2,962 posts
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Post by crowblack on Feb 10, 2018 21:19:40 GMT
I've just got back from this, and really enjoyed it (if that's the word - it's quite bleak, sheep farming entropy). It starts slowly but it's a grower and the first play I've seen this year that has really grabbed me. Shame they can't add some sheep sh*t to the set for full Sensurround!
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721 posts
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Post by hulmeman on Feb 10, 2018 21:31:00 GMT
That's the play with Alec Secareanu in the cast. How is his performance?
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2,962 posts
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Post by crowblack on Feb 10, 2018 21:50:12 GMT
Good, from what I could see - he's mostly under a beard! He's not in it all that much, though, if that's a decision-making factor!
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Post by Deleted on Feb 11, 2018 13:45:22 GMT
As someone who bangs on about dramaturgy I found this play very well written, although the repetition (which is a feature of the piece) doesn’t always quite work. It felt as though it dragged quite a bit and on another day this might not have mattered but I was very tired. When I got home I realised I loved the atmosphere the play created and really appreciated the writer’s unique voice. Longman’s talent and skill is palpable and the production is of course superb - classy direction, performances and scenography. I recommend it but try to go on an evening when you are rested and able to focus and not when you are exhausted as I was.
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1,198 posts
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Post by Steve on Feb 11, 2018 19:52:14 GMT
I very much appreciated this: a highly effective poetic portrait of entropy, weakened by too much miserabilism. (Spoilers follow) Entropy: Days pass, and everything you know, everything you are, everything you love, falls apart, bit by bit, imperceptibly, but inevitably. This play is a superbly effective reminder of that, like one of those skulls sitting in the corner of every old Dutch painting (or Yorick's skull in Hamlet, for that matter). The problem I have with the play is the same one Dylan Thomas would have had. While the play itself may be raging against the dying of the light, the characters in it not only don't bother raging, they don't bother living. They don't joke, they don't hug, they don't enjoy the beers they swill. They don't act much like real people, although they do exhibit one real trait: denial, in that they are always insisting that "everything is going to be ok." I know that if anybody in this had really embraced any aspect of living life to the full, in any way, this play would have crushed me. There is a crucial moment where one character urges another to embrace an aspect of life, a key moment for the playwright, but this was too subtle for me to really feel for these otherwise numbed characters. Instead, I found profundity in the actors themselves, rather than their characters. Against a backdrop of formalistic theatrical decay, I found immense life in the clipped springy vocals of Ria Zmitrowicz, in Alex Austin's beady electric eyes (he was SO good in Barbarians at the Young Vic), in Rochenda Sandall's stoic sturdiness and in Alec Secareanu's gentle openness. If these actors had had real characters to play, I would have been stimulated in my heart, as well as my head. But as an artistic intellectual portrait of entropy, this production is eerie and uncanny. Seize the day. 3 and a half stars.  |
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Post by noboiscout on Feb 15, 2018 14:41:01 GMT
Very depressing play, both in contact, acting and direction. Very little to recommend it, I'm afraid. A wannabe Waiting for Godot - not much happens, slowly and tediously. I would quite happily have put the miserable sods [ie the character and not the actors of course!]out of their misery with the shotgun that that was brandished around by one of he sisters. I felt sorry for Alec Secarenu, who must have thought it would be nice to act at the Royal Court, to end up in this drivel.
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483 posts
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Post by drmaplewood on Feb 15, 2018 17:52:18 GMT
Enjoyed the matinee today, wonderfully poetic and atmospheric. Wasn’t as convinced by the role of the brother, one scene where he was meant to have some menance fell quite flat for me.
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2,962 posts
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Post by crowblack on Feb 18, 2018 18:07:28 GMT
Just catching up on some R4 Saturday Reviews on iPlayer and they gave this a great review (thoroughly deserved!).
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2,962 posts
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Post by crowblack on Mar 3, 2018 12:18:42 GMT
I'm still thinking about this one - probably the strongest and most lyrical play I've seen this year. Good to see lots of positive words on Twitter, countering the snooty 'we don't want rural dramas in London' line taken by some newspaper critics. If I lived in London I'd go again.
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