Network at the NT

A theatre trip mid-week is a bit of a bummer really. It starts with the painful extraction of husband from the office around 430. The vagaries of London traffic. And inevitably the question of food. Traffic was good and the walk from Regents Park to the South Bank, pleasantly brisk. We had half an hour before the start of the play, so time for coffee and...
We didn't fancy the carrot and hummus sandwiches on offer. So we did the play on an empty stomach.
I just want to say that while it all involved huge effort and temporary starvation, we were both agreed that Network was the finest piece of theatre we had seen since, well, since uncle fell off the bus.
We had wanted to see it because we both remembered enjoying the film, with Peter Finch.  Astoundingly, it was  directed way back  in 1976 by Sidney Lumet.
Brian Cranston in the lead, we 'd come across from a brief flirtation with Breaking Bad (which failed to enlist us in its huge fan club ).
He was superlative. A profoundly moving performance that remained with me for the rest of the night.
The play is fresh, contemporary and prescient. It speaks for our time and dynamically portrays our world of fake news and reality TV.
Wonderful set. It takes the audience into a television studio with live cameras projecting images on a huge screen. The noise, the hubbub, the countdown to being On Air, buzzing as the audience takes their seats. Costume racks to one side of the stage and a restaurant to the other where people are eating and drinking and watching the action. Real people. you know, ordinary punters like you and me.
I'd have given my eyeteeth to have been up there with the action. Dearest would have paid good money to have all his removed without anaesthetic, not to have been up there.
We're different that way. But as we finally feasted on beans on toast at eleven o'clock that evening, we both agreed that it had been an exceptional night out and hadn't we been lucky.

Brian Cranston gives a magnificent performance