Jerwood Upstairs: Grasses of a Thousand Colours

Wallace Shawn's fitfully amusing, dystopian drama is based on a seventeenth-century fairy tale. Appearing in his own play as a garrulous memoirist called Ben, Shawn's character is a retired scientist who has been involved in changing the diet of the animal world to the enhancement of his reputation and the detriment of the world. In a play that largely consists of long, narrative speeches, food and sex are important themes. Mostly, it has to be said, sex. The actor who once featured in 'Toy Story' plays a man who talks about the joys of masturbation, the intense pleasure of making out with a cat called Blanche, and the more mundane enjoyment of having sex with three women. Behind the salacious detail, Shawn creates a queasy portrait of a world in meltdown, reminiscent in its fantastical elements of Caryl Churchill's 'Far Away'. But eventually, Ben's smug, endless speeches begin to pall and the narrative loses its grip.