|
Post by partytentdown on May 14, 2017 8:17:55 GMT
|
|
1,102 posts
|
Post by zak97 on May 16, 2017 8:41:07 GMT
Brilliant play. Dark, disturbing and challenging. A fantastic cast all through. It's the sort of play I'm glad I went into blind, not knowing anything. I've never seen so many people in an audience leaning forwards with their faces I. Their hands at times. It's truly gritty at times. A warning, very strong language and themes, and full nudity in case some are uncomfortable with that. As direction goes it is very Jack Thorne and I did notice tones of Harry Potter stylistically to begin with, them I remembered the common unity of a director.
|
|
2,563 posts
Member is Online
|
Post by viserys on May 16, 2017 8:54:46 GMT
"It's truly gritty at times. A warning, very strong language and themes, and full nudity in case some are uncomfortable with that.
(...)tones of Harry Potter stylistically to begin with"
These are not things I thought I'd ever read close together, but I guess I know what you mean. Nice to hear it was good, now I'm dreading it less and looking forward to it more!
|
|
Xanderl
Member
Not always very high value in terms of ticket yield or donations
|
Post by Xanderl on May 16, 2017 9:25:42 GMT
Inevitable question - what was the running time please?
|
|
22 posts
|
Post by iamian on May 16, 2017 9:37:01 GMT
I have to disagree, I think it is a terrible adaptation of the play and the second half in particular is a mess. I went in there knowing the story and think that some of the central ideas of the play and has been removed/ignored. The sex scene and language don't really need to be as strong as they are. The set starts to get interesting and then doesn't do what I thought it was going to do which was disappointing. Performances are all fine, John Boyega is good (though his madness did stray a little towards Gollum territory) and it was in pretty good shape for a first performance.
Most of the audience did seem very enthused by it at the end though and it was a young and diverse audience which is great.
|
|
22 posts
|
Post by iamian on May 16, 2017 9:37:53 GMT
Running time is 2 1/2 hours including interval (we were out just before 10)
|
|
1,102 posts
|
Post by zak97 on May 16, 2017 9:52:18 GMT
"It's truly gritty at times. A warning, very strong language and themes, and full nudity in case some are uncomfortable with that. (...)tones of Harry Potter stylistically to begin with" These are not things I thought I'd ever read close together, but I guess I know what you mean. Nice to hear it was good, now I'm dreading it less and looking forward to it more! I meant as in movement with relation to the set and music to do with movement. And again, I found the get was directed in a similar way to Potter.
|
|
1,102 posts
|
Post by zak97 on May 16, 2017 9:53:25 GMT
I have to disagree, I think it is a terrible adaptation of the play and the second half in particular is a mess. I went in there knowing the story and think that some of the central ideas of the play and has been removed/ignored. The sex scene and language don't really need to be as strong as they are. The set starts to get interesting and then doesn't do what I thought it was going to do which was disappointing. Performances are all fine, John Boyega is good (though his madness did stray a little towards Gollum territory) and it was in pretty good shape for a first performance. Most of the audience did seem very enthused by it at the end though and it was a young and diverse audience which is great. I imagine this will be a dividing play. The people behind me were confused as to what they were watching for 2.5 hours and didn't seem to enjoy much of the direction either. Personally, I would happily go again.
|
|
22 posts
|
Post by iamian on May 16, 2017 9:58:36 GMT
I have to disagree, I think it is a terrible adaptation of the play and the second half in particular is a mess. I went in there knowing the story and think that some of the central ideas of the play and has been removed/ignored. The sex scene and language don't really need to be as strong as they are. The set starts to get interesting and then doesn't do what I thought it was going to do which was disappointing. Performances are all fine, John Boyega is good (though his madness did stray a little towards Gollum territory) and it was in pretty good shape for a first performance. Most of the audience did seem very enthused by it at the end though and it was a young and diverse audience which is great. I imagine this will be a dividing play. The people behind me were confused as to what they were watching for 2.5 hours and didn't seem to enjoy much of the direction either. Personally, I would happily go again. I agree, I was confused watching it because I was expecting to see certain scenes and characters that are central to the original but that were missing from this version.
|
|
1,103 posts
|
Post by mallardo on May 16, 2017 10:41:25 GMT
Yes, John Boyega was very good after a tentative start and Sarah Greene as Marie was even better. The whole cast was solid, especially for a first performance. I actually preferred the second half to the first; the pace picked up and one could feel things starting to click into place. The set, a series of symmetrical panels raised and lowered as needed, didn't much impress.
The sex scenes were, I thought, well staged. The full frontal nudity belongs to Ben Batt, playing Andrews (Andres), and is pretty blatant - the lady next to me audibly gasped - but Nancy Carroll does go topless later in a scene that's actually, in context, a degree more disturbing.
The updating to Cold War Berlin doesn't do much for or against the piece but it gives adaptor Jack Thorne an opportunity to fill in Woyzeck's and Marie's backstory which, as we hear at some length, happened in Belfast where Woyzeck was previously stationed. Marie is Irish and came with Woyzeck to Germany when she became pregnant with their child.
As a backstory it's plausible enough and Thorne goes further by having Woyzeck haunted by the ghost memory of his mother (Nancy Carroll, superb in a double role), a prostitute who abandoned him in childhood. A young Woyzeck keeps dropping in and out of the play (somewhat unnecessarily) to remind us of the lasting impact of this youthful trauma. This, coupled with the little green pills he's taking as part of the research study carried out by the Doctor (Darrell D'Silva, excellent) seems to be the primary cause of Woyzeck's distress. There's no mention of PTSD that I heard, nor would that be relevant to this version of the story.
My issue with it is that Thorne's filling in of the many blanks contained in Buchner's original unfinished play - basically just short scenes and scene fragments - actually reduces the universality of the piece, stripping it of much of its primal power. We almost know too much about this Woyzeck - he's no longer the downtrodden Everyman, he's too specific for that. The play now feels like a strong and affecting domestic tragedy - not the elemental portrait of society's permanent underclass that emerges from Buchner.
Having said all that and, as iamian said above, the young audience was loudly enthusiastic and appreciative. The curtain call brought a quick standing ovation. My reservations aside I would certainly recommend it.
|
|
2,706 posts
|
Post by Cardinal Pirelli on May 16, 2017 10:47:21 GMT
One salient point, there is no one original version of the play, it was left incomplete and in no particular order. Any production, therefore, has to make decisions about how it pieces the fragments together. Some go the expressionist route but Thorne's strength is with something more external and domestic so it sounds as though he is playing to that strength.
As the play was left in fragments it is tempting to think it was meant to be like that but study of Buchner's other plays from his sadly short life, suggest that this was just a trick of fate.
|
|
22 posts
|
Post by iamian on May 16, 2017 11:03:00 GMT
My issue with it is that Thorne's filling in of the many blanks contained in Buchner's original unfinished play - basically just short scenes and scene fragments - actually reduces the universality of the piece, stripping it of much of its primal power. We almost know too much about this Woyzeck - he's no longer the downtrodden Everyman, he's too specific for that. The play now feels like a strong and affecting domestic tragedy - not the elemental portrait of society's permanent underclass that emerges from Buchner. Very well put and my other issue is {Spoiler - click to view}by removing the Drum Major character, the scene where he sees Marie & the drum major dancing together and all suggestions of Marie's infidelity, it changes his fear that she will leave him from something that's real and that he is powerless to prevent to something that's just in his head (and the pills just make it worse)
|
|
587 posts
|
Post by Polly1 on May 16, 2017 22:06:46 GMT
Goodness, this was awful. Not even saved by a topless Nancy Carroll (although she was great in her small roles, but wasted really). I admit I knew nothing about the play beforehand and actually thought the updated setting worked ok, set was effective but 'plot' is such a mess and script is dire. Boyega was melodramatic in the extreme (shouting does not equal acting) but was very unclear, Sarah Greene's acting was ok but diction and projection hopeless (hope Dame Judi doesn't go!) It's very rare that I leave a theatre wishing I hadn't bothered but tonight was one such occasion. The mostly young audience lapped it up, what a shame they hadn't seen some decent acting. At least I only paid a tenner. So annoyed I am writing this on the train home...
|
|
|
Post by Honoured Guest on May 16, 2017 23:52:34 GMT
Running time is 2 1/2 hours including interval (we were out just before 10) For those many of you who like to remind us how you so love to get home early from the theatre, there are two weeks of Woyzeck mid-run which start half an hour early at 7.00pm, allowing The Old Vic to schedule a second, music, show each night.
|
|
530 posts
|
Post by jek on May 17, 2017 6:53:17 GMT
My 17 year old son was among the young audience at Woyzeck last night on a sixth form college trip. They've been studying the play as part of their A Level course and had to spend many an hour devising their own production, writing about its themes etc. He absolutely hated this production. I don't think it was that it was shocking (he's been doing weekly life drawing classes since he was 15 and so naked people at close quarters aren't a novelty for him) he just thought it was terrible, full of padding.
|
|
|
Post by Deleted on May 17, 2017 7:52:39 GMT
It has to be full of padding - even the damn opera is only about 90 minutes! ;-)
|
|
Xanderl
Member
Not always very high value in terms of ticket yield or donations
|
Post by Xanderl on May 18, 2017 5:47:36 GMT
The Old Vic has once again lived up to my experience of being the most irritating theatre to deal with. Had to return a ticket for Saturday - it's almost sold out so they agreed to take it for resale. But (and I appreciate this is common to a lot of theatres) - they won't put it up for sale till the day of the performance. And the weird bit which I've never experienced before - they emailed me a PDF form of their terms and conditions, which I had to print out, fill in, sign, scan and mail back to them.
Box office guy was perfectly pleasant but I find this all very offputting, as with other weird Old Vic policies like forcing you to show tickets after the interval and standing in the aisle glaring at people during the curtain call. If they are (as they claim) keen to be more inclusive and welcoming to new audiences they really need to drop this nonsense.
|
|
|
Post by Honoured Guest on May 18, 2017 9:08:47 GMT
And the weird bit which I've never experienced before - they emailed me a PDF form of their terms and conditions, which I had to print out, fill in, sign, scan and mail back to them. Presumably you'd have already checked the Terms & Conditions box, at the time of purchase, if you'd booked online, so I'm guessing you booked in person to avoid the booking fee? Hence the need to sign it at this late stage?
|
|
Xanderl
Member
Not always very high value in terms of ticket yield or donations
|
Post by Xanderl on May 18, 2017 9:37:43 GMT
I booked online. This was specifically terms and conditions for ticket exchange, and involved me filling in the order number, ticket value and seat number by hand on the form. I appreciate this is less work than doing a tax return but something of a faff, and not everybody has a printer and scanner.
For various reasons I won't bore everyone with I had to deal with 3 theatres yesterday to return or exchange tickets and the Old Vic was the only one that made life difficult like this.
|
|
|
Post by alexandra on May 18, 2017 10:01:20 GMT
Xanderl, out of curiosity, were the other 2 theatres subsidised? Because I think you were lucky that they agreed to take it for resale - many commercial theatres don't. And if they do provide a resale service, their house their rules I guess. I expect they've had trouble with re-sellers complaining before, and needed to nail it legally with the terms and conditions.
|
|
|
Post by Honoured Guest on May 18, 2017 10:09:28 GMT
When I've returned tickets to the Royal Opera House in person, they've filled out a chit as described by xanderl which I think I had to sign. As Alexandra says, it just depends on the individual theatre's procedure. The ROH procedure is very efficient with its reimbursement if the ticket is resold, and the procedure feels a bit cumbersome but it does ensure that you understand the theatre's conditions for accepting the ticket to offer for resale. Obviously xanderl would probably have understood anyway, but many casual theatregoers might otherwise have wrongly assumed either that the theatre was buying back their ticket or that it would be straightaway offered to the next purchaser!
|
|
|
Post by Deleted on May 18, 2017 12:36:11 GMT
I had to return tickets to the Old Vic for ART - which was actually quite straight-forward (and didn't involve any of the kerfuffle with forms, scans etc.) but that might have been because that's a new system they've just introduced - or maybe because I was not asking for a refund, only to have them moved to another performance.
What annoys me intensely is that the Old Vic box office number is an 0844 number, which mean it has a 50p per minute charge from my EE mobile. So if you want to book over the phone, or move tickets, or enquire about anything, then it'll cost you a few quid for the privilege. I question the ethics of this, particularly as there will be lots of people who are blissfully unaware of this particular revenue stream that the Old Vic has opted for.
|
|
572 posts
|
Post by princeton on May 18, 2017 14:25:51 GMT
as with other weird Old Vic policies like forcing you to show tickets after the interval and standing in the aisle glaring at people during the curtain call Oh how I've long shared this view - it happens every time. On my last visit a member of management was clearly, and publicly, berating an usher for not telling everyone as they left that they needed their ticket to get back into the auditorium. And then during the curtain call the ushers screaming no photographs if anyone looked as though they were getting out a smartphone. As someone who usually chooses an a aisle seat I've come to dread that moment at the Old Vic - it borderline spoils what one might have just watched on stage. For a theatre which send endless emails about its late-night cocktail bar and its "relaxed all-day café" they really do need address the customer experience for those of us who are actually going to see something at the theatre.
|
|
18 posts
|
Post by claireyfairy1 on May 18, 2017 17:41:58 GMT
I had to return tickets to the Old Vic for ART - which was actually quite straight-forward (and didn't involve any of the kerfuffle with forms, scans etc.) but that might have been because that's a new system they've just introduced - or maybe because I was not asking for a refund, only to have them moved to another performance. What annoys me intensely is that the Old Vic box office number is an 0844 number, which mean it has a 50p per minute charge from my EE mobile. So if you want to book over the phone, or move tickets, or enquire about anything, then it'll cost you a few quid for the privilege. I question the ethics of this, particularly as there will be lots of people who are blissfully unaware of this particular revenue stream that the Old Vic has opted for. Consumer law dictates that they are required to provide a post-sales customer service number that is not premium (i.e. it must be 01, 02, 03 or 080). I've asked the Old Vic repeatedly on Twitter to provide a number, but they ignore me. Last time I just called the stage door and asked to be put through as I'd run out of time to keep talking to a brick wall. The Donmar used to have an 0844 number too, but seem to have recently changed. I complained on Twitter back when it was still 0844 and they let me do a return over email at the time, but it's really not good enough. They should all be compliant. /Going back into lurk mode now I got that off my chest.
|
|
721 posts
|
Post by Latecomer on May 18, 2017 17:53:20 GMT
The Old Vic has once again lived up to my experience of being the most irritating theatre to deal with. Had to return a ticket for Saturday - it's almost sold out so they agreed to take it for resale. But (and I appreciate this is common to a lot of theatres) - they won't put it up for sale till the day of the performance. And the weird bit which I've never experienced before - they emailed me a PDF form of their terms and conditions, which I had to print out, fill in, sign, scan and mail back to them. Box office guy was perfectly pleasant but I find this all very offputting, as with other weird Old Vic policies like forcing you to show tickets after the interval and standing in the aisle glaring at people during the curtain call. If they are (as they claim) keen to be more inclusive and welcoming to new audiences they really need to drop this nonsense. I had to try and do this on a very small phone once! It really cheesed me off! Plus the show was sold out and then mysteriously lots of house tickets became available on the day in question so they didn't sell mine! I bet you 10p they don't sell yours X! In better news the Donmar are now fantastic to deal with and swap dates very cheerily....and you can get through to them! And I have found globe quite helpful (I had ticket, they said just email us a photo with a line drawn through it and we can put back up on website!)
|
|
|
Post by partytentdown on May 18, 2017 18:46:36 GMT
The Old Vic has once again lived up to my experience of being the most irritating theatre to deal with. Had to return a ticket for Saturday - it's almost sold out so they agreed to take it for resale. But (and I appreciate this is common to a lot of theatres) - they won't put it up for sale till the day of the performance. And the weird bit which I've never experienced before - they emailed me a PDF form of their terms and conditions, which I had to print out, fill in, sign, scan and mail back to them. Box office guy was perfectly pleasant but I find this all very offputting, as with other weird Old Vic policies like forcing you to show tickets after the interval and standing in the aisle glaring at people during the curtain call. If they are (as they claim) keen to be more inclusive and welcoming to new audiences they really need to drop this nonsense. I had to try and do this on a very small phone once! It really cheesed me off! Plus the show was sold out and then mysteriously lots of house tickets became available on the day in question so they didn't sell mine! I bet you 10p they don't sell yours X! In better news the Donmar are now fantastic to deal with and swap dates very cheerily....and you can get through to them! And I have found globe quite helpful (I had ticket, they said just email us a photo with a line drawn through it and we can put back up on website!) Donmar have recently installed their own system instead of using ATG which may explain the change in number and general increase in helpfulness.
|
|
4,038 posts
|
Post by kathryn on May 18, 2017 21:49:42 GMT
Well, this was distinctly underwhelming from up in the dress circle. Might have been good from the first 10 rows of the stalls, but I sort of doubt it.
|
|
|
Post by partytentdown on May 18, 2017 22:13:55 GMT
Might give it a miss.
|
|
2,347 posts
|
Post by zahidf on May 18, 2017 22:15:22 GMT
I thought this started of decently but fell of a cliff.
John Boyenga was great though. He needs a better part though!
|
|
4,038 posts
|
Post by kathryn on May 18, 2017 22:25:45 GMT
I wasn't convinced by him. Felt he hadn't quite got under the skin of the character and was going through the motions. It might have been the fact that he seemed to be in shadow for most of his big scenes, making it hard to properly see the details of his performance, that gave me that impression. I couldn't see his facial expressions. My friend commented that he didn't seem to know what to do with his hands. We both thought it would have been better in a smaller, more intimate, space than the Old Vic.
It did pick up after the interval, I thought. It was the very long scenes between him and his girlfriend that sagged. Maybe if they trim them a bit it'll work better.
I was a bit bothered by the lack of soldierly body language. Slouch, slouch, slouch - none of them looked like they'd ever stood to attention, let alone on parade.
|
|