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Post by mallardo on Jun 19, 2018 8:50:35 GMT
Melissa McCarthy springs to mind as a large woman who's a movie star but, again, she's a comic actor - which holds true for male actors as well. For some reason fat = funny. Even Shakespeare played by that rule.
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Post by mallardo on Jun 18, 2018 14:24:10 GMT
But it's not as if Fifi only gets to walk her beat. She has her moment in the second act when the drunken Crowley brings her into the club where she's caught up in the ensuing mayhem. When she returns to the street after that we see her, perhaps, in a slightly different light. It's an arc of sorts.
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Post by mallardo on Jun 15, 2018 8:05:27 GMT
I don’t buy a programme usually nowadays but this time I did. It does have some good stuff in it including a diary written by Friel about the writing of this play. He says at one point that it is not political but it is all about the language and then again that he does not favour concept plays. ( hear that David Hare?) but then what does the NT do? Plonk a purely political ending ( don’t we love a lighting change and good clange noise to imdicate prisons?) which isn’t in the text right there at the end. As if we are incapable of making our own judgements, an insult to Hinds who delivers the last speech with such accomplishment and frankly, daft. It is all about the language and that says it all. We can open up our minds to the suggestions that makes and to the whole colonialism, repression , everything will come forward so why do the NT bods think we are so stupid? The audience was full of young people. It must still be lurking on the A level syllabus then. It is a masterpiece and here, very well done except for that last moment. They just couldn’t help themselves could they?
With all due respect, of course the play is political. How could it not be? Friel's diary entry underscores the point when he says he's worried that the political element will overwhelm the language issue. As it turned out he solved the problem. The political element does not overwhelm but it's certainly always there and powerfully so.
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Post by mallardo on Jun 15, 2018 7:11:29 GMT
I can't agree with the masterpiece notion - too many longeurs and dramatic dead spots for that - but certainly an interesting play one is glad to have seen in such an all-encompassing production. Absolute Hell for these people is simply being alone - a situation none of them can cope with - and in this day and age (as in that one) there is much truth to this. The air of desperation hanging over La Vie en Rose is palpable and beautifully conveyed by an excellent cast. I thought Charles Edwards, in particular, was extraordinary. But there were no false notes from anyone so kudos to director Joe Hill-Gibbins for getting it right this time.
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Post by mallardo on Jun 11, 2018 12:11:44 GMT
I would certainly choose South Africa and I'm an American.
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Post by mallardo on Jun 11, 2018 11:00:23 GMT
I thought Ian Rickson's final image was powerful and profound - the play needs to go out with a bang rather than with a whimper - and it rather brilliantly captured one of the main issues of the piece, that cultural imperialism in the form of linguistic appropriation is but a way station on the road to complete political, social and military domination.
I thought the whole production was masterful, wonderfully acted and directed - easily earning five stars.
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Post by mallardo on Jun 9, 2018 16:24:52 GMT
Not positive but I believe Emily Berrington is the lead in this? I hope so. I too have fond memories of her in Children's Children.
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Post by mallardo on Jun 8, 2018 12:14:17 GMT
Those seats are top non-premium price in A. Kind of you to slump, mallardo .
It was either that or she wouldn't have seen anything - and I'm not a big guy. Are the seats sold with any kind of warning?
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Post by mallardo on Jun 8, 2018 11:51:48 GMT
Mean Girls is very disappointing. In fact all of this years NY musicals are.
Not all. The Band's Visit is brilliant in every way.
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Post by mallardo on Jun 8, 2018 9:46:20 GMT
I was in AA and deliberately slumped down in my seat I felt so guilty about blocking the lady behind me in A. Agree with TM's warning - avoid A at all costs.
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Post by mallardo on Jun 3, 2018 8:16:39 GMT
Patrick Marber gave the blender bit to Julie as well, iirc, in After Miss Julie. That production was so brilliant.
Agreed. Natalie Dormer was the perfect Julie.
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Post by mallardo on May 26, 2018 8:32:06 GMT
It's a good production of a very mediocre show. The premise is useful - the roller rink, home of the Antonelli family for generations, is being torn down on the same day that the prodigal daughter (Angel) returns to confront her mother (Anna) and reprise their lives via flashbacks - but book writer Terrence McNally makes shockingly little of it. There is nothing insightful or original. The whole thing hangs heavy with sentimentality. It's no surprise that this Kander and Ebb show is so rarely done.
Of course a great score can overcome a slender storyline but that's not the case here. Although there are some clever numbers, well staged by director Adam Lenson, there are no great songs. The showstopper of the evening came not from the two leading ladies but from the six chorus guys rollerskating.
As for those leading ladies, they have to shoulder a huge burden - the material calls for heavy lifting. On Broadway two larger than life personalities, Chita Rivera (Anna) and Liza Minelli (Angel), were apparently able to make that happen. It doesn't quite happen here. They have found a perfect Anna in the wonderful Caroline O'Connor but Gemma Sutton, talented as she is, is just not right for Angel. She simply doesn't have the quirkiness or the charisma to fill out what is not so much a character as a sketch for a character. So O'Connor dominates far more than she should.
Having said all that it must also be said - as reported above - that the audience loved every bit of it. Huge applause and standing O at the end. So, for all its flaws, something was working - just not for me.
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Post by mallardo on May 24, 2018 8:49:37 GMT
First things first. For the Orlando Bloom fans, yes, he does - you have to wait for the second act but the moment is so cleverly staged by director Simon Evans that the effect is quite startling and he carries it off with appropriate swagger.
The two ladies - Neve McIntosh (Sharla) and Sophie Cookson (Dottie)- are also required to lose their clothes. If you've seen the film you'll know when and how. In fact, if you've seen the film you'll know pretty much everything that's going to happen. It turns out to have been a very faithful adaptation.
Still, familiar or not, Tracy Letts's play seen live and up close - I was in row AA, practically in the set - has the power to shock and awe and it has been well staged and generally well played here. Bloom (Joe) starts slowly but soon begins to fill out the role and by the chaotic finale he is fully in control of things. He has the size - I never realized what a big guy he is - and charisma for the character and if he slightly underplays the menace he makes an effective case for doing so. Ms Cookson is also excellent as the child/woman daughter and her scenes with Bloom have real truth and power. Ms McIntosh too is fine. She fully commits (and then some) to her second act humiliation scene - the graphic KFC drumstick moment - which is played to shattering effect.
Alas, it's not all good news. Adam Gillen, in the pivotal role of Chris, the instigator and linchpin of the plot, is so far over the top he seems like he's dropped in from another planet. If you thought he was a tad too big as Mozart in the NT's Amadeus, you ain't seen nothin' yet. Chris is stupid and desperate but he's not mentally defective - or should not be. His sister is supposed to be the one with that issue - but not here. So grotesque is Gillen that he dominates scenes is all the wrong ways and, for a while, until one grows used to him, he totally skews the play. Why Simon Evans is allowing him to do this is a real question.
In any case the play outlasts and survives him. Killer Joe has one of the most savagely compelling finales ever and this production delivers it in spades. The play goes out on a high and the audience (full house) responded in kind - lots of bravos and standees at the bows. The Bloom fans were not disappointed.
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Post by mallardo on Apr 27, 2018 14:59:10 GMT
I can think of at least three different novels called Night Watch/The Night Watch, and The Power Of Love is an extremely popular name for a song, and people cope with that degree of replication just fine. I think two plays with very similar titles is probably okay.
It's probably not all that okay with the authors but, alas, titles cannot be copyrighted. I have credits on two films that share their titles with two much better known films, so that if I mention them I am compelled to add... not the one starring Sally Field (in one case) or, especially, not the one starring Angelina Jolie (in the other). It's necessary but it feels like an apology.
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Post by mallardo on Mar 25, 2018 7:18:57 GMT
It's the piece itself I found a bit lacking. Musically it was cleverly (operatically) constructed but there are no stand-out numbers. However, it was musically subtle, with none of the ridiculously histrionic nonsense in so many of the current WE musicals. There was no dramatic or musical arc to the piece though and the very end is quite lame.
If the end is "lame" then there is something very wrong with this production - which I have not seen.
Not only does the last number, "Emmie's Dream", contain a major plot revelation but the strong affirmation of Caroline by her three children - after all has been said and done - is about as powerful a moment as one could ask for to bring this story of class, race and family to a close. I well remember catching the original Broadway production back in '04 and leaving the theatre drained and exhilarated - and knowing that I had just seen a genuine masterpiece.
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Post by mallardo on Mar 25, 2018 6:58:10 GMT
The thing about this production is that the coin toss for the roles is not a gimmick but central to the idea of the show - the two actresses with the same costume, same hair, same look. Interchangeable. History could so easily have gone the other way.
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Post by mallardo on Mar 24, 2018 7:15:41 GMT
I thought it was pure genius. A work of stunning originality and enormous emotional depth, beautifully played and radiantly sung. When one considers that this was (apparently) an assignment for McPherson, that the Dylan people came to him and asked him to write something that used the Dylan song catalogue, it's astonishing what he came up with. Nothing in the theatre in recent times has affected me as much as The Girl From The North Country - not even Angels in America.
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Post by mallardo on Mar 23, 2018 17:18:34 GMT
I've belonged to enough "commiserate about your terrible day at work" websites to know that they most certainly DO have self-checkout machines in the US.
Well, I live (some of the time) in West Hollywood, a fairly up to date community in Los Angeles, and none of the supermarkets there have self-checkout machines. Literally none. It may have something to do with the fact that supermarket employees there are unionized. Or it may not.
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Post by mallardo on Mar 22, 2018 18:58:23 GMT
Accent issues aside, I very much liked Irons. He is a (for once) credible former matinee idol and the most sympathetic James Tyrone imaginable. His emotional reflections on his poverty stricken childhood were beautifully played and most moving. If the last hour of the play was not all it should be it was not his fault but that of the sons.
The less said about Matthew Beard's Edmund the better - he's miscast and woeful. Rory Keenan's Jamie is much better but, I thought, unbalanced. Whisky is for Jamie what morphine is for his mother, transformative. He must be a different person in the final act than he has been earlier - not just drunk but released. His raging self-lacerating confession to his brother is one of the greatest scenes in American theatre but it needs to be properly set up. I will never forget the late Philip Seymour Hoffman erupting on stage in this scene in the 2003 Broadway production. It was shocking because we had seen no hint of it earlier. His Jamie stole the show - it's possible to do. But not this time.
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Post by mallardo on Mar 1, 2018 13:51:33 GMT
Just remembered that the Finborough did Laburnum Grove a few years ago. Lots of his novels have been reprinted. He's still very well-remembered I think
And still one more - the Finborough had a big hit with Priestley's Cornelius in 2012. The Sam Yates production was so successful it went to New York with the Finborough cast! It was again successful there getting great reviews and breaking box office records (according to Wikipedia) at the off Broadway 59E59 theatre.
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Post by mallardo on Mar 1, 2018 12:01:12 GMT
Dangerous Corner was also done in a touring production that I saw at Richmond in 2014.
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Post by mallardo on Feb 25, 2018 12:39:48 GMT
Oh wasnt aware it toured? Decent cast with Essie Davis,Jonathan Hyde and Adrian Scarbrough alongside SRB. It went to the WE and Broadway but i never caught it 😕
I saw that production of Jumpers on Broadway - first time I had seen SRB who was brilliant in it, as was Essie Davis - and loved it. The evening was notable in that Steve Martin was sitting in front of us - he loved it too.
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Post by mallardo on Feb 19, 2018 10:27:21 GMT
The guillotine removing heads in the NT's Danton's Death. I was in the front row and I have no idea how it was done.
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Post by mallardo on Feb 16, 2018 14:38:40 GMT
No, it's not new and not niche, it's people presuming that characters who say and do mean things speak for the author - which in LaBute's case they clearly do not. Some White Chick is the one-act piece about the guys who want to make a snuff film, right? Do you believe LaBute is endorsing these guys? Or might it be that he is reminding us that such people - and such attitudes - exist and need to be confronted? LaBute's subject matter may sometimes be distasteful - and let's give him credit for mellowing considerably over the years - but his work is serious and thoughtful and, IMO, deeply moral.
The fact that you can say (even hypothetically) that you're not surprised at whatever bad conduct LaBute might be accused of because his work reflects attitudes that condone bad conduct, is quite something.
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Post by mallardo on Feb 16, 2018 14:01:29 GMT
I wonder how many people who condemn LaBute's so-called misogyny have actually seen any of his plays? And, if they have, which particular plays are offensive? Whatever his personal conduct may be the knee-jerk response to his work says nothing good about his detractors.
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Post by mallardo on Feb 16, 2018 12:34:09 GMT
The playwright Neil Labute has been fired by the off-Broadway theatre company MCC after a 15-year playwright residency, and his upcoming play has been cancelled. No further details, but expect more as New York wakes up... I think it's fair to say his plays aren't considered particularly friendly to women. The really weird thing is that all this stuff happened in plain sight with all of us watching in the audience or from the wings and, in many cases, even applauding. So weird.
All what stuff? LaBute's plays often expose male brutishness toward women and condemn it. The men are always the bad guys. Are you mistaking this for some sort of anti-female bias in his work? So weird.
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Post by mallardo on Feb 13, 2018 21:28:19 GMT
What does the race of P&G's creators have to do with anything? They tried hard for authenticity - DuBose Hayward was from Charleston, South Carolina, he knew whereof he wrote - and they achieved something very like it. The point is that the world of Catfish Row they conjured up was absolutely specific both dramatically and musically. It transposes to Mittel Europa only by stripping it of all cultural credibility.
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Post by mallardo on Feb 13, 2018 20:39:42 GMT
Whatever the general argument may be about cultural appropriation, the specific case in point is a show in which every plot point, every line of dialogue, every character touch, every note of the music speaks to the experience of poor Blacks in the American rural south - and nothing else. There's a Boat That's Leavin' Soon for Budapest? Give me a break.
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Post by mallardo on Feb 9, 2018 22:01:08 GMT
The OBCR contains the complete sung-through show.
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Post by mallardo on Feb 8, 2018 1:42:47 GMT
I saw Cory English as Igor in the US National Tour. He'd be a great choice, he's perfect.
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