The Other Boleyn Girl - Chichester Festival Theatre
May 9, 2024 16:59:10 GMT
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joem, vickyg, and 1 more like this
Post by Steve on May 9, 2024 16:59:10 GMT
Just got out of this, and enjoyed it, despite being a bit tired for having to drive on account of train strikes.
I will write a very quick car park review while I wait for the car park to clear lol.
Some spoilers follow. . .
It's a very classy sedate production, with lots of lovely musical interludes accompanied by suitably stiff and staid courtly dancing, an adaptation written by Mike Poulton as if we've already seen his adaptations of "Wolf Hall" and "Bringing up the Bodies," who thus leaves out a lot of the action from both those plays.
Thus this show plays like a serious version of "Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead," whereby we barely ever see the real schemers, Cromwell, Wolsey and especially Henry VIII, the monster at the heart of it all.
Instead, we get Freya Mavor's Anne Boleyn acting like Regina George from "Mean Girls," calling her sister Mary a "farm animal," a "slut" and a "whore," and scheming to steal her life. The girls' mother and uncle, Alex Kingston and Andrew Wyatt, are equally, if deliciously dreadful, albeit caricatures of dreadfulness, whereas Mavor's Anne's dreadfulness is much better developed and verges on poignant.
Thankfully, Lucy Phelps' Mary Boleyn is a likeable character, the only one, and her plight, her attempts to survive and save her sister from herself, are moving.
Anyway, by keeping Cromwell and Henry VIII out of the show, by and large, much drama is sacrificed, and I enjoyed this classy 2 hour, 55 minutes production to the tune of 3 and a half stars.
Now the drive home, grr, but at least the car park misery is over, and I can exit at leisure lol.
I will write a very quick car park review while I wait for the car park to clear lol.
Some spoilers follow. . .
It's a very classy sedate production, with lots of lovely musical interludes accompanied by suitably stiff and staid courtly dancing, an adaptation written by Mike Poulton as if we've already seen his adaptations of "Wolf Hall" and "Bringing up the Bodies," who thus leaves out a lot of the action from both those plays.
Thus this show plays like a serious version of "Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead," whereby we barely ever see the real schemers, Cromwell, Wolsey and especially Henry VIII, the monster at the heart of it all.
Instead, we get Freya Mavor's Anne Boleyn acting like Regina George from "Mean Girls," calling her sister Mary a "farm animal," a "slut" and a "whore," and scheming to steal her life. The girls' mother and uncle, Alex Kingston and Andrew Wyatt, are equally, if deliciously dreadful, albeit caricatures of dreadfulness, whereas Mavor's Anne's dreadfulness is much better developed and verges on poignant.
Thankfully, Lucy Phelps' Mary Boleyn is a likeable character, the only one, and her plight, her attempts to survive and save her sister from herself, are moving.
Anyway, by keeping Cromwell and Henry VIII out of the show, by and large, much drama is sacrificed, and I enjoyed this classy 2 hour, 55 minutes production to the tune of 3 and a half stars.
Now the drive home, grr, but at least the car park misery is over, and I can exit at leisure lol.
