're douche bags. The daughter of the composer is married to a General from the Bolsheviks which is why they can still stay in the Dacha, and he's a total philistine so they all dislike him, but all the peasants in the village like him and he loves the daughter a lot and he doesn't seem that bad if you ask me and he's very nice to his daughter and puts up with the aforementioned douchebags. Then this guy turns up and he looks a bit like Fagin from Oliver with the long hair and the glasses and he's playing the trumpet and being weird and then suddenly he takes off his *gasp* disguise and who should it be but a former student of the composer dad [who by the way is dead and died ages ago and whose name was Boris] and former lover of the daughter who is now married to the General. So the whole family are all happy because he is cultured and douchebaggy like him, although the daughter isn't happy because he left without a word for 12 years and the General isn't happy because this guy used to bang his wife and clearly she is affected by his return.
[Then there was the interval]
So then there's lots of talking about why did he leave, why didn't he tell the daughter he was leaving, etc etc and turns out he got sent away BY THE GENERAL to be a spy for the Russians in Europe because he had fought for the White Army after the revolution, and if he hadn't have gone he would have been killed, and the General totally ruined the cultured guy's life and it is all very sad isn't it. But the daughter still decides that actually the cultured guy is a bit of a douchebag and didn't come back to the Dacha because he loved or missed her but because he missed the way of life he used to have there, and that the General loves her loads so she'll stay with him. But what she doesn't know is that actually cultured spy guy came back to collect the General and take him to Moscow so he can be tortured and killed because Stalin was, as we all know, a paranoid lunatic and thinks that the General is plotting to kill him. So then these guys come from the police and take the General away in his uniform- although first the whole family sing a song which is weird- and then the spy guy kills himself and then that's the end. Wow.
So. That was two and a half hours worth of plot. There were moments which were great, but it seemed to drag on a lot, there was a lot of shouting, and most of the characters just seemed to feel sorry for themselves all of the time, but they weren't particularly empathetic. Not really worth 5 stars if you ask me. And the fact it's at the NT means most of the audience was made up of people who were quite similar to the family in the play- a.k.a. douchebags with abrasive, braying laughs- who thought all the singing and piano playing in the first 45minutes of the play was positively charming and oh so amusing and brayed away, giving me a slight headache and the taste of sick in my mouth. Ooof.
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