A lot of people probably arrived to see “Here We Go” by Caryl Churchill at the National Theatre with great expectations. Maybe even humming “high hopes” or “here we go, here we go.”That moronic soccer chant may have little to do with the show actually, unless it means “here we go – life is short and we are all heading to death.”Here, after all, is a new drama in the Lyttelton by Churchill, who is widely acclaimed as a major writer. Her rhyming-couplet Yuppie satire “Serious Money” and many more works have proved perfectly timed to catch the zeitgeist.Churchill is having something of a late purple patch, with another full-length play coming in 2016. The revival of “Light Shining in Buckinghamshire” made perfect sense at the Lyttelton earlier this year – it has a cast of more than 60 after all – but “Here We Go,” which, yes, is about imminent death, would be much better at a smaller venue such as the intimate Dorfman.It is being staged with a timing that on some nights allows it to be doubled up with another new work at the National, “Evening at the Talk House,” by Wallace Shawn, which is indeed in the Dorfman.With Churchill now aged 77, one may hope that she has plenty of interest to say in a play about aging. The work, starring Patrick Godfrey, who is 82, is a succinct 45 minutes or so.The action is broken into three parts, which are subtitled “Here we go,” “After” and “Getting there.” They may be better subtitled “Here’s an okay-ish start,” “Oh dear” and “Oh how much longer can this go on for?”The best bit is the first. It raises hopes, in a funny sort of way, as a group of acquaintances gather for the wake of a man who sounds to have been an intriguing character. Not that he was an anarchist, we are told – just a sexual one. He was “an old goat,” dangerously handsome in his youth, a left-wing MP, never a party member, never tolerated fools gladly, and way too individualistic for his own good. The play blurb tells us that he has “an adventurous past and a ginger cat that needs a home,” but what happens is never revealed.The dialogue is in Churchill’s best non-naturalistic style, with many comments just fragments, and sentences endlessly unfinished. The characters break from reality to announce details of how they will eventually expire, such as “I die seven years later of a brain tumor.” Others perish while swimming, crossing the road, attacked by an intruder, or suffering from Alzheimer’s. One has only hours to live and notes that death comes at you suddenly, like stepping on a rake. Cheery stuff.Boom, the scene changes to a solo Godfrey, topless and in the spotlight for a 10-minute monologue. Is the very man that they have been talking about? His reflections start to meander and he sounds less of a character than the dear departed. Most of his unoriginal references are buried in cliché. He is in a tunnel of light. The dead are many and the living are few. Will be pearly gates be pearly white? Will his ghost return to touch people? Then on to the last and longest scene. I had hoped for a return to the funeral party, perhaps with dear beardy deliciously haunting his old friends and foes from the sidelines. Instead, the totally wordless action lasts some 20 minutes plus, but it could last forever. It’s like watching paint dry.In summary, the Old Man is sitting in his pajamas in bed. His nurse painstakingly dresses him – trousers, pants, shirt, socks, shoes, jacket, then carefully holds his Zimmer frame. He shuffles to a chair. She carefully undresses him and puts back his night clothes. Then he moves back to the bed. Ten minutes have elapsed in total silence. Pause. Then they repeat this action, again and again and again... by which time the lights have faded out and we can give short, polite, muted applause in sheer relief that it is over.There is no reason at all that a play should be dramatic and have a plot. A slice-of-life style experiment is a legitimate technique, and it does draw attention to serious issues of aging and caring. It is indeed tragic if the lively man described at the opening should be reduced to a doddering old wreck. That’s provocative, powerful and moving, and the point is very well taken, but it could have been made in a few minutes, not dragged out to this inordinate length. I saw a few couples walking out rather than endure this water torture. I wouldn’t have been surprised if they had asked for their money back, even though tickets are a bargain £15 (that’s about $23).While it will stick in the mind for a long time, and shocking in its way, I can’t see many people wanting to return to endure this ever again. Life is just too short.“Here We Go” continues at the Lyttelton Theatre, National Theatre, through December 19.Information: http://www.nationaltheatre.org.uk/shows/here-we-go
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