Incoherent, inept sci fi - excrutiating and tedious. David Morrissey is actually the best thing in it, but he is up against an overly verbose script, and an amateurish production. It's as if he is leading a troupe of drama students on an improvised exercise. All his dialogue has the strange effect of being exposition that only adds to the confusion, like some character from Alice In Wonderland. The production has the air of a precocious youngster convinced of it's own genius and the startling originality of it's own ideas - anyone failing to penetrate the incomprehensible plot must be of a lower order of evolution. I gather from other reviews here that there is some kind of Marxist allegory at work - if this is the device of two cities occupying the same space - one plush, one rancid - I don't find it overly original, and the point escapes me. I don't think polemics make for especially good drama, and does not make China Mievelle's work seem very appealing. Overall, the production reminded me of painful misfired attempts at adult science fiction from the 1980s, like the awful Plays For Tomorrow, and especially the badly flawed but more interesting Artemis 81, which at least has some flair by comparison,.
Review of The City and the City
