The Boom Room is a sweet little radio play that captures the ennui and idiosyncratic Englishness of lockdown – cleaning out spice racks, a sudden urge to plant potatoes – and plays to the boomer stereotype of technology exploration in the time of Covid.
A cheeky listen for its observational charm
Pompous twerp Adrian and his long-suffering wife Margaret take time from their bickering to host an online reunion of his old drama school chums. The preamble to the catch-up is the deliciously recognisable microphones-at-dawn as they all struggle with camera angles, sound issues and tablets-down-the-lav. Unsurprisingly, given Adrian’s somewhat unfortunate personality, the only two to turn up are a pound shop Ian McKellen and Joanna Lumley; and as this hapless trio trade the all-too-familiar stories of frustrated actors trying to make it on the panto and bacon-advert scene, a strange voice interrupts their thespic reveries…
This is worth a cheeky listen for its observational charm, and it’s a lovely length that saw me more than comfortably through my ‘on hold’ call to Scottish Energy. But that’s another lockdown story…
