Even if his understudy was on there would be half-a-dozen performances worth the ticket price

Even if his understudy was on, there would be half-a-dozen performances worth the ticket price. Act Three opens with a vintage vodka scene between three middle-aged men, which, in terms of opportunities gratefully snatched by top-flight actors, rivals the olive- eating sequence in Art: they are the short noisy vulgar Borkin (Anthony O’Donnell), the growling, loftily unreasonable misanthrope, Count Shabyelski (Oliver Ford Davies), who looks like the ancestor of some mad uncle in an Evelyn Waugh novel, and the genial, red-nosed, imploring husband, Lebedev (Bill Paterson), who is caught between his ravenously stingy wife and his steadfastly earnest daughter Sasha (Justine Waddell, making her debut). Whether it’s in riotous scenes, such as this, searing argument, or the chilling closing moment, Jonathan Kent heightens and shapes the action to tremendous effect. If you’ve ever met anyone who knows someone who works at the Almeida box office, renew that contact now.In Doug Lucie’s new play The Shallow End, a smart wedding is in progress for the daughter of a media magnate.

As in The Godfather, the real business of hiring and firing goes on inside the house. Lucie has patches of accurate satirical comment about the media: the relaunch of the Sunday paper includes a new style section, “Whoosh”, a pop and football fanzine. Jane Asher, improbably cast as the frustrated wife of the political editor, makes waspish remarks about journos, and the final scene perks up with a Pilgerish correspondent (Nigel Terry), who talks like Bogart from down under. What The Shallow End lacks, in Robin Lefevre’s production, is any convincing suggestion that Lucie finds journalists interesting.It’s a relief to return to tough, quickfire dialogue, that gives a compelling sense of people actually thinking out loud, in Lindsay Posner’s excellent revival of David Mamet’s superb American Buffalo at the Young Vic.

The three petty crooks, who plan to steal an American Buffalo nickel, are vividly realised on a spectacular junk-shop set designed by Joanna Parker. Neil Stuke plays the hesitant Bob, answering a question “Because” and then just nodding and nodding as if the nods somehow amplified the argument. Nicholas Woodeson is impressive as a molelike, determined Don, and Douglas Henshall, chopping the air with his hands and involuntarily snorting mid-sentence, is a flighty, memorable Teach. High-adrenalin stuff.In The Slow Drag, a jazz musical at the Freedom Cafe in Soho’s Wardour Street, Kim Criswell plays the singer June Wedding, married to band musician Johnny Christmas (Nikki Slade), whom nobody but June knew was a woman (see Expert Eye, below). Carson Kreitzer’s play, inspired by a jazz musician Billy Tipton, widens its theme to include Chester (Christopher Colquhoun), a light-skinned black musician who passes as white to play in the clubs.

The Slow Drag, half compilation show, half backstage drama, blurs the boundaries between cabaret and drama, and left me wanting one thing or the other, but not this.Theatre details: Going Out, page 14.. I DIDN’T really find Nikki Slade convincing as a man or Chester convincing as white, but I do think the issue of race is a good parallel. They all seem to be living a lie – but then that’s musicians for you. Never have an affair with a musician, that’s my advice: music always comes first and the relationship second. As for the play itself, the writer has said that the reason Johnny Christmas lives as a man is that he doesn’t feel that love between two women is acceptable – but I didn’t get that from the play at all. I felt he did it because he wanted to be a musician, and female trumpeters didn’t exist.

But it’s got to be more than that, because all those women who want to be civil engineers or work on oil rigs don’t masquerade as men.
What the play said about the press digging dirt and having no manners was absolutely right. When all the stuff about me came out, the press tried desperately to find pictures of me “before”; but nobody would give them any.I think Johnny makes a very clever point in the show: “I blended in because I had a beautiful wife. Everybody looked at her, not at me.” I think that’s excellent; because, certainly in the early stages, you learn ways of diverting attention from yourself.With transsexuals, cross-dressers and gay people, the main source of interest for others is: “What do they do in bed?” I remember one guy at a party asked me: “What’s it like? If I make love to you will it be like making love to a proper woman?” I said: “Well there’s only one way to find out, isn’t there? But I’m afraid I don’t give previews.” I felt that the play rather side-stepped the issue, because although the characters were usually quite confessional, at one point June said: “They wanted to know if I knew, they wanted to know if I … well I won’t even dignify it with the word.” A bit of a cop-out.