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Post by andbingowashisname on Dec 20, 2023 15:42:35 GMT
The last major revival of The Caretaker was at the Old Vic in 2016. Matthew Warchus directed Timothy Spall, Daniel Mays and George Mackay. Before that, I think, was the Trafalgar Studios transfer from Bath of Christopher Morahan's revival in 2010 with Jonathan Pryce, Peter McDonald and Sam Spruell. I am led to believe that The Caretaker is about to get another fairly major production in 2024.
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Post by Jan on Dec 20, 2023 17:56:45 GMT
The last major revival of The Caretaker was at the Old Vic in 2016. Matthew Warchus directed Timothy Spall, Daniel Mays and George Mackay. Before that, I think, was the Trafalgar Studios transfer from Bath of Christopher Morahan's revival in 2010 with Jonathan Pryce, Peter McDonald and Sam Spruell. I remember one in 2007 at the tricycle with David Bradley and Con o Neil The only production of the play not mentioned so far that I have seen was in 1991 directed by Pinter with Donald Pleasance (reprising his role from the original production) and Colin Firth. Amazing to think that production from so long ago was the 30th anniversary production of the play.
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Post by bee on Dec 20, 2023 19:18:56 GMT
The Hampstead production of Dumb Waiter did in fact go ahead, I saw it. Seating was still socially distanced at the time. Oh did it ? That’s odd, they gave me a credit note when it was originally postponed, I must have missed the news of its return. Yes, looking back at the reviews now it was supposed to run from early December 2020 till the end of January 2021. I'm guessing the run must have got cut short when full lockdown got reintroduced for Christmas 2020.
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Post by prefab on Dec 22, 2023 23:29:13 GMT
Saw this tonight, and it was honestly better than I expected, with the actors getting into the rhythms of Pinter's language. But I'd agree with the general consensus that the directorial flourishes added absolutely nothing, and the set and costume design seemed all wrong. (Ruth was the only one in period-appropriate dresses, while Joe looked like all his clothes came straight from JD Sports). Joe Cole did some very entertaining physical comedy, but he seemed all wrong for Lenny, not nearly intimidating enough. And Jared Harris was very good in quieter scenes, but went a little too over-the-top in his shouting scenes; it almost felt like he was gearing up for a West End transfer to a larger theatre.
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382 posts
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Post by stevemar on Dec 24, 2023 16:34:26 GMT
Pinter is frustrating, absurd and usually fascinating for me. Despite the actors trying hard, something is off in this production.
I can only attribute that to the staging and particularly the director’s choices. The room is supposed to be claustrophobic but we get an airy (if dry iced filled) cavernous house. The characters fight and make their speeches, but the danger doesn’t seem to be there and it seems to hark back to the past with the stark lighting overemphasising certain memories. Ruth seems to have worked out how to deal with these men from the outset, so that element of surprise/danger is missing.
3 stars.
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1,016 posts
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Post by andrew on Dec 26, 2023 22:41:53 GMT
but we get an airy (if dry iced filled) cavernous house Did you not see the seven hundred insistent signs declaring it a "water based haze"? And it is an extreme level of haze at the start of act 1 for what's actually an empty house.
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Post by aspieandy on Dec 27, 2023 13:59:28 GMT
hello, I wondered if the haze was intended to represent London fog (various clean air Acts beginning in the late 1950s).
Also not sure about the house being claustrophobic - my copy of the play says 'An old house. North London. A large room, extending the width of the stage' (as we know, two rooms have been knocked through). That was for the 1965 Peter Hall production at the Aldwych Theatre.
It is magnificently creative writing done justice by a very decent group. Pinter has developed into his own artist at this point, belief and confidence set - only another 40-years before the Nobel. It's an achievement to script this world, and let it be.
Unaware of Lisa Diveney before this role, she carries Ruth very well.
I'd be interested in understanding the director's rationale for a thrust stage ..
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Post by David J on Dec 27, 2023 15:59:36 GMT
I wouldn't say the set needs to be claustrophobic at all. I think it is the cast that need to bring that claustrophobia with the right amount of tension, as I witnessed in the 2012 RSC production. Unease might be a better word. Granted last years tour set felt too big and seeing this productions photos don't give me a sense of unease.
And a thrust stage is fine and the closeness of the action could add to the tension so long as the director know what he's doing with it. I point to the RSC production again in the Swan Theatre.
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Post by stevemar on Dec 27, 2023 20:22:47 GMT
but we get an airy (if dry iced filled) cavernous house Did you not see the seven hundred insistent signs declaring it a "water based haze"? And it is an extreme level of haze at the start of act 1 for what's actually an empty house. Oh, I didn’t! Anyhow, it was really too hazy…
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Post by Jan on Dec 27, 2023 21:31:14 GMT
Also not sure about the house being claustrophobic - my copy of the play says 'An old house. North London. A large room, extending the width of the stage' (as we know, two rooms have been knocked through). That was for the 1965 Peter Hall production at the Aldwych Theatre. Here's a production photo from that 1965 production.
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Post by aspieandy on Dec 27, 2023 22:23:33 GMT
Thanks. With Mrs Pinter* as Ruth.
* as was
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2,348 posts
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Post by zahidf on Jan 9, 2024 9:26:35 GMT
I thought this was fine. Seemed to emphasis the comedy over the menace in the piece, i never really felt any danger from the characters. Joe Cole especially seems to be playing his character as if it was a comedy.
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Post by theatrelover97 on Jan 9, 2024 18:49:16 GMT
Quite surprised to discover the Young Vic don't accept tickets back for resale unless it's sold out. Normally its only the commercial theatres with that policy. At least they gave me a voucher but its only 6 months so not likely I will be able to use it as the reasons stopping me going from most shows won't be resolved that quickly.
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Post by Rory on Jan 9, 2024 19:28:00 GMT
Quite surprised to discover the Young Vic don't accept tickets back for resale unless it's sold out. Normally its only the commercial theatres with that policy. At least they gave me a voucher but its only 6 months so not likely I will be able to use it as the reasons stopping me going from most shows won't be resolved that quickly. I could be wrong on this, so perhaps just check, but I think you have to only book a show within the 6 months of the credit being issued, as opposed to having to see one within that period. So if they release a season you could book for something a bit further down the line maybe.
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542 posts
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Post by andrew on Jan 10, 2024 1:54:44 GMT
Quite surprised to discover the Young Vic don't accept tickets back for resale unless it's sold out. Normally its only the commercial theatres with that policy. At least they gave me a voucher but its only 6 months so not likely I will be able to use it as the reasons stopping me going from most shows won't be resolved that quickly. You could book something, then cancel in 6 months and get another voucher?
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Post by papasmurf115 on Jan 10, 2024 11:14:50 GMT
3 out of 5 for me. I enjoyed the staging & jazz music before the play. The first half was good with character development + Jared Harris as the stand out performance. Disappointed with the second half as the character arcs went AWOL + felt uncomfortable with the content (maybe I'm too woke). Although I did enjoy Joe Cole's performance post the break. Overall interesting but I was expecting better.
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Post by bee on Jan 15, 2024 23:48:11 GMT
I really struggled with this. The characters' behaviour is so strange, and the dialogue between them so bizarre, that none of it feels even close to being real. Thus it was hard for me to care at all.
It might be me though, I don't think I really "get" Pinter.
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zak
Auditioning
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Post by zak on Jan 19, 2024 15:55:59 GMT
This strange and menacing piece by Pinter, the master of making audiences feel uncomfortable. As in his screenplay for Joseph Losey's film The Servant, the playwright forces us to contemplate ordinary human situations in new ways, asking us uneasy questions : who's the master and who's the servant? The title refers to the coming home from America of Edward, a philosophy professor, the elder of three brothers, seemingly to introduce his sexy young wife, Ruth, to a family made up entirely of men: the patriarch, Max, a retired butcher who struggles to hold on to his diminished fatherly authority; uncle Sam, a chauffeur; and Teddy's two brothers: Lenny, who we understand is a pimp, and Joey, the younger one, a boxer, and a kind of gentle brute. They all descend on Ruth like a pack of wolves, but she's no pushover, and soon controls the household, taking the role left by the deceased mother - "we have not had a whore under this roof since your mother died", says Max in a jolly voice, rather intriguingly. All make Ruth somewhat menacing sexual propositions, which she faces with easy poise, turning the wolves into lambs at her feet, to the point that Teddy eventually goes back to America alone. We understand that Ruth stays, gladly joining the gang and somehow taking the role of the absent mother. I wondered what a modern feminist/activist would make of her? Pinter doesn't deal with cosy certainties and, like Baudelaire's "Héautontimorouménos" (the self-tormenter) she is, like all of us, both victim and butcher. We leave the theatre with an awkward feeling, lost in the moral haze that director Matthew Dunster so wonderfully represents with a real fog surrounding both the stage and the stalls as we enter the auditorium. The actors are all superb, particularly Jared Harris as a magnificently stentoreous Max, Joe Cole as the sinister but sexy Lenny, and Lisa Diveney as minx turned circus ringmaster Ruth. The ambiguities of our human nature presented by Pinter with such subtle brutality made me think that is the essence of what makes any work of art great, its true social role and what makes it last in time: forcing us to face what we'd rather not face. i thought of The Homecoming as a kind of development of themes touched on by Tennessee Williams' Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, but unlike Maggie -so unforgettably played by Elizabeth Taylor in the 1958 film version- Ruth's ultimate conformity is not a surrender, but a takeover. Harold Pinter was a North London Jew, and the victim-turned-butcher theme made me think of Israel's harsh dealings with the Palestinian population and its Arab neighbours, arguably the most burning case of moral dubiousness we face as humankind.
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Post by robwilton on Jan 19, 2024 16:25:37 GMT
Excellent comment, zak. Exactly. "[Ruth] soon controls the household... All make Ruth somewhat menacing sexual propositions, which she faces with easy poise, turning the wolves into lambs at her feet, to the point that Teddy eventually goes back to America alone."
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Post by aspieandy on Jan 19, 2024 19:22:49 GMT
We understand that Ruth stays, gladly joining the gang and somehow taking the role of the absent mother. I wondered what a modern feminist/activist would make of her? and >> Ruth's ultimate conformity is not a surrender, but a takeover. Indeed. Pinter delving into exactly this aspect of a fast-changing society in the early-mid 1960s (Alfie, for example, came a year or so later in 1966).
The key, of course, is that there is no judgement. But that doesn't stop his wry social observations about the power-relationship between men and women, both in the past and the present; how things are presented, how things might actually be, why, who is changing and who is resisting. And crucially; is there a price for all this newfangled freedom ..
Billington, in his 2011 review, had this down as "an intuitively feminist play". Ruth clearly makes a deal with the men, and it is most definitely her deal her choice, without coercion (and it includes leaving her children on another continent). Pinter laying it on a little thick at that point, but maybe he needed the point to not be missed. Anyway, it's only a deal. If it doesn't work out she can always go back to the kids ..
Which, for some, might cause a glance at where it all led - to, for example, a society of social housing estates in which lone-parent households are in the clear majority.
The really sublime aspect for me is he is still influenced by Becket, but only insofar as it serves his own work.
God, it's glorious writing.
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Post by lichtie on Jan 20, 2024 16:31:06 GMT
Wasn't sure what to expect of this given the lacklustre reviews but in the end glad I went. I think I agree with the comments saying the cast seemed to be trying to lighten the brutality present by playing more towards the comic aspects present in any Pinter.
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Post by jr on Jan 23, 2024 8:35:33 GMT
£12 ticket available on noticeboard for Thursday 25/1 7.30. DM if interested.
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Post by aspieandy on Mar 16, 2024 2:17:27 GMT
Having listened to a dozen or so of these last year, I'd forgotten about Douglas Schatz and his commentaries on current productions.
He is always well-prepared, gets very good guests and gives them plenty of space and time. Here, he talks with director Matthew Dunster about this production of The Homecoming. Plenty of insights and interpretations emerge. The ideal companion for a session with the eyebrows or mounting another Munro >>
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960 posts
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Post by alicechallice on Mar 16, 2024 11:17:16 GMT
Having listened to a dozen or so of these last year, I'd forgotten about Douglas Schatz and his commentaries on current productions. He is always well-prepared, gets very good guests and gives them plenty of space and time. Here, he talks with director Matthew Dunster about this production of The Homecoming. Plenty of insights and interpretations emerge. The ideal companion for a session with the eyebrows or mounting another Munro >> I'm also a huge fan of this podcast.
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Post by aspieandy on Mar 16, 2024 12:30:27 GMT
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