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Theatre

Tricycle’s Ben Hur is magnificent in its superficiality – a masterpiece of nothing

10 December 2015

3:00 PM

10 December 2015

3:00 PM

It’s the target that makes the satire as well as the satirist. Is the subject powerful, active, relevant and menacing? Patrick Barlow’s new spoof, Ben Hur, must answer ‘No’ on all four counts. The show takes aim at two principal irritants: vain actors and the Hollywood epics of the 1950s, whose titanic scale was offered as bait to audiences besotted with their cosy new TV sets.

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