Groping on stage was met with groaning from the stalls this week; we groundlings sighed with pleasure and with pain as four different productions took us to new highs and lows.

Never have we sat through worse theatre than Waiting for Guagua. It was the most awkward sort of one night stand; the kind that couldn’t get it up but spent an excruciating hour trying nonetheless. It tried everything: Beckett, Pinter, and not a little Lorca, but in so doing did nothing but accentuate its own shortcomings. The narrator told us that what this story needed was “a decent story teller…Someone who can really handle the material”. With a play full of lines like “the monkey of your pleasure”, however, the story teller didn’t have much to go on. Int erminable scene-changes provided some respite from the laboured pretension. Sitting in darkness, listening to the sound of snoring on stage, the thought was unavoidable: ‘how apt’.

But fear not. Although the ADC’s new love affair with student writing did not take us anywhere near climax with this disappointing night of frustration, Staggered Spaces brought us to the brink. Nadia Kamil and Luke Roberts’ play is witty, touching and thought-provoking; a definite must-see. The structure of the play occasionally left it feeling like a smoker, but we’re not complaining; if only all smokers were this good. Self-indulgent it may be, but do we care? These groundlings certainly didn’t.

The Mechanicals in A Midsummer Night's Dream showed Waiting For Guagua how nihilism ought to be done. Ade O’Brien’s delectable Bottom, winningly illuminated by Amy Hoggart’s Moonshine, gave a far better commentary on the basic absurdity of theatre in five minutes than Guagua managed in its painful sixty. S adly, A Midsummer Nights’ Dream is not Shakespeare’s masterpiece, and David Ralfe’s use of ballet did little to salvage this boring comedy.

If it’s a comedy double-bill you’re wantin’, you’re better off at 7.45pm with Conor McPherson than William Shakespeare. The Seafarer has weighed anchor at the National, and this week it sailed to the Cambridge Arts Theatre leaving groundlings awash with pleasure in its wake. Superb acting, a hilarious script, and deceptively libidinous Irish accents left us trembling with delight. Banter and brouhaha abound as we joined the Harkin brothers (Jim Norton and Karl Johnson) and their ‘friends’ for a Christmas Eve replete with Faustian undertones. Out of season this may be, and out of pocket it will leave you, but go anyway; it’s orgasmic. Merry Christmas.

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