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World’s Biggest Diamond

Saw the World’s Biggest Diamond by Gregory Motton [more famous in France than here] at the Royal Court, this week.

A 73 year old writer is dying. He is visited by a 60 year old former lover and her third husband. Over the course of the next couple of days, they pick apart their affair of 30 years ago – with some of the flickering passion perhaps still lingering.

Michael Billington suggests the play is frustrating but that

the acting at the Theatre Upstairs, under Simon Usher’s direction, is wonderful. Neither Jane Asher nor Michael Feast look nearly old enough for the characters.
But Asher beautifully shows the woman’s glacial facade slowly thawing out of concern for her dying lover and from memories of lost happiness: her sudden smile on the recollection of ice cream getting into her eye hints at her long-suppressed tenderness. And Feast lends the solipsistic old recluse, who feels we are “all alone with God in this nasty dead universe”, a neo-Beckettian bitterness. Acting as good as this makes me forgive the hermetic nature of Motton’s writing.

I wasn’t moved by the play or the acting. Part of this was the fact the actors did not to me embody a 60 year old woman or a 73 year old man dying, as Billington also points out, they look far too young.

The play lacked detail in its writing. Not only detail in the present eg who are her children? What does he write? But also in the past, what were any of the details of the events that made them fall in love? I only came away with the sense of the abstract and nothing concrete like the details of the first day they met, or slept together or the last time they spoke.

Perhaps, I wasn’t concentrating enough, but I wasn’t drawn into the play, and not drawn into the characters. Others may think the acting was good, having not been drawn in, I’m not sure I can judge although my companion for the night didn’t like the acting either. I wouldn’t put this high up my list to see but as an attempt to tell the story of two people meeting 30 years after their affair has ended it does hold some interest.

Royal Court Until November 26. Box office: 020-7565 5000.

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  • About me

    I'm a playwright and investment analyst. I have a broad range of interests: food, gardening, innovation & intellectual property, sustainability, architecture & design, writing and the arts. I sit on the board of Talawa Theatre Company and advise a CIS investment trust on socially responsible investments.

  • Recent Work

    Recent plays include, for theatre: Nakamitsu, Yellow Gentlemen, Lost in Peru, Lemon Love. For radio: Places in Between (R4), Patent Breaking Life Saving (WS).

  • Nakamitsu

  • Yellow Gentlemen