I have to admit, Chris Goode's
Jubilee didn't appeal to me when the Lyric Hammersmith first added it to their programming, and I only changed my mind about booking it when I found out the cast included Lucy Ellinson - she's someone whose performances I try not to miss. So I approached the show cautiously, but hoping to be pleasantly surprised. But while there's some good moments, this attempt to transplant the spirit of punk into the 21st century falls curiously flat. Derek Jarman's iconic 1978 film, set the year before during the Queen's Silver Jubilee, gets relocated to 2018 and framed - for reasons I'm still not entirely clear on - by a different Queen Elizabeth: Toyah Willcox, from the original film's cast, appears as Elizabeth I, who makes a Faustian request for divine knowledge, and is granted a vision of a group of genderqueer squatters four centuries into her future.
