The week on stage: From Please Do Not Touch to the arty Andy Warhol drama The Collaboration

Highs and lows of the week’s theatre

From L-R: ‘The Collaboration’, ‘Please Do Not Touch’, ‘Red Pitch’ (Marc Brenner/Craig Fuller/Please Do Not Touch)

Andy Warhol, gentrification, and the criminal justice system are all under the microscope on the London stage this week – to varying degrees of success. Next week, we’ll be reviewing Kit Harington’s Henry V, Our Generation at the National Theatre, and After The End.

The Collaboration – Young Vic ★★★★☆

In this arty drama, Andy Warhol and Jean-Michel Basquiat bare their knuckles and souls over a collaboration in the artist’s studio. Paul Bettany’s entertainingly neurotic, affecting performance as Warhol is a joy, while Jeremy Pope plays Basquiat as his more cerebral, thoughtful foil: he’s got a profound faith in the power of his paintbrush, is unable to understand Warhol’s flippancy, and is endlessly eloquent even though he’s constantly half-stoned. Together, they debate the purpose of art and create tentative artworks together. The authenticity-obsessed Basquiat cajoles Warhol into picking up a paintbrush after decades of screenprinting, while Warhol persuades Basquiat to indulge his fixation with the empty visual trappings of American capitalism.