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

Ben Hur

Tricycle, until 9 January 2016

Here We Go

Lyttelton, in rep until 19 December

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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TaggedBen-Hur, Caryl Churchill, Comedy, Death, Hollywood, Lyttelton, Mortality, National Theatre, Patrick Godfrey, Religion, Theatre, Tricycle Theatre

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

Plus: a Turner Prize entrant that got lost on its way to Tate Modern by Caryl Churchill at the Lyttelton

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