Wagatha Christie, Ambassador’s Theatre, review: Can we put this (bad) joke to bed?
Wagatha Christie was a great joke. The idea of Colleen Rooney being a modern day detective, the type Agatha Christie could have penned, is obviously hilarious. But can we end this joke now? Or I’ll call the real detectives in.
In case you’ve been hiding in Miss Marple’s beehive for the past three years, this play about the time when Colleen Rooney accused fellow wag Rebekah Vardy of selling stories about her to The Sun. “It’s………. Rebekah Vardy’s account,” Rooney wrote, smashing the internet into smithereens.
What followed was a high-profile court case, but also a high profile soap opera. Vardy and Rooney’s court outfits have been picked apart at the seams, as has Vardy’s evidence, perhaps the most iconic being her claim that her phone – containing valuable proof of her innocence – “regrettably fell in the North Sea.”
Vardy lost the court case and now owes Rooney up to £1.5m in legal fees. It’s all been undeniably gripping. Then the Wagatha Christie play came along, which I thought might be some kind of hipster take on the whole sorry mess, but instead it’s a run-through of…. (yes, dot, dot, dot) exactly what we’ve already heard a million times.
Liv Hennessey’s script basically restages the court case for those of us who weren’t inside, but all the good lines went viral during the case anyway, and the script allows next to no room for either Vardy or Rooney actors to offer us any new takes on the whole saga. How these two women felt during the court case, behind-the-scenes tidbits or introducing questions about what either may have thought would have been interesting insertions, but there’s basically no fiction here. It leaves a huge question mark about why we’re here in the first place.
At times, the audience seem gladiatorial. Laughing at, rather than with, the characters, their response feels uncomfortable and mean-spirited. By the end when the court case dissolves and the woman stand facing one another, it feels like the Vardy and Rooney actors may get to delve into some drama, but instead the lights just go off. It’s an unsatisfying end to an underdeveloped concept.
Wagatha Christie runs at the Ambassador’s Theatre until 20 May
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