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Post by Mark on Feb 19, 2018 17:52:56 GMT
I was in box 4 yesterday afternoon - £25 about an hour before the show so a bargain.
A slow burner, but I did really enjoy it, and particularly I found the acting to be so engaging. Lesley Manville putting in a wonderful performance,
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Post by david on Mar 11, 2018 19:56:06 GMT
Caught this at today’s matinee. As Mark stated, it’s a slow burner, but it worked for me. Having the opportunity to see Jeremy Irons and Lesley Manville was an absolute treat. If I had to choose, it was LM’s overall performance that won me over, going from comedic to heartache so quickly. She owned the stage every time she was on there and it was. an absolute privilege to watch her and JI at work.
AT 3hrs 20min it could have done with another interval rather than just the 1 as there is so much stuff to take in and being so full on at times,it may have been better to have split it up more.
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4,631 posts
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Post by Phantom of London on Mar 11, 2018 20:17:33 GMT
My review: Eugene O’Neill’s semi-autobiographical play comes to the West End in another lengthy production, this time starring Jeremy Irons as ageing actor James Tyrone, and Lesley Manville as his morphine-addicted wife, Mary. A claustrophobic set lined with books and lights moves the plot forward as first, we see Mary Tyrone in recovery, happy and calm, but soon realise she is in her own reality of dope heaven (or hell). In Manville’s hands the role takes on both the fierceness and deceit of an addict, along with the weakness of the wife and mother who ‘once fell in love with James Tyrone, and was so happy’. Irons is a theatrical Tyrone, every inch an actor and never a glimpse into the real man. He baits his sons – the shiftless Jamie (Rory Keenan) and the consumptive Edmund (Matthew Beard) – and yet can’t control even the level of whisky in the bottle he keeps on the table. He sees the girl within his wife, but can’t reach her. The twisting hands, the trailing wedding dress, the lying on the bed with eyes open, the drifting, the drinking, the moments where just for a minute or two Mary Tyrone is happy again. It’s all about her, and the moments where Manville is absent from the stage drag, just a little, in a heart to heart between Irons and Beard where the latter just can’t catch the tragedy of the character. Keenan, though, is good, filled with self-loathing and self-destruction, on a spiral of disappointment by seeing addiction and disgust all around him. He has his father’s name and perhaps, his weakness too. There’s nothing but a downward spiral for all of them, in this raw and broken world where everyone lies and no one can face what’s really going on around them. Could this be classified as a memory play, just like Tennessee William’s The Glass Menagerie?
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Post by loureviews on Mar 13, 2018 9:55:00 GMT
Possibly, Phantom. It isn't narrated as such but does make much of what the characters reflect on from the past.
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Post by Snciole on Mar 21, 2018 10:44:44 GMT
Manville is great but I found the play and production very dull. I felt every second of those 3hrs 20 and they started late!
There is space in theatre for traditional productions such as this but putting aside my own issues with Eyre as a director and O'Neill as a playwright all the performances were appropriate. Matthew Beard isn't my favourite actor but I warmed to him after this.
Irons is all over the place-odd accent and his diction at the beginning was terrible.
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1,016 posts
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Post by andrew on Mar 21, 2018 22:08:20 GMT
This needed something done about Act 4. I got through Act 1 and 2 fine, Act 3 I was content with, then everyone just kept talking and talking and talking and going outside for a bit then coming back in for a bit and being drunk and fighting and making up and being angry again and making up again. I would say some judicious editing could have helped a lot. Everything else about it was quite good I thought (except as Snciole said, Jeremy's awful awful accent...)
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Post by popcultureboy on Mar 21, 2018 23:53:48 GMT
Irons has a throwaway line which explains his accent and diction choice in the VERY LONG HOUR when Manville is absent in the second half, which made me forgive his performance retrospectively. There's a reason why this tends to have the hour long act when Mary is not on stage trimmed down, and while in the right hands that hour can be gripping stuff, here I don't think the hands are quite right....
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Post by couldileaveyou on Mar 21, 2018 23:55:53 GMT
I'd like to see it again even just for Manville's final five minutes, but I'm not sure I can survive the rest of the second part again.
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1,016 posts
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Post by andrew on Mar 22, 2018 11:11:41 GMT
I'd like to see it again even just for Manville's final five minutes, but I'm not sure I can survive the rest of the second part again. I couldn't tune back in again to this having lost the will to live a bit in the preceding hour. I was too fidgety to really get gripped by her final moments. Which is a shame. Maybe she could just do a little YouTube video for us all so I could look in again?
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Post by Snciole on Mar 22, 2018 16:01:32 GMT
Irons has a throwaway line which explains his accent and diction choice in the VERY LONG HOUR when Manville is absent in the second half, which made me forgive his performance retrospectively. There's a reason why this tends to have the hour long act when Mary is not on stage trimmed down, and while in the right hands that hour can be gripping stuff, here I don't think the hands are quite right.... I can see why Irons has taken those many accents on but ultimately Scar from The Lion King comes off most of all (Did Tyrone tour in Africa ). Do other actors portray James Tyrone with such a mid-Atlantic accent?
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Post by mallardo on Mar 22, 2018 18:58:23 GMT
Accent issues aside, I very much liked Irons. He is a (for once) credible former matinee idol and the most sympathetic James Tyrone imaginable. His emotional reflections on his poverty stricken childhood were beautifully played and most moving. If the last hour of the play was not all it should be it was not his fault but that of the sons.
The less said about Matthew Beard's Edmund the better - he's miscast and woeful. Rory Keenan's Jamie is much better but, I thought, unbalanced. Whisky is for Jamie what morphine is for his mother, transformative. He must be a different person in the final act than he has been earlier - not just drunk but released. His raging self-lacerating confession to his brother is one of the greatest scenes in American theatre but it needs to be properly set up. I will never forget the late Philip Seymour Hoffman erupting on stage in this scene in the 2003 Broadway production. It was shocking because we had seen no hint of it earlier. His Jamie stole the show - it's possible to do. But not this time.
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