LOVE HURTS ACTUALLY, SALISBURY ARTS CENTRE, MAY 3

LOVE Actually is a hugely popular film by a very well-regarded writer.

Monkey Poet takes it as the basis of the first half of his show and uses it to make a political point.

The point being that writer Richard Curtis has ‘never written a sympathetic working class character in his life’, which in turn is used to make the further point that rich people have it easier than poor people – and that’s not fair.

It’s all a bit old hat, childish and contrived. And the lampooning of Curtis conveniently ignores his frequent portrayal of the rich upper classes as total idiots and that probably his best known character is the scheming Blackadder – a servant who continually outwits his dimwitted aristocratic masters.

The premise is flawed and forced, and it doesn’t even have the saving grace of being more than mildly amusing in places.

It was a shame, though, that a few people didn’t come back for the second half, which was the poetry from which Matt Panesh derives his stage name because that actually was rather good.

MORWENNA BLAKE