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Post by Steve on Mar 13, 2017 18:33:36 GMT
Saw this yesterday, and loved it. A kind of "Daddy Dearest" for artistic types. Probably more fun for theatre obsessives (like the readers of this board) than a general audience, this two-hander features Adrian Lukis as a fierce alcohol-swigging Pulitzer Prize winning playwright, David, coaching his daughter, Jill Winternitz's Ella, on how to get ahead in theatre. Some spoilers follow. . . David considers critics (and I suppose us on this board as well) as the scum of the earth, but he himself is hypocritically a harsher critic than any of us, rating even Arthur Miller as "a hack" (his justification for this had me in hysterics). He does, commendably, worship Sondheim, and loves singing along to songs from "West Side Story," such as "Tonight" and "Somewhere," with a particular fondness for the latter. David's daughter has appeared in "The Seagull," playing the part of Masha, and Act 1 features father and daughter chatting about theatre, music and art, as they await Ella's press night reviews. To be fair, it is less of a chat and more of a lecture, as David barely lets his daughter get a word in. This means that Lukis has what is effectively a mountain of a monologue, and for me, it was never less than gripping, sometimes amusing, sometimes maniacal, but Lukis effectively embodies the ego and neurosis of a man who values artistic achievement over every other thing. Despite a lack of lines (or perhaps because of a lack of lines), Winternitz has a difficult part, which is to believably and naturalistically listen to, nod along to, laugh at, clap, praise and live the experience of a daughter who worships her father, simply listening, for protracted periods. She achieves this wonderfully, as she has a natural softness and an improvisatory immediacy in her moment to moment responses to Lukis' David's pronouncements and moods. Act 2 is much shorter, much different, and fulfils the promise of the Act 1 setup. For my taste, it goes slightly too far in the right direction, as once I felt that direction, I no longer needed to get to the destination. Perhaps American writers, such as this play's Halley Feiffer (daughter of Pulitzer Prize winning cartoonist and playwright, Jules Feiffer - shades of autobiography perhaps?), have more of a taste for going all-the-way than British writers, and that is where my taste seized up a bit. But it's a small quibble for what is a powerful and well-acted denouement. The play has much to say about art and artists, demons and drink, and parenting too, in which latter respect it echoes and expounds the themes of Philip Larkin's pithy poem, "This be the Verse" (aka "They f--- you up, your mum and dad.") The Finborough is a small venue, and sometimes strains to fit the plays and musicals that play there, but a two-hander like this play lends itself perfectly to the space. A claustrophobic drama with expansive themes, and a powerhouse turn from Lukis. 4 stars
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Post by Steve on Mar 11, 2017 13:16:12 GMT
This is a functional Othello, with a powerful feminist slant, that is ham-stringed by that slant. Average. Some spoilers follow. . . If from the start, Othello doesn't love Desdemona as much as she loves him, how can this tragedy achieve full throttle (pun unintended)? Ditto with Iago, if he has no seductive qualities, how can we appreciate him as anything more than a cartoon villain? If Cassio is a woman, how much does that manipulate this production towards the conclusion that "men are bad, women are good?" Othello is introduced as a gob-smacked and soft-spoken political type, who far from being towering and noble is more likely to be cowering and feeble. Multiple renditions of Lana Del Rey's "Video Games" right, from the start, sound great but announce to us that while Desdemona feels "for you, for you, all for you, everything you do" about Othello, he'd rather be playing his metaphorical "video games." When Brabantio makes his disgusting and racist allegations about Othello's connection to Desdemona, Kurt Egyiawan's Othello looks more like a deer-caught-in-headlights, an elected official caught with his pants down, rather than a man defending a great love or passion. There is nothing about Sam Spruell's Iago that makes him relatable or charming, or indeed, anything other than a terrible villain. One contrasts, for example, how Rory Kinnear's bloke-from-the-pub naturalism made him sound like a friend whose jokes we'd laugh at, or how Ewan McGregor's conspiratorial charisma was electricly engaging in his childish excitement. If Othello and Iago are unlikeable men, Cassio, who is very likeable, has now had a sex-change into Joanna Horton's soft and endearing Michelle Cassio. That's right, there are no principals who are men, who are redeemable, and Othello's jealousy now concerns a suspected lesbian affair, which implication is that Othello is particularly offended about this because he secretly hates women generally. The lesbian love song of the show is Katy Perry's "I kissed a girl (and I liked it)" which seemed just a bit trivial for a weighty play like Othello. Looming over the whole play is Othello's omnipresent patriarchal bed, which is presented as something of a character, and which has an appropriate character arc, although it involves something of a misuse of PJ Harvey's song, "In the Dark Places." At the end, said bed is torn to pieces by the lesbian lovers, Cassio and Bianca, which fits the men-bad-women-good thesis of the play, but which impact is muted by the use of PJ Harvey's "In the Dark Places" which appropriately reflects the verdict that this bed is a "dark place," but somewhat defeatingly rolls back the feminist agenda with it's refrain that "not one man has, and not one woman has, revealed the secrets of this world." If the women tearing the bed to pieces does not reveal the secret that men's abuse of power MUST be disrupted, then what was the point of hammering the feminist message so hard at the expense of nuance and drama? I liked Thalissa Teixeira's noble and sensitive Emilia very much, and I liked more generally all the performances in the play, but I felt that the overall dramatic impact was muted by an all-too-obvious agenda. On the other hand, the production's clearly articulated thematic bent, coupled with it's use of popular music, make it likely that this is a Shakespeare production that could easily connect with young Shakespeare neophytes, who might otherwise be alienated by the archaic language. 3 stars
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Post by Steve on Mar 11, 2017 12:32:08 GMT
What some see as slight (pejorative), I see as smallness (complimentary). I'd agree with HG that it's on the surface, but for me, it has enormous resonance, a little gem.
More spoilers follow. . .
I describe it as a "gem" because there is a wonderful symmetry to the production, like a gem, a mathematical precision in both physical and character design. Look at the little chapel and observe it's front pentangle, a central square with a fifth point on top where the roof converges. The ground corners of the central square are like the two grandmothers, seeking to support their grand-daughters, who are represented by the top corners of the central square. See how the stones on one side are falling into ruin: that side represents the Welsh grandmother desperately trying to raise her grand-daughter, in the absence of her daughter, the girl's mother, who has left them. The pinnacle of the pentangle, at the top of the roof of the chapel is like Scarlett, who has roofed and housed and cossetted both her daughter and grand-daughter for years, and is now, in a sense being asked to care for a stranger's grand-daughter.
The scenes in the play allow for all aspects of the pentangular relationship to interact and intersect and resonate with each other: the two old ones, the two young ones, grandmother and grandaughter (times two), and show the inter-relation of all these relationships with that one precious lost middle-aged person, Scarlett, who in a sense is being asked to care for them all, a roof for them, a completion of a family bond regardless of who were previously strangers.
How poetic this simple set-up is, a house that is also a chapel, five people who have some kind of connection, spiritual in the sense that they are all awakened. Will the house fall to pieces because of the dents, or will it repair itself because of the new pieces added?
Sometimes the simplest slightest poetry is the most resonant, like Andrew Marvel's "To his Coy mistress," which makes one simple point again and again. This play is like that, for me, simple but clear, without the kind of forced twist that makes me think the whole play is a con job (like Stoppard's "The Hard Problem," which purports to address complexity, but actually schematically codes it's religion-over-science bias by making scientists unsympathetic, religion sympathetic, and coincidence and contrivance everything). This play stops before it can pull a con, and I love it for that. It sets it's pattern out twice, in words and in visuals, and just lets it's poetry resonate.
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Post by Steve on Mar 9, 2017 13:19:10 GMT
Saw this last night. A lovely thoughtful play, beautifully realised. I could pretend I saw this play on International Women's Day deliberately, as it is written by a woman, directed by a woman, and stars 5 women (and no men). As it happens, I didn't know any of that, nor even that it was International Women's Day until I read it on the train in the Standard on the way home. It is, however, a triumph for all the women involved, a gem of a production that contains within it's smallness sparkles that radiate outwards to shed light on mighty issues regarding all our lives. Who are we? Are we where we are supposed to be? What do we owe our families? What do we owe strangers? What is a stranger? Some spoilers follow. . . The smallness of the play is reflected in it's brief 75 minute running time, it's single small rundown yet bucolic set, featuring the world's smallest "chapel," it's focus on a singular issue: is it ok for Scarlett (Kate Ashfield) to leave her mother (Joanna Bacon) and grown-up daughter (Bethan Cullinane) behind in London and move to rural Wales to get away from her stressful (and failing) life? Scarlett sets her sights on buying said "chapel," and befriends two locals, a 14 year old girl, Billy (Gaby French) and her grandmother, Eira (Lynn Hunter). Eira owns the chapel, and is reluctant to sell it, as she hopes her own daughter (Billy's mother) will return to live there, but she must juggle her relectance to sell it with the fact that her grand-daughter adores Scarlett. The tensions between all 5 characters that develop, when Scarlett's own mother and daughter come to Wales to get Scarlett to come back to London, are beautifully realised, a perfect blend of comedy, drama, connection, disconnection and some slight surrealism due to the ambiguity about how Scarlett intends to live and support herself in this alien setting. . . "Ninety eight percent of our thoughts are repetitive," declares Scarlett, when explaining her need to escape London's rat race, and start again. It is the 2 percent of thoughts that are not repetitive that the play touchingly and humourously explores. Kate Ashfield (who was in the Royal Court's original run of Sarah Kane's "Blasted") is suitably lost and mysterious as Scarlett, Bethan Cullinane (who was Innogen in the RSC's recent Cymbeline) is suitably confused as her daughter, and Gaby French makes an open and generous and loveable debut as the young girl who befriends Scarlett. Humour is mostly generated by the two wonderful older actresses, Joanna Bacon and Lynn Hunter, going to war with each other in their roles as protective mothers and grandmothers. If there were more wonderful plays like this, you wouldn't need a women's day. 4 and a half stars
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Post by Steve on Mar 7, 2017 12:18:12 GMT
An abject (and object) lesson in how to make the funny unfunny, I hated this. Some spoilers follow. . . As with much comedy, Shakespeare gets laughs by subverting highfalutin notions, especially romantic love, with base ones. The higher a production of this play builds the tower of romantic love's pretensions, the greater the shock and surprise of the comedy the tower makes as it clatters to the ground. Joe Hill-Gibbins has no handle on Shakespeare's humour, so he builds us a filthy dirty muddy crass concept of romantic love, leaving himself with no notion to subvert over the course of the play. Since the tower of love has already tumbled from the opening of the play, as we witness the actors sploshing around in mud in the opening scene, Shakespeare's comedy is itself subverted and destroyed. Hill-Gibbins fondness for desecration can work in non-comedy settings. His dirtying up of "The Changeling," which included great sploshing food fights, also at The Young Vic, seemed to illuminate the essential filth at the heart of that play. But if Hill-Gibbins is going to desecrate a comedy, tossing away it's raison d'etre, he'd better replace all those lost laughs with something else worth watching. If he thinks that showing us that love is akin to rape is a revelation, he's wrong. That is already apparent in Shakespeare's design, so all Hill-Gibbins achieves is to reveal Shakespeare's design too early. I think what might be going on is akin to an acting exercise, where Hill-Gibbins is trying to break down both the play and actors by degrading them, so he can build them back up, making something fresh and new. In one sense, he succeeds, as Anastasia Hille seemed preternaturally youthful, skipping around like a little girl, as she emerged from the mudpit, and Leo Bill seemed genuinely humbled by crawling around on all fours like a dog, seeking hugs from his fellow actors. Indeed, the sploshing fetish is known to trigger psychic liberation from repressions implanted by childhood cleanliness-obsessive parents, and whether it is food or mud, Hill-Gibbins always seems to seek psychic exorcism through sploshing. But the effect on myself was less revelatory. I felt I had been invited to a tawdry dogging, sitting there fulled clothed, peeping at people at their most vulnerable, sploshing and crawling in mud, as if peeping through the window of a car in the dead of night. Luckily, not all of Shakespeare's comedy in this play relies on subverting highfalutin notions. At the end of the play, Shakespeare has already achieved this subversion, so he has the rude mechanicals indulge in an outright celebration of baseness, stupidity and crudeness. Crudeness is something in Hill-Gibbin's wheelhouse, and the rude mechanicals are genuinely funny. I laughed at Leo Bill's Bottom, and even more so at Aaron Heffernan's Flute, who unselfconsciously appeared as the most stupid man alive, playing Thisbe. But if stupidity and filth are the destination, it is a shame that Hill-Gibbins started in much the same place. He gave himself nowhere to go, pointlessly gutting the comedy over the course of the first three quarters of the play. Unfunny comedy is something I can't stand. 2 stars (for an attempt at something original, despite it's dismal failure). PS: This flop Midsummer makes me mourn anew the banishing of Emma Rice from the Globe. Her Midsummer was one of the funniest I've seen, as she used music and art and dancing and interactivity and roleplay and sheer joy to build a towering conception of love, which degenerated into the most playful and childish broad comedy I have ever witnessed. Bon voyage, Emma!
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Post by Steve on Mar 4, 2017 12:18:56 GMT
If you like both Beckett and Hamlet, it's entertaining. I do, and I enjoyed it. Some spoilers follow. . . Marwood's point about Daniel Radcliffe being underpowered is well-taken, though I feel differently about it. Having seen Samuel Barnett's take on the same role, where his smug conceited Rosencrantz constantly seemed to be laughing in Jamie Parker's Guildenstern's face, I appreciated the sheer serenity of Radcliffe, a wholly amenable companion for Joshua Maguire's budding Sherlock. And Sherlock is how Maguire plays Guildenstern, in a version of Stoppard's play that could be titled "Sherlock and the Mystery of Life," where Maguire's Guildenstern is energetically, earnestly and enthusiastically questing for answers about everything in every scene. This puts Radcliffe in the role of a very staid and sturdy, but above all, serene Watson. And of course, there is David Haig's Moriarty (aka The Player), stalking the stage like everyone's favourite mastercriminal, creating existential obfuscations and hurdles for Maguire's Sherlock to solve. Actually, Haig is more dashing than that, more along the lines of Mandy Patinkin's swashbuckler in "The Princess Bride:" I would have loved for Haig to declare "My name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die!" With Haig and Maguire bringing charisma and wit by the bucketload, it's a blessed relief to have the good-natured Radliffe flopping about the stage like a puppy in search of a stroking. Indeed, Radcliffe is SO like a puppy that this show is like Herge's Adventures of Tintin, starring Maguire as Tintin, out for an existential schoolboy adventure, with Haig as arch-villian Rastapopoulos, and guest-starring Daniel Radcliffe as Snowy, man's (and Guildenstern's) best friend. Radcliffe brings a much-needed human/puppy warmth to a show which can otherwise fall prey to Stoppard's precise cold alienating cleverness. Overall, I had fun with this show. Existential angst has never been so cosy. 4 stars.
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Post by Steve on Mar 4, 2017 11:45:29 GMT
Your TSWST thing is fascinating, Steve. Would I be right, I wonder, in thinking that American playwrights of the current generation are particularly prone to this? Speech and Debate could fall into this category as would something like The Flick. American optimism per se seems to be a thing of the past - especially now - but the playwrights can't quite consign it to the graveyard so we have small optimism or TSWST. It's still rare to see an American play of recent vintage go the full pessimist route - not so rare for UK or European plays. Or am I way off base? Yes, I do suspect that recent American playwrights have been more likely to add an optimistic coda, as well as more likely to feature characters that are across-the-board empathetic. Even Neil LaBute, who I NEVER thought would write one of these plays, given how misanthropic he used to be, now seems to want to write a whole trilogy of TSWST plays. Well, we shall see, as the third part in the "Reasons" trilogy hasn't yet surfaced, but I'm predicting he stays "reasonable," that Tom Burke will star, and the title will be "Reasons to be Reasonable." I love Theatremonkey's way of putting it lol!
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Post by Steve on Mar 2, 2017 12:59:42 GMT
Saw it last night, at the same time as the press. Completely agree with everything Mallardo said, so will focus my thoughts instead more generally. Some spoilers follow. . . About ten minutes into the production, I thought this is a "the-sun-will-shine-tomorrow" (TSWST) play. Anyone who sees a bit of new writing in fringe venues will see a lot of TSWSTs. Writers of such plays avoid melodrama, fantasy, extremes and exaggeration of all types, so as not to appear forward or silly. Such plays consist of a modest character with an immodest problem who engages in small tangible real moments of empathy with other characters, after which, the play modestly concludes with the coda "the sun will shine tomorrow." This coda avoids the dreamy optimism that life's problems can be solved, as well as avoiding the equally large pitfall of excessive pessimism. I like these kinds of plays. They usually teach me something about something, and frequently the characters and situations are recognisable in my own life. However, with the passage of time, these are not the plays that I remember best. It is the writers who go somewhere unsafe, exaggerated, dreamy, insane, who risk being thought incredibly silly, that write the plays that sear into my memory. With respect to the soldier-home-from-the-war scenario touched on in this play, I think of Sean O'Casey's bitter "The Silver Tassie," which I saw on this same Lyttelton stage, which presented the returning soldier with the cynical and miserable message "absolutely nobody cares about you." No rays of sunshine for that poor fellow, and it upset me so much I won't ever forget it lol! Anyway, I just throw it out there without knowing the answer: are many of today's playwrights limiting their longevity by being too reasonable? I don't answer the question about whether this particular production turned out the way I expected, of course, as that would be too much of a spoiler. But what I will say is I do love Ralf Little. For some reason, unknown to me, he gets a bad rap. But in "The Nap," "Dead Funny" and this, he's been pitch perfect every time. In this, he's incredibly likeable, tentative, sensitive, as Kate Fleetwood's character's ex-boyfriend. Excellent. And like Mallardo said, Kate Fleetwood nails this part. She made me feel her physical pain by the way she appeared to not want her agonised flinching to be noticed. 4 stars
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Post by Steve on Mar 1, 2017 12:55:28 GMT
Loved the 2 principals, particularly Conleth Hill, who is a marvel! Some spoilers follow. . . If Imelda Staunton was concerned about being compared to Elizabeth Taylor in the movie, she has nothing to worry about. As good as Taylor was, she was about twenty years too young for Martha, which skews the character away from carrying the weight of a whole lifetime of disappointment: which is what Staunton successfully conveys. Besides which, the movie is far too nasty to be relatable, with Richard Burton's George so unrelentingly cold and cruel, I can barely bear to watch the thing. By contrast, both Staunton and Hill find ways of being incredibly nasty to each other, while simultaneously carrying the audience's empathy for their characters, all the way to the bitter yet heartbreaking end. As in the movie, Staunton plays Martha as a battleaxe, (something the softer Kathleen Turner refrained from doing), which gives her performance the bite you want from this play, but she brilliantly utilises a baby voice strategically, in different tones at different times, sometimes to mock, but sometimes to hold her inner child out to George for his embrace. This prevents her performance from descending into caricature. Hill, as George, displays a stand-up's mastery in manipulating the audience, which he combines with an actor's mastery at emotionally reacting. He knows just how to balance the silent suffering of his character with the softly spoken vitriol. A cruel line that in another actor's mouth would elicit disapproval and groans from the audience, in his mouth receives roars of approval and laughter. This is because he subtly builds enormous empathy for his George, gracefully absorbing humiliation and hurt from moment to moment, preparing his slingshot filled with barbs so perfectly that when his cruel retort comes, it is as much the perfect psychic relief for the audience as it is for George. His George is intrinsically nastier than Bill Irwin's, yet for me, equally sympathetic, which is a perfect balance. Where the production suffers in comparison to the film is in it's depiction of the minor characters, the two guests: young couple, Nick and Honey. There is a richness to the film, where the motivations and behaviours of the hosts and guests mirror and refract and magnify upon each other. In the film, George Segal's Nick is as much a predatory shark as Richard Burton's George, he's just not as good at it. In the film, Sandy Dennis' Honey has the same deep desires as Elizabeth Taylor's Martha, she just can't hide it so well. Indeed, in the film, Sandy Dennis gives one of the all-time great screen performances of an empathetic emotional human sponge, instantly internalising and reflecting the pains of others. All this richness is gone in this production (some remained intact in the Turner Production), where Luke Treadaway's Nick is a mere lunk, attractive with it and sporting an Elvis accent, and Imogen Poots' Honey is a mere mouse, albeit a very mousy mouse well-realised. This is not down to the actors, but the director, who has focused his eye on the main duo, and must feel that increasing the complexity of the storyline by adding nuances to the supporting players' reactions would only confuse matters. James Macdonald also directed the earlier Albee production at the Almeida that Parsley rightly praised, "A Delicate Balance," which had another great performance by Staunton as an alcoholic, so he plainly knows what he's doing, and has deliberately chosen to give us a show that places Hill and Staunton at the centre, and includes the others as clapping seals to keep our focus where he wants it, on Hill and Staunton. Ultimately, I loved this production as much as I loved the Turner one, and more than the film. But across all three versions I've now seen, the two performances that I most love are Sandy Dennis as Honey in the movie and Conleth Hill as George, at the Harold Pinter. 4 stars (and could get better)!
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Post by Steve on Feb 28, 2017 14:49:56 GMT
I wonder actually whether the ending is still evolving night to night at the moment. I wouldn't be surprised; it didn't seem quite right to me. Does what I said about it seem familiar to others who've already seen it? (please use spoiler brackets) I loved the ending, as I recall it from last Wednesday night: {Spoiler - click to view} The party motif is established at the beginning. A party takes place through curtains, at the back of the stage, to which Hamlet does not feel welcome. (He hides behind chairs, observing, his presence only known to Ophelia, which affords them a conspiratorial closeness).
Subsequently, Hamlet's father's ghost invites him to seek revenge against Claudius. . .
At the end, after the final confrontations, the curtains are rolled back once more, resuming the party motif, except we see that the first guests at this new party are the already dead: Ophelia and Polonius. Hamlet's father appears at the curtain entrance to this party of death, the man who invited everyone to this final party we are all invited to. One by one, the ghosts of the poisoned and killed get up and make their way through the curtains, accepting their invitations. Hamlet, who remains in a dying state in between life and death, makes contact with them, even taking Claudius' hand in a conciliatory gesture that accepts that after death the concerns of life are over, and that soon they will be together forever in death. Most movingly Hamlet is able to express his full love for his own father in an embrace. Soon, only Horatio and Hamlet are left, and final words spoken. This makes for a far more intimate ending, with just the dying man and his friend. Dead, Hamlet joins the party. The screen comes on, and all the final Fortinbras stuff is rendered as prerecorded screen images. Death is more real than life, it seems, which is the mood the whole production has been going for all along, which is why it is so tender and so sombre, and so resonant. After all, all us of will spend an infinity more time dead than alive.
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Post by Steve on Feb 23, 2017 1:18:48 GMT
Saw this tonight. A muted, poetic, poignant, intimate rumination on life and, particularly, death, this is among the best Hamlets I have seen! Spoilers follow. . . The production poster of Andrew Scott's Hamlet, open-eyed in an open coffin, blue satin sheets reflecting blue across his face, as red flowers and flames emblazon the black jumper covering his chest, perfectly captures the mood of this production. Scott's Hamlet rages red internally, but all his actions are tempered by a calm blue thoughtfulness, that is rooted deeply into the production as a whole. Icke magnifies the contemplative and poetic power of this production by using all characters periodically as sentinels, silently observing the actions of other characters, which technique gives multiple meanings to many scenes, as we perceive them through the eyes of all the carefully positioned watchers. Characters who are not in a scene, on the page, nonetheless appear in scenes serving their function as sentinels, hugely enriching an audience experience, where we too are observing silently, and see ourselves reflected. Such reflections occasionally become literal, as when audience members are caught on camera, and displayed on a big screen. Unlike other Icke productions, where surveillance has been a threatening presence, here surveillance serves as the ultimate sentinel, a transmitter and recorder of truth, including closeups and freeze frames of faces of the actors. The intimacy of the Almeida is paramount. Actors can speak in a whisper and still be heard, so the rise and fall of emotions can be more sensitively calibrated than in bigger theatres, such as the Barbican barn of Benedict Cumberbatch or even the Cambridge Theatre cave of David Tennant. Indeed, Tennant's astonishing and excellent stint as Hamlet can be most usefully compared with this production, as he is an actor with a similar electric wired range to Scott. Tennant gave us "antic disposition" that was so electric and so wired that Scott could easily have seen it as his duty to try to outdo Tennant in total manic energy output. This could have been disastrous in a tiny space like the Almeida, where such an effort would come across as shrill and off-putting overacting. But instead, Scott does the opposite: conforming to Icke's hushed, delicate and caring vision by muting his performance, treading sensitively and lightly through Shakespeare's poetry as if ballet-dancing on pins, where pins are words, and every one can Pr**k. This is a magnificent cast across the board. Angus Wright once again gives us his oh-so-real matter-of-fact delivery, that makes Claudius' malevolence commonplace, universal and inevitable. Juliet Stevenson gives us the most touchy-feely of Gertrudes, at once motherly and loving but equally desperate and needy. So too with Peter Wight's Polonius, at once a buffoon as well as a loveable warm and tender father. Jessica Brown Findlay's Ophelia is infinitely touching not only because the actress exquisitely expresses Ophelia's hurt, but also because Icke finds ingenious ways of enriching her early scenes such that her initial bond with Hamlet is greater and richer than we are used to. All the characters are like this, multifaceted and well-rounded, without a hint of exaggeration. All the characters' arcs are poetically linked in Icke's well-orchestrated, plaintive dance of death. It is Andrew Scott who holds the poetry together, Icke's ultrasensitive onstage avatar. Sometimes he seems to move in slow motion, sometimes he explodes, but the sensitivity and depth of Icke's vision always remains intact, right up to it's supremely moving ending. I'm only glad I've another ticket to see this production after it beds in, and before it moves somewhere where it's incredible intimacy will be lost. This is a Hamlet for the ages. For me, anyway. 5 stars.
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Post by Steve on Feb 16, 2017 13:43:22 GMT
Saw this last Saturday matinee, and very much enjoyed it. Some spoilers follow. . . Going in completely cold, I instantly cringed at the tweeness of this Yorkshire with it's cheerful green hillock and pleasant gamboling villagers. I prejudged the first song, seeing the title, "Yorkshire," expecting a celebration of the soil and said green hillock which would be queasily exclusionary and nationalistic in tone. I was wrong. The modest lyrics were a universal celebration of human life at it's most modest, rooted in an amusing British defeatism, with descriptions of late buses stuck behind tractors and schoolchildren who don't appreciate the beauty of the Yorkshire mist, as well as an outward embrace of every other county, an embrace even extending to Europe, which ships the flowers that ride the trucks to Yorkshire. I was still in two minds about the show when the second song, "Girls" embraced the easy and dated girls-are-like-this-boys-are-like-that nonsense that has been done to death in every comedy show since Shakespeare. But then Joanna Riding's Annie came out and sang about her worries about losing her witty good-humoured husband, James Gaddas' John, himself uncomplainingly dying of cancer, in the song "Scarborough," and she broke my heart. A lot of this is performance, as Riding knows how to milk a moment, giving the impression of trying to withhold powerful emotions, while in fact deliberately showering the audience in a storm of sadness. But it is not only Riding that makes "Scarborough" brilliant, it's the lyric writing, which calmly rides the gently wilting waves of Gary Barlow's lovely melody to deliver sudden surprising punches to the emotional gut. As a frequent ticketbuyer, the idea that people I buy tickets for won't live to use them hurt, but so too did the idea that Annie might lose the man who can reach towels on high shelves or clear scary spiders from the bathtub. Maybe I'm just a sucker for emotional manipulation, but the specificity of the song, the banality of the details, the sense that these details describe the precious ordinary moments of every life, made "Scarborough" overwhelmingly emotional for me. And I knew that the musical was a hit for me, when the fourth song "Who wants a silent night?" turned out to be a much needed and vastly successful change of pace, with a rollicking Claire Machin, as Cora, expressing every bit as much joie de vivre as Riding had expressed deep sadness. As the musical went on, the love of Joanna Riding's Annie for her husband John, threatened to be forgotten as a story thread, as we move on to the shenanigans surrounding the nude calendar, but Tim Firth and Gary Barlow never allow that to happen, returning to the principle emotional thread periodically, in particular in the song, "Kilinanjaro," in Act 2. The nude calendar fun delivers everything you would expect, in as tasteful a way as you would expect, proving that taste and fun do mix. And the thread with the teens, which involves an endearing Ben Hunter fretting about losing his virginity to a bolshy girl, delivers the kind of diverting moments which will make a trip to this show worth it for young ones forced to accompany their parents to see this. That is, these moments aren't integrated well, but they are somehow necessary anyway. Overall, this is an excellent cast, performing a show which has something for everyone, but which derives it's greatest value from Joanna Riding's brilliant evocation of grief for her dying husband. Recommended, if you like this sort of thing. 4 stars.
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Post by Steve on Jan 24, 2017 16:06:37 GMT
Liked the themes, Loved the characters! Some spoilers follow. . . This is a play about a young girl, Tamsin, who must juggle caring for her OCD brother, Dean, with earning a crust doing zero-hours packaging work for an Amazon-style mail-order company. Thematically, this play has two targets, the Government and Capitalism, and doesn't score a bullseye against either of them. With regard to the Government, the play is weak, relying on a whole bunch of contrivances and coincidences to indict the Government for not caring for the OCD-suffering brother. For a play that really knows how to characterise and condemn the ineffectiveness of Government to care for it's citizens, I preferred Alexander Zeldin's "Love." With regard to Capitalism, the production depicts Tamsin's packaging job as a Hunger Games style battle to survive, as screens show how many items each employee packs per hour, and employees run off against each other to be faster, and not get fired. Employees accrue points for slowness and for "time-wasting" toilet breaks, knowing that at 3 points, there will be no more work. Employees compete in the hope of moving beyond zero hours hell, and being rewarded with a proper job. For me, the electronic music that underscores, and heightens the tension of the competition, actually made the packaging look like fun. I felt an excited urge to rush onto the stage and start packaging things myself to see if I could beat the high-score on the scoreboard. I was jealous of the actors that they got to compete in this exciting competition. Contrast this to the monotony of zero hours work, as depicted in Alexander Zeldin's "Beyond Caring," for example. Zeldin makes such work seem like an inhuman unendurable chore, whereas in this prodction, there is the charge of competition, a manufactured soundscape to enhance it, and great camaraderie among employees to boot. One useful thing the play does is to make a clear visual analogy between Dean's repetitious obsessive compulsive disorder, at one end of the stage, and the repetitive compulsive order of capitalist productivity at the other end. Although the play never suggests any other mode of living that might be better than capitalism, it does serve as an universal whine about life in general, in which we are all born to flay about on our own hamster wheel of productivity from birth to death. Where the play really scores, however, are in two of it's characterisations: Erin Doherty, as Tamsin, is a stressed, withdrawn, shy and anxious nerd, who opens up like a delicate flower to her inspiring and optimistic younger co-worker, Luke, played by Shaquille Ali-Yebuah, whose buoyancy, quirkiness and naturalism are her antidote. The scenes between these two were so lovely that I was on the verge of tears, as Tamsin gained the courage to sing Meatloaf to her Meatloaf-ignorant adorable new friend. Joseph Quinn, as Dean, gives great OCD, but his character here is a mere cipher of suffering, and does not make the most of him. Quinn's ease with effortless expression was on display recently as Miss Havisham's jealous and guilty brother in Dickensian on the BBC, as well as in "Death Watch," at the Print Room, where he was incandescent as a human limpet, all furtive eyes and sudden movements, jealously guarding the object of his hero worship. This production is a chance to see a great young actor make the most of an underwritten role. As the man in charge of the mail-order factory, Aleksander Mikic was simultaneously stern and sympathetic (and bore a strong resemblance in countenance and mannerisms to Dr. Luka Kovac in ER, for those who remember that show lol). For me, the funny, natural and touching relationship of Erin Doherty's Tamsin and Shaquille Ali-Yebuah's Luke raised this production to an unmissable 4 stars. PS: Sit as centrally as you can, on either side of this traverse stage. Prioritise centrality over row. Scenes occur at both ends of the stage, and in the centre, you get the best of it.
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Post by Steve on Jan 24, 2017 14:51:32 GMT
Gina Miller contested Theresa May's attempt to erode the right of Parliament to make laws. Miller did both Brexiters and Remainers a huge favour, and we should all be thankful to her, for preserving the principle of Parliamentary sovereignty. While it is true that many actions the Government takes stem from exercising the power of the Queen, changing the law of the land (which all sides conceded would be the result of triggering Article 50) is NOT one of the Queen's powers, and is reserved to Parliament. Thank you for standing up for this key principle, Gina Miller, in the face of tremendous personal abuse, and against an overwhelming tide of ignorance fueled by the Daily Mail! As has been pointed out, the choice to make the Referendum advisory was made by David Cameron's Government, it was a mistake, and it is his fault that public money has been wasted today, as well as Theresa May's fault for compounding his mistake, and not consulting Parliament about Article 50 in the first place.
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Post by Steve on Jan 19, 2017 1:04:32 GMT
I must say I never saw the play as misogynistic - but you make a great case, Steve. It could also be read the other way around, as an appreciation of the power and controlling intelligence of women and the helplessness of men in the face of it, to the degree that Dodds' only recourse is the one men have always used when confronting such superiority - violence. Agree. That was my starting point in thinking about this, that Donald Dodd is exactly like my acquaintance, who committed murder-suicide, a weak man who resorts to violence because he is confronting a "superiority" he can't control. It was after that that I started thinking that every woman in this comes across as a sociopath, but not only that, sociopaths with preternatural powers of omniscience and foresight. They feel like a vision of women with superpowers, from inside a paranoid male mind, yet their actions carry on being that way even when Dodd is not present, such as when Ingrid instantly deduces Donald's movements by smelling his jacket, or when we hear how she has swayed the mind of Donald's father against him in advance of his plea for understanding, etc, etc. I got the feeling I get in a Dirty Harry movie, or a Death Wish movie, when I am being misanthropically primed to be ok about someone being blown away in an act of extreme "justice." My general feeling is that if you take a murder-suicide type, and focus on reasons that justify that sort of behaviour, and those reasons include that all women are secretly and dispassionately coldly controlling your life, and treating you not as a human, but as a pet (eg Ingrid's statement that she picked Donald as a partner because she could "live with him," not because she loved him, which sounds like she's treating him like a pet dog, except less than that, because she probably loves her dog. And it gets worse, she is so cold she is willing to tell him to his face that he has the status less than a dog, a dog she encourages to have an affair as a kind of thought-control experiment, designed to exorcise his friskiness, or to castrate him. It all seems to imply that when Dirty Donald pulls out his Magnum 35, he's dispensing a kind of necessary justice against the arrogance of his wife. And if indeed, as appears to me, there is no recognisably human woman in this play, I would argue that the play borders on suggesting that, by extension, extreme action may be necessary against all these bodysnatchers who seek to control poor all-too-human men. But of course, these are only thoughts and opinions I am having, and I welcome reasons that show I'm wrong. I didn't see the show but David Hare has been lauded for decades for the roles he has written for women. Of course, many people become progressively out of touch over the years. Agree. Love Hare. I wonder if this play is merely shaped by Hare, and that Simenon seeded the thematic territory that I am thinking about above (in my comment to Mallardo). Steve I'm not sure if I agree wholly with what you've written but what an explanation, thanks for that, rather more nuanced and developed that my 'why are talking so slowly and not doing up their coats' response. Yep, I'm quite capable of disappearing up my own rear end, but it's better getting it out of my system and doing that on a message board, than doing it in real life, which might prompt dirty looks lol. I must say I never saw the play as misogynistic - but you make a great case, Steve. It could also be read the other way around, as an appreciation of the power and controlling intelligence of women and the helplessness of men in the face of it, to the degree that Dodds' only recourse is the one men have always used when confronting such superiority - violence. No play isn't misogynistic, neither is Othello. And Debicki doesn't appear nude and neither does she "constantly" get her kit off. Good points. I don't think Othello is misogynistic, so I agree with you there. The reason I suspect this one might be is the total absence of a normal woman in it. It feels like "Invasion of the Bodysnatchers," where a fightback might be necessary for us poor men (who just happen to be the ones who actually do most of the killing, and don't need any more reasons to do more of it). That hovering female eye looked like an attacking spaceship, at the beginning of "War of the Worlds." The females/aliens are equipped with supernatural powers of detection, and total dispassion, like alien pod-creatures. So when Dodd takes up his weapon, it's like he's leading the resistance. Obviously, that's just opinions and feelings, but I think they are ok to express on a discussion board where we express opinions and feelings, and I accept, that for unstated reasons, you read this play differently to me. Debicki is, of course, not nude in this play, but merely bare-breasted (sometimes referred to as "partial nudity," but wrongly I concede), and I would agree that it is the uncanny repetition of this scene from "The Night Manager" in such detail that engendered my use of the word "constant," though of course, she is in fact actually "nude" elsewhere in "The Night Manager."
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Post by Steve on Jan 18, 2017 11:28:07 GMT
I saw the last show, and I found it thrilling, stylish, and unique but misogynistic. Since the show is over, mega-spoilers follow. . . This show reminded me strongly (pun unintended) of a strangely intense, fiercely controlling but always affable acquaintance, from a couple of decades back, who would rave about a patterned black and white shirt I used to wear, and jokingly threaten to take it from me. After discovering his wife was leaving him, he shot her, shot his daughter, and shot himself. . . In hindsight, Mark Strong's Donald Dodd feels like that man, someone with a vision for how life should be, a vision for how women should be, a vision for how he himself should be, and when his delusions collapsed, turned to extreme violence. The thrill in this show was knowing something was off with Donald Dodd's life, knowing something terrible would happen, but not knowing what and when. How perfect the casting. Mark Strong, an actor whose very name tells you he's "strong," and whose ever-threatening physicality seems to confirm this, playing someone ostensibly so meek and mild. The suspense and inevitability of the worm turning had me squirming. The horrible thing about this show is that it seems to encourage him to turn, at least partially to justify his murder of his wife, and to a degree, the murder of all women. Clearly, the creatives intend us to view this show as a kind of fever dream, the misogyny in the lead character's head expressionistically writ large: it's not the show that is misogynist, they would argue, it's Donald Dodd. Thus the huge all-seeing eye of Hope Davis' Ingrid Dodd, the first image we see, projected onto an immense screen at the optician's office, can be read as Dodd's paranoid male fantasy of the omniscient controlling woman. That is why, inevitably, the last sentence he utters in the play, after killing Ingrid, is "I shot her in the eye." However, male paranoia in this production reaches beyond the character of Donald Dodd to pervade every scene of the play. All the men are short-sighted dreamers: Dodd dreams of an empowered life, Ray seeks release through sex, Dodd's father hopes his son will treat his wife better, Lieutenant Olsen believes he's solving a case. In fact, all of them are shown to be dupes of robotic omniscient women, who manipulate everyone around them. Elizabeth Debicki's Mona at first appears an uncalculating dreamer, like the men, until we realise she's been playing Dodd all along, that he never had a hope with her, as she was taking flowers from another man even before her affair with Dodd began. Mona's maid sees everything that happens in the apartment, dealing with those flowers, grinning knowingly at Dodd as she puts the flowers away. The omnipresence of this maid, even when Dodd is having sex, shows just how dispassionate, knowing and calculating Ingrid and her maid are, both women conspiring in the understanding that sex is just a tool of power and manipulation, and that Dodd's real affections and dreams of intimacy are merely a male weakness. Cuckolding her billionaire husband, young bride Patricia Ashbridge (played at the final show by understudy, Arabella Neale) lasciviously lures the doomed Ray (Nigel Whitmey) to her private bathroom for uncomplicated sex, like a spider lures a fly. After all, Ray is destined to so tucker himself out in this bathroom, that he can barely stand in the storm that ensures, and stumbles to his death. But the most emblematic female in the play is the omniscient Ingrid, she of the all-seeing-giant-eye who even Mona fears, brilliantly played by Hope Davis like a bored supervillain, whose subdued omnipotence seems civilised, but in fact, kills the joy and spirit of every man in her orbit. She effortlessly turns Donald's father against him, fools the Lieutenant by hiding evidence, and manipulates every facet of her husband's life, even planning his affair with Mona by asking him to sleep between herself and Mona, where he can literally be squished and sandwiched and suffocated by scheming women. It stands to reason that she has given Donald only daughters, and has tricked him into believing that raising more women in the world is his main and only satisfying function in life. The vision of this play is that females are threatening. The key symbolic image of the play is when Donald Dodd is lured by the feminine spherical beauty of the round hanging chairs in Mona's flat, tries to sit in one, and is swallowed up by it. Also, all the scene changes are like lady parts opening and closing to give birth to the stupid dupe male protagonist's delusions and ultimate doom. Truly, if ever a play has managed to visually conjure up the mechanical inevitability of doom and fate, it is this one, with the Lyttelton functioning like a machine, cranking it's way smoothly and methodically through the noirish plot, opening then cruelly closing portholes of hope. The realisation of filmic scene changes, as well as the superb storm sound effects, swallow up the lives of two men (and one female supervillain) with dazzling efficiency. Mark Strong restrains his emotions to the level of a machine in this play. It was exquisite and thrilling to see him check his natural explosiveness for so much of the duration of the show, giving the play a tantric aspect, whereby the thrill was in the wait. I got a major charge from watching this play, but I was disturbed by the po-faced male fear and misogyny that underlies it. On a side note, this production may be the first Elizabeth Debicki project where her nudity is completely warranted, as the underlying misogyny which requires her to constantly get her kit off, pervades and is the subject of the play. Overall, a unique and fascinating evening, in stagecraft, in acting, and for the slow-motion investigation of a disturbed mind. But to the extent that this play suggests that disturbed minds are not disturbed, that women are robots invented to manipulate men, and that terrible violence can be justified, well, that's plain wrong! 4 stars
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Post by Steve on Dec 29, 2016 18:54:16 GMT
Saw the matinee yesterday. Great fun, with Layton Williams and Lucie Jones standouts! I wished I sat further back than the cheap front row seats I opted for. While immersion in the show was thrilling, the sound mix for smaller voices was fogged by actual proximity to the instruments. Most of the performers had the belt to make themselves heard, but subtleties in Ross Hunter's performance of Roger, in particular, could only be appreciated from mid stalls or further back, I should imagine (somewhere, anywhere, closer to the sound desk). This contributed to an experience, for me, in which ostensible lead character, Roger's story, including his romance with Philippa Stefani's Mimi, was a mere breeze to be brushed away by the tornado of Leyton Williams's Angel and his relationship with Ryan O'Gorman's Collins. The staging contributed to this biasing, as O'Gorman and Williams were charging about two feet from the front row, whereas Hunter and Stefani were typically staged to the rear of the set, where Roger would sit with his guitar. Williams is a star. His Angel stole every scene he was in. Dynamic, generous, flamboyant and gorgeous, he was Matt Henry in Kinky Boots, but younger and, yes, much more "angelic." Pairing him with O'Gorman's beautiful baritone meant that the Collins-Angel duo ate up this production (at least from where I was sitting). For me, the show started with William's effusive entrance with "Today 4 U" and ended with O'Gorman's overwhelming elegiac "I Cover You (Reprise)." Everything else was epilogue. Williams was not alone in chewing scenery. . . Lucie Jones had the fortune and wherewithal to perform a hugely rousing "Over the Moon." Fortunate because the band was mostly silent, allowing her voice full command of our ear drums. And boy, did she TAKE command. Everything about her "Over the Moon" worked for me. If Eden Espinosa in the Broadway Recording brought an artistic sincerity to the number, and Idina Menzel brought unhinged hysteria, Lucie Jones' background on the X Factor informed her take: it is pure personality, a force of ego, the voice that Simon Cowell promised had been hungrily slavering for attention in Thimbletown, Wales, desperate to take over the world, unleashed. There is an infectious GLEE to the rise and fall of Jones' powerhouse belt, combining Menzel's hysteria with an empowerment savoured, borne of years waiting in the wings. If the X Factor was good for anything, it was good for this! Like Williams', Jone's Maureen's storyline gets sterling support, in this case from Shanay Holmes' furious Joanne and Billy Cullum's somewhat swaggering Mark. In their number together, "Tango Maureen," Holmes and Cullum build a head of steam, but in their scenes with Jones, they whistle. Ironically then, for me, Rent's story of community and communality (which still powerfully reverberates in the anthems, "La Vie Boheme" and "Seasons of Love") becomes, in this production, a tale of triumphant individualism: the story of Angel and Maureen, two egos who rise to the top, the creme of the charisma tree, by sheer force of personality. It is in Angel's story that the heart of this production lies, though, and it is because of Angel's story, and the captivating duo of Leyton Williams and Ryan O'Gorman, that I couldn't help welling up all over again. 4 stars.
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Post by Steve on Dec 24, 2016 22:58:20 GMT
Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah, Felicitations to everyone! And thank you to Theatremonkey, BurlyBeaR and the mods who make this site possible.
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Post by Steve on Dec 23, 2016 10:20:09 GMT
Oops, sorry. I meant Callum Howells above, when I referred to Alastair Brookshaw. (It's too late to edit the post above). Alastair Brookshaw came across as sly and furtive, half weasel, half squirrel, but managed to come across as a likeable human regardless, perhaps because he gave himself so totally to his "Perspective" number. Foxa, Mark Umbers' smiley face is the best smiley face.
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Post by Steve on Dec 22, 2016 14:17:15 GMT
Loved Foxa's review!!! This show is less vanilla ice cream, and more chocolate pralines and cream with caramel, a guilty moreish pleasure that had me rushing to buy tickets to see it again and as gifts! Guilty, because I see where Parsley's coming from when he says this show is "dated." The they-hate-each-other-because-they-love-each-other romantic comedy formula has been frozen in aspic since at least 1934, when Clark Gable and Claudette Colbert wittily hated on each other in the movie "It Happened One Night." Miklos Laszlo created his spin on the formula, three years later, Parfumerie, on which this musical was based. This is the sort of wish-fulfillment you'd find on a perfume box, and the show is as trivial and seductive as sweet smelling perfume, which is probably why Laszlo set it in a perfume shop. But life would be distressing (Trump, Brexit and Leonard Cohen's exit feel particularly upsetting) without trivial beautiful distractions. And for me, this show is a perfect thing. At it's core is Scarlett Strallen's Amalia, who embodies Foxa's lovely description of herself as an "intense, bookish, awkward girl." The keyword is "intense." Strallen's roiling emotions explode her eyes out of her head as if on stalks. Lost in fiction, Strallen's Amalia is so angry at an imperfect real world, especially condescending men like Mark Umber's Georg, that she simmers, a head of steam surrounding her at all times, boiling over into brilliant eruptions of emotion, like "Where's my shoe?" This is an actress who is an expert at effortless intensity! Romantic comedy movies have been dead for at least 15 years, since the heady heyday of Four Weddings/Pretty Woman/Bridget Jones ended. Musicals fill this void, and this is the best of the genre, with Strallen's Amalia Balash the most endearing romantic comedy character I've seen in ages, a stage character who really really seems to need a hug. If the focus of Strallen is the "romantic" aspect of romantic comedy, the focus of Katherine Kingsley's Ilona is the "comedy." All coiled fury, like Strallen, but with added knowingness, Kingsley is like a spiteful shark, trawling for victims. Her abrupt cockney mannerisms, and impeccable comic timing, ground Kingsley's Ilona in a cynical wisdom of the commons, yet Kingsley simultaneously suggests with micro expressions of hurt, that tenderness lies beneath her scarlet-clad powerful predatory physicality. For that reason, she is as loveable a character as Strallen's. Her songs "I Resolve" and "At Trip to the Library" are laugh riots. Mark Umbers' gentlemanly demeanour and delivery seem to emanate from another time, and coupled with Georg's chippiness, his Georg feels appropriately Cary Grant, the ideal romantic comedy protagonist. Slightly too much the gentleman, Umbers' Georg's passions need a tad more stirring, but Umber's winsome charm is a magic ingredient, for me, that lifts this show out of our gaudy present into a genuinely sparkling world of fantasy. Cory English is hysterical as the Waiter, his precise pernickety pickiness in complete contrast to the chaos of the choreography around him. I had belly laughs for his scenes, and will be interested to see how Norman Pace essays the role when he takes over later in the run. Alastair Brookshaw is youthful joy incarnate, a toothy grinning lump of geniality that supplies the sugar in his depressed boss, Maraczek's bitter crunchy pralines. Les Dennis is elemental casting as Maraczek, but if playing a depressed cuckold is a bit on-the-knuckle and Dennis' range never seems to stretch far beyond, his presence gives the show that bitter undertone that deepens the formulaic plot machinations, a tether of dark reality for this kite of a show, that poignantly we must return to when it finally stops flying. Dominic Tighe sings wonderfully as Ilona's partner and nemesis, Kodaly, but he is better at performing the caddishness she now resents than the seductive surface that must have enticed her in the first place. He needs to borrow a whisker of Umbers' charm to thoroughly convince. The songs in this show are wall to wall winners from Scene Four's "Tonight at Eight" through to "Grand Knowing You" towards the end of Act 2. That is about 15 brilliant songs in row, the best run of great songs I can think of anywhere. They are smart, witty and offbeat, spanning the grandeur of illuminating the smallness of the Earth compared to a vast Universe to the specific smallness of hunting down the location of a shoe. These are timeless lyrics, even if the romanticism of the core story is dated by it's fantasy. But this is a fantasy I have already booked to return to, and apart from "Funny Girl," I haven't done that for any show (I can think of) this year. I look forward to experiencing again Scarlet Strallen's intensity, Mark Umber's charm, Katherine Kingsley's comic timing, Sheldon Harnick's lyrics, and Jerry Bock's 15-in-a-row peerless melodies. With this moreish show, one more trip still may not be enough. 5 stars.
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Post by Steve on Dec 18, 2016 12:18:08 GMT
Saw yesterday's matinee and loved it! A feelgood triumph-of-the-underdog story, boosted by tremendous singing of tremendous songs. Some spoilers follow. . . On one level, the show makes for a terrific concert, with a programme that includes a variety of different song-types, singers and choreography, each number as dazzling as the glitter on their costumes. One reason why the show resembles a concert is the thinness of the book (remarked upon by others here), skipping through history like a join-the-dots exercise, eviscerating complexity by abandoning the aftermath of key moments. Fortunately, the complexity still lingers: the duality of Joe Aaron Reid's Curtis, a progressive pioneer in breaking down societal racism but also a cruel regressive force of patriarchy; the simultaneous attractiveness and repulsiveness of Adam J. Bernard's unpackageably wild and magnetic trouser-dropping love-cheat Jimmy Early; the degree to which ambition limits The Dreams' friendship when success is a zero-sum game. These factors work to bolster the dramatic heft of what is otherwise a by-the-numbers underdog story. Although it is by-the-numbers, Effie's story carries an iconic resonance because it is super-charged. No underdog in society being more historically disadvantaged than an overweight black woman, Effie's plight makes Elphaba's moaning about being "green," in Wicked, seem super-petty. "Dreamgirls" graces our underdog protagonist with a superpower: a voice that can break down any barrier, which crashes through skulls straight into bleeding hearts. Amber Riley embodies that superpower, which is why she is such perfect casting, and is why the audience cheer every time she comes on stage. Amber Riley is not yet an exceptional actor, her Ryan-Murphy-educated-big-gesture-acting-style not honed for subtlety. Her fellow Dreams, Liisi LaFontaine and Ibinabo Jack act her off the stage in the delicacy of their ability to express emotion. But Riley's voice doesn't seem to know that Riley's face can't act. Riley's voice has a range of expression that is majestic! She can come in with a whisper of a song, and build through every grade of emotion, crash through the barrier where you think she's at a ten, and go further until. . . well, I was in tears at the end of "And I am telling you I'm not going!" The best actor on the stage though, for me, was Adam J Bernard. He's astonishing, for his stage-swallowing charisma, for his wild yelp, for his ability to depict Jimmy Early as both a charging bull and as a timid mouse. He was so captivating that I preferred the double act of "Jimmy Early and the Dreams" to "The Dreams" alone, with "Fake Your Way to the Top" being a personal highlight. Choreographically, "Steppin' to the Bad Side" was my favourite number, starting with the martial regimentation of Joe Aaron Reid's Curtis Taylor Jr, all those men moving robotically in lockstep with him, to the way the number ended by showcasing the individualism of Adam J. Bernard's Jimmy being Jimmy. I was delighted that Tyrone Huntley, so electric in Jesus Christ Superstar, got a song, "Family," where he was able to show entirely another side to his talent, namely how tender his singing can be. Towards the end of the show, Amber Riley and Liisi LaFontaine (a wonderful singer, albeit lacking the belt of Riley) duetted on the number "Listen," and the interplay of their voices was vital and thrilling. Despite it's thin book, the underlying story here is so rich, the songs so strong, Adam J. Bernard so special, and Amber Riley so supercharged, that this show shouldn't be missed. 4 and a half stars
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Post by Steve on Dec 15, 2016 22:29:37 GMT
Great review, Steve! Made me smile ) Wondering who was playing who (as 'two rocks and a lump of jelly') in that version you've mentioned with Gatiss/Pemberton/Shearsmth Shearsmith was the lump of jelly. Gatiss bought the painting, of course, cos he's always funny when he thinks he's marvellous, Pemberton thought it was "sh*t."
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Post by Steve on Dec 15, 2016 22:00:17 GMT
Thoroughly enjoyed this tonight. The translation can't quite disguise the French origins of the play, as there are a few moments when phrases used feel wordy and unnatural, but this is thoughtful and funny throughout. Two rocks (Rufus Sewell and Paul Ritter) and a lump of jelly (Tim Key) are best friends, and have disagreements over the value of a work of art. Deep thoughts are triggered about the meaning of friendship: can two rocks be friends? Can a rock be a friend with a lump of jelly? While such thoughts wash over us, three great actors get to gradually descend into Basil Fawltys, which process delightfully fires on all cylinders from 45 minutes in. This is more effective than the only other production I have seen, with Gatiss, Pemberton and Sheersmith, as the acting here is more sincere, with zero mugging, which ironically makes the clashes between characters funnier. It also gives added fire to the Peep Show fourth wall breaking moments, when characters tell the audience what they are really thinking! Tim Key is a marvellously floppy and emotive bowl of jelly, Rufus Sewell is a marvellously hard lump of rock pretending to be a bowl of jelly, and Paul Ritter is a sterling lump of rock who simply can't help being a lump of rock. Great fun! 4 stars
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Post by Steve on Dec 15, 2016 14:16:11 GMT
Saw this last night. Absolutely brilliant, uncontrived, meaningful theatre.
While some may find the pared back drama uneventful, this for me was more impactful than the National's earlier minimally contrived dramas: "The Flick" and "Beyond Caring."
Some spoilers follow. . .
As an antidote to the by-the-numbers dramatising of most plays, "The Flick" felt fresh, involving three characters simply sweeping a cinema and living life. But for all it's exceptional characterisation, vivid observation of moment to moment interaction and authentic pace, "The Flick" was a hoary old love triangle.
In "Beyond Caring," Alexander Zeldin also opted for a meticulously slow and detailed observation of life, involving endless sweeping and factory work through the night. But he snuck in obvious contrivances to ram his points home. Janet Etuk's character not only had to sweep through the night, she had to do it with arthritic hands, constantly bullied by her unnecessarily cruel and pedantic boss, played by Luke Clarke.
In this play, Etuk and Clarke are back, but now there is nothing contrived. They are a couple, just like any couple, with two kids, the girl excitedly rehearsing her nativity play, the boy lost in a laptop. This is a world the National audience will recognise: it's them.
The couple happen to be living in temporary accommodation, Apartment 5, and each day, off stage, Luke Clarke's Dean visits the requisite Government Office to sort out permanent housing.
Next door, in Apt 6, Nick Holder's character cares for his infirm old mum, played by Anna Calder-Marshall, so he can't work. He's also off each day to the benefits office.
No doubt the National audience also have mums and sons, who would look after them, if it came to it.
The play is these two families interacting, in their shared living space, in believable, and for the most part, in apparently uncontrived ways. The details of their interactions are routine and relentlessly credible, and through small well-observed scenes, we come to know and relate to everyone in the play. For everyone, a different detail will signal the moment you are completely sucked into this world: for me, it was when Dean put up Christmas decorations to make the anonymous housing cosy for his kids. From that moment, this show upset me more than any show this year.
The lights are on in the auditorium, so in the least intrusive, most effective Brechtian way possible, we are forced to acknowledge that the characters we are watching are just like us.
The danger for a show like this one is that people who need to see it, won't. Which is why the National Dorfman is the perfect auditorium. If any space is booked in London, as a matter of rote, it's this one, where the danger of a great show selling out prompts regulars to buy tickets to every show regardless.
This isn't as entertaining or as well-characterised as "The Flick," but it's more immersive, it's more recognisable, and it's ultimately more hard hitting.
Anna Calder-Marshall as the Old Mum, Janet Etuk as the expectant Mum, Luke Clarke as the Dad, Nick Holder as the Carer and Darcey Brown as the exuberant little girl are pitch perfect.
5 stars
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Post by Steve on Dec 13, 2016 10:33:00 GMT
Dawnstar, thanks very much. Sister has booked for January. Fingers crossed.
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Post by Steve on Dec 12, 2016 18:49:56 GMT
Charming, but dramatically inert. Like Farinelli, at this same venue, it's about the quasi-spiritual value of music. Handel's music, to be precise, since half the arias sung in "Farinelli and the King" were by Handel, including Farinelli's closing number "Lascia ch'io pianga." This time, it's all about Handel's "Messiah," the writing of it, and putting it on. Where music was a matter of life and death in Farinelli, with Rylance's depressed King saved only by the music, and Farinelli's life stolen from him because of it, here everyone is just short of cash, particularly Handel, whose operas are tanking, and who needs a hit. David Horovitch's grumpy German-accented Handel is irreverent, repeatedly using the word "sheisse," Sean Campion's sly narrator, Crazy Crow (and part-time bodysnatcher. . . he needs the cash too) is equally irreverent, repeatedly using the word "fecking," and Kelly Price's singer is on the run from a scandalous past. Thus the mood and backstories contrast with the spiritual nature of the production they are all putting on. Unfortunately, the play stops at backstory, and has no story. The singing and acting are great, but this is a huge dramatic step down from Farinelli, which used it's drama to super-charge the spirituality of the singing. I was blown away by that production, but this one never added up to more than the sum of it's beautiful parts. At least I had fun imagining the Kelly Price was still playing Sister Brown in Grandage's production of "Guys and Dolls," and that Adam Cooper's Sky Masterson would rush in and rescue her from the mundanity of the dramatic construction. He didn't. 3 stars.
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1,240 posts
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Post by Steve on Dec 12, 2016 18:17:08 GMT
Dawnstar, do you know when the original cast leave this show? My sister and brother-in-law want to see them. Is it too late? Thanks in advance.
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1,240 posts
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Post by Steve on Nov 30, 2016 1:29:56 GMT
This is the story of first world war poet, Charles Hamilton Sorley. An ordinary frame contains an extraordinary portrait of an extraordinary poet. The frame is ordinary. There is something safe and staid about this. There are no fevered conversations in smoky dug-outs between panicking soldiers, on the verge of death in the trenches, which make "Journey's End" so dramatic. There is no artistic vision boldly imposed over the storytelling, like the scabrous "oh What a Lovely War." Instead, this is like late night BBC2 or Radio 4, in the way it combines a performance of Sorley's letters and Sorley's poetry, with a depiction of Sorley's parents reacting to his fate and story, with songs and music from the era. But oh what a performance this is of Sorley's poetry and letters! Alexander Knox IS Sorley. Being with him in this tiny theatre is like travelling back 101 years in a time machine, so convincing, subtle and moving is Knox's performance. Connoisseurs, of young actors giving career-defining brilliant performances, need to see this! I felt a similar frisson of discovery to when I first belly-laughed at "The Play that Goes Wrong," or to when I welled up after Cynthia Erivo collapsed in a weeping heap at the end of the overwhelming final performance of Dessa Rose, both in this same contained electric space. This is a transfer from Finborough Theatre, and I understand work has been done on this since it played there, including sending Knox to Sorley's Marlborough School to absorb the atmosphere, breathe the school's sweat, to help him transform into Sorley. Sorley was extraordinary himself. A Scot who attended a British public school, he gravitated to Europeans, and spent his gap year in Germany, where he fell in love with the Germans (albeit revulsed by the pervasive anti-semitism), only for war to break out. Then he had to kill the people he loved. Unlike Wilfred Owen, he never believed in "Dulce et decorum est," so the trenches to him were always a tragedy, a violation of a European union he believed in. He was a Remainer in an age of Brexit, 100 years ago. Overall, if the storytelling is conventional, Alexander Knox's performance makes this unmissable, and Charles Sorley's European sense of identity makes this topical. 4 and a half stars. PS: This run ends on December 3rd.
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1,240 posts
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Post by Steve on Nov 30, 2016 0:41:12 GMT
I saw this Saturday night, and loved it. Don't go if you want a narrative. There isn't one. This play is a compilation of the prose poems of Louis Jenkins, shaped by Mark Rylance into a series of vignettes, comic, downbeat and surreal. The description "pseudo-Beckett" is accurate in so far as it is about two men hanging about, who then hang about with two other people, but this didn't seem pretentious (aka pseudo) to me. Rather it is a warm, affectionate reflection of Louis Jenkin's sometimes wacky, sometimes forthright, always honest appraisal of life. Here's the most fun Jenkins poem I found on the internet, for those who want a taster: www.yourdailypoem.com/listpoem.jsp?poem_id=97Not so long ago, Jeremy Paxman was bemoaning the death of poetry, saying that even the top-selling poetry collection today sells an unprofitably low amount of copies. He pointed out that selling 15,000 copies puts you in the top ten titles sold in a year, and he suggested that the way to rescue the delights of poetry, that Shakespeare so successfully once shared with the masses, would be to abandon poetry collections and package poetry differently. That's what this production succeeds in doing, just as "Cats" once did with TS Elliot's poems, or Dylan Thomas did with "Under Milk Wood." On seeing the set, I had deja vu, as some twenty years ago, I was part of the audience that watched the live recording of the "Ice Fishing" episode of "Frasier," in which Niles and Frasier bickered over how much Niles loved ice-fishing, and how much Frasier didn't, the two men perched over a hole in the ice. This is more surreal than Frasier, or it's parent sitcom, "Cheers," but what "Nice Fish" and "Cheers" and "Frasier" all have in common is that they depict how lovely it is when very different people are simply together, the importance of some form of community, even when there is little common ground. I liked Jim Lichtscheidl's downbeat monosyllabic Erik, who reminded me of the deadpan comedian, Steven Wright, with his downbeat take of the human condition. I loved Mark Rylance's feckless Ron, whose wired enthusiasm, which rises to vertiginal heights, is delightful in itself, but also because we anticipate the comic fall to follow. And most of all, I loved the gobby cheeriness of Kayli Carter's Flo, whose ingratiating expressions would suddenly drop away to reveal the terror, fear and emptiness concealed beneath. Yes, it's not a story, but it's far too modest, warm and affectionate to be taken as an attempt to top Beckett. And I imagine it's more likely to put a smile on your face, and less likely to leave you baffled. To me, this felt like a warm fire on a cold night. 4 stars.
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1,240 posts
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Post by Steve on Nov 14, 2016 16:33:32 GMT
Went Saturday night. This production starts up as dauntingly baffling, and ends up as excessively explanatory, but in between there is an involving mystery and distinctly offbeat humour to tickle the funny bone. Some spoilers follow. . . In the 1700s, young Maggie (Fiona Glascott) joins a sewing group, which sews in virtual silence. From the start she struggles to fit in, wanting to make conversation while others want to sew. She is a 1700s Mr Bean in her clumsy attempts to fit in. . . Audience members had no idea how to react. Is Maggie's behaviour offensive or funny? Is the silent sewing group benign or threatening? Is the audience supposed to behave like the sewing group or like Maggie? Are audience members who laugh disruptive or are they the only ones who get it? To this extent, the show is a game in which the audience are participants, and how the audience adapt to the actions and revelations of this always intriguing 1 hour and 20 minutes is as important as the content of the play itself. Not only does the play disguise it's tone, it's entire genre is slippery. Is this Beckett? Pinter? McDowell? Mischief Theatre? Having played a game with the audience for most of running time, EV Crowe rushes at the end to make everything explicit, and underestimates her audience by being a touch didactic. As with the ending of Hitchcock's Psycho, I wish this play had spelled out less. Fiona Glascott walked the wire of a character, who wants to fit in, yet is intrinsically a misfit, wonderfully. She is well-supported by the entire cast, especially by John Mackay (mostly recently seen persecuting Jack Farthing's Snowden character at Hampstead Theatre), the boss of the sewing group, precariously poised between understanding Maggie and being frustrated by her. I loved the games this production played, I found Glascott's antics relentlessly amusing, I enjoyed the discombobulation of the audience, and the play left me with plenty to muse about. 3 and a half stars
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