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Post by lonlad on Jun 4, 2017 12:11:46 GMT
Interestingly, both shows are going ahead today at the Globe, which is 5 mins from the Menier (and Borough Market)
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Post by lonlad on Jun 2, 2017 0:09:19 GMT
Amber was back from holiday tonight and ON FIRE as was the cast as a whole - and the understudy Curtis (Ryan Reid) is a great improvement on Joe, I have to say. A thrilling night and the production is in superb shape.
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Post by lonlad on Jun 1, 2017 0:49:42 GMT
What can one say? It's a glorious score and a shame if its virtues were lost on you, with a half-dozen or more iconic numbers from the Broadway songbook not least "Some Other Time". Very odd that somehow your defense is that you haven't heard it before --- so what? does that mean Hamlet is a bad play if one hasn't perhaps seen it before? That's the entire point of exposure - you have to start somewhere. Sorry if your ear doesn't take to Bernstein.
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Post by lonlad on May 31, 2017 23:59:44 GMT
"Without any memorable songs" ? Wow. The score is a Broadway glory - one can only assume the show doesn't deliver it. 5 stars from David Benedict on The Arts Desk.
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Post by lonlad on May 31, 2017 16:00:45 GMT
Please God no to the bloody BODYGUARD ever again --- what a total non-event.
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Post by lonlad on May 31, 2017 15:47:41 GMT
Thanks for that. We'll make sure and steer clear :-)
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Post by lonlad on May 31, 2017 15:30:20 GMT
She has been wigged and costumed to look absurd/grotesque -- a few years ago in HAY FEVER she looked fine.
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Post by lonlad on May 29, 2017 23:35:02 GMT
Winsome to a faretheewell, La Kendal now looks like a dwarfish chipmunk. Sorry to say it but it's true.
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Post by lonlad on May 29, 2017 9:43:13 GMT
Wonderful comment above, the first half of which bears out the supposedly offending earlier sentence completely!
(A cast can be hardworking and terrible, alas, as we all know.)
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Post by lonlad on May 25, 2017 22:28:10 GMT
I thought it was for PBS in the States.
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Post by lonlad on May 21, 2017 17:08:24 GMT
Sarah Greene was a 2014 Tony nominee for THE CRIPPLE OF INISHMAAN, directed by Michael Grandage
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Post by lonlad on May 18, 2017 8:40:20 GMT
The wonderful Joseph Millson is playing both the sons, so that's an incentive !!
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Post by lonlad on May 18, 2017 0:22:28 GMT
That idiot in The Times liked it so it MUST be awful.
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Post by lonlad on May 17, 2017 23:21:55 GMT
Painful beyond words. I hope Dame Maggie is steering WELL clear. Mo Lipman plays it with a German accent that comes and goes and a vague sense of embarrassment. Fizzy Kendal is simply ghastly. The solicitor in the third act didn't seem to have been rehearsed. Poor Trevor, he is just SO desperate these days .....
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Post by lonlad on May 15, 2017 23:31:20 GMT
I saw the 1993 production at the Court and this one is a LOT better. You make not like the material (though my guest and I did - A LOT), but I wouldn't pass up a chance to go.
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Post by lonlad on May 15, 2017 5:44:00 GMT
Shame about the play itself, which was overinflated rubbish on Broadway - though Hugh Dancy did provide immediate eye candy. Nina Arianda by the time I saw it was playing her reviews and was borderline intolerable.
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Post by lonlad on May 11, 2017 12:08:26 GMT
No it doesn't --- Wilde's play is overripe twaddle and probably the only way to do proper justice to it is to indulge its camp excesses - i.e. not treat it (or the story itself) reverentially/portentously as would seem to be the Berkoff and now the Farber norm. Wonder what the morale is like backstage on this one? god only knows how they will power through NT Live ....
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Post by lonlad on May 10, 2017 17:40:48 GMT
Aha, yes, exactly right - which, if memory serves, happily was NOT in slow-mo :-)
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Post by lonlad on May 10, 2017 17:28:24 GMT
Was Sher in it later? Possibly. The lead at the National (where I saw it in 1989) was Berkoff himself as Herod, with Katherine Schlesinger in the title role. I remember its slow-mo ponderousness but it must have done at least reasonably well for the simple reason that it transferred to the Phoenix-admittedly, this was back in the day when Berkoff was a big name.
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Post by lonlad on May 9, 2017 23:31:15 GMT
Checkhov??? :-(
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Post by lonlad on May 9, 2017 23:24:32 GMT
Saw it tonight. Excruciating. If the National wants to alienate all those drawn to the venue by ANGELS, they have now done so and more. A complete disgrace, and the curtain call was so frigging self important (as was everything else about it) that my entire row was suppressing sniggers ....
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Post by lonlad on May 2, 2017 23:45:28 GMT
Jane's French accent is at least better than Mr Seadon-Young's embarrassing Noo Yawk one .....
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Post by lonlad on Apr 5, 2017 22:42:39 GMT
Why is it that Damian Lewis can do American accents very well on TV and film, as we know, but has no clue onstage - first as Teach in AMERICAN BUFFALO and now in this, in which he speaks in a pinched, nasal stage whisper that only drops when the character gets angry. Thank God for Sophie Okonedo, who is terrific, but none of the men in her orbit give her much to work with. And the PJ Harvey music has got to go.
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Post by lonlad on Apr 5, 2017 9:19:17 GMT
It's just you LOL. "Cliquey" Hmmm ..... nor have I ever noticed a commonality to the dress code there (except that they are all wearing clothes!) But Gary Owen is a really GREAT playwright -- VIOLENCE & SON and IPHIGENIA IN SPLOTT both superb - so this sounds like he has completed a personal trifecta.
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Post by lonlad on Apr 2, 2017 22:22:35 GMT
Sounds good. There was a stunning production in New York a season or two ago Off Broadway and the play seemed eerily relevant - one assumes it has only become more so!
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Post by lonlad on Mar 29, 2017 23:13:23 GMT
Jane Asher one of the LEAST good things about the show, along with Haydn Oakley, who isn't up to it vocally -- the dancing is glorious and to demean Robbie Fairchild (*a ballet world bona fide star) is so infantile as to not be worth further comment. The designs, too, are among Crowley's career best, which is saying a lot !
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Post by lonlad on Mar 28, 2017 7:31:16 GMT
Definitely a Greek tragedy, the word tragedy having itself meant "goat song" in ancient Greek. Bill Pullman's performance on Bway in the original one of the greatest I have ever seen. Fingers cautiously crossed for this one.
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Post by lonlad on Mar 26, 2017 22:23:10 GMT
I hope "is Damian Lewis famous" was/is a joke question? Next we'll be getting, "who is this Benedict Cumberbatch fella anyway" ,,,, ?
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Post by lonlad on Mar 23, 2017 9:27:23 GMT
So the women will be playing the characters as written - i.e. as men? That seems entirely counterintuitive (this isn't Glenda Jackson as LEAR!) but it makes nominally better sense than if the characters themselves were changed to be women, which would make a nonsense of Laura Wade's text. But given that the play was written and (initially) directed by women, surely if this is what had been intended, they would have done it first time round? Seems totally unnecessary.
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Post by lonlad on Mar 22, 2017 9:11:24 GMT
As posterj said earlier (and I agree 100%), it's largely wonderful but owes an enormous amount to the two leads, and to Zoe Rainey, an alumna of the recent Kenneth Branagh season who is the pick of a surprisingly dodgy supporting cast. David Seadon-Young has one of those fake Noo Yawk accents you could drive a truck through, and Jane Asher more or less gives up on her Gallic sounds midway through and just sounds like, well, Jane Asher. Nor does Haydn Oakley begin to have the vocal command and heft of Max von Essen, who originated the part on Broadway. That said, the designs are so ceaselessly gorgeous that I would be happy to go back and just feast on the visuals - Bob Crowley outdoing even himself.
A solid 4 stars but not (in my view) 5.
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