There are only two stories on the front page of the Guardian today. One is this one, about the Russian children right now being held hostage. The other is on David Hare's new play which I posted about a few days ago. Here is a detail from James Meek's report of a preview performance of it:
With some of the cast, particularly Alex Jennings as Bush and Nicholas Farrell as Blair, going some way to mimicking their originals, the full house in the Olivier theatre experienced a curious sensation: watching what were, effectively, restaged clips of familiar TV lines uttered by our Machiavellian leaders, but doing what they never had a chance to do on the sofa at home when they first heard them - laughing at them, and hearing the whole theatre laughing at the same time.Meek goes on to mention Aristotle, catharsis, and 'extreme feelings of fear and pity'. I know which of these feelings visited me, as I read Meek's piece. Against the background of the horrors of these last few days, the primary focus of their antipathy and their mutually massaging glee is... well, you know who.