1,181 posts
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Post by theatrelover123 on Oct 30, 2019 21:52:55 GMT
Phone call from the NT, telling me I've been re-seated due to sightline issue. Will report more when I know what they mean... There are many sightline issues with this show ;(
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Post by crowblack on Oct 30, 2019 22:20:18 GMT
There are many sightline issues with this show ;( Really bad. Maybe it should have been an arthouse film instead, or staged with the stage much lower and with the table on a revolve.
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Post by turbo25 on Oct 31, 2019 10:38:24 GMT
I've been lucky enough to see Circle Mirror Transformation, The Flick and John all here in London and consider myself a big fan of Annie Baker's thought-provoking, atmospheric style. However, The Antipodes was a big disappointment for me: loved the first 80 minutes or so but eventually I tired of trying to decipher precisely who these people were and what they were actually doing - I found it frustrating and willfully obscure.
However, if you are popping along to give this one a go then I suggest you sit up in the circle. I was on the top level (which I usually avoid at the Dorfman) and was very glad to have a) a rail to lean on; b) good sightlines; and c) to not be in the pit...the poor folk in the front couple of rows are in the light and completely on show. I amused myself watching them fall asleep or struggle to see what was going on.
Bring back The Flick. Oh, and Rufus, while you're at it, a revival of Here Lie's Love (off topic I know but, hey) would definitely wash this sour taste out of my mouth.
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Post by Boob on Oct 31, 2019 13:19:05 GMT
They were doing this a week ago. Longer queues at the collections desk. Iirc it was expensive seats that were being reallocated .. The night I went, most of Row L in the Pit was blocked off apart from the end seats.
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Post by londonpostie on Oct 31, 2019 23:53:58 GMT
It's driving me nuts this one.
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Post by crowblack on Nov 1, 2019 10:01:38 GMT
It's driving me nuts this one. The play or the reactions? Some people clearly love this - fair enough, horses for courses, Marmite and all that, but it annoys me when they loftily dismiss those who thought it half-baked as conservative. And I think some reviews have given an extra star for her reputation - the Indie's doesn't read like a 4 star review.
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Xanderl
Member
Not always very high value in terms of ticket yield or donations
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Post by Xanderl on Nov 1, 2019 10:18:58 GMT
Row L is gone in the centre block now. Aside from central facing seats, and those in the circles, nobody sees faces most of the time for the first hour, I think. I'd go for the end furthest from the auditorium entrance, circle or back 2 rows of those end stalls (raised block of 4 rows, last one being high seats at side stalls level). So do you think side seats in the circle are better than side stalls for this one? Currently in a cheap side seat in the pit.
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Post by londonpostie on Nov 1, 2019 10:34:35 GMT
It's driving me nuts this one. The play or the reactions? Some people clearly love this - fair enough, horses for courses, Marmite and all that, but it annoys me when they loftily dismiss those who thought it half-baked as conservative. And I think some reviews have given an extra star for her reputation - the Indie's doesn't read like a 4 star review. Even the reviews feel a little off; on the one hand - I agree with you - she gets credit for her past work. On the other, some reviewers wave airily and say 'a play about plays', before moving on to their next gig.
I can't ignore there is stuff there, that is there for - presumably - intelligent reasons, that I'm not getting to the bottom of. It is unusually cryptic. So does that expose my limitations or is Baker being, as turbo25 mused above, a little unnecessary.
That rather begs the question - me or her ..which is where I am with this atm
Soooo .. anyone, any thoughts on, say, the wolf guy? The extraordinary is all around us ...
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Post by crowblack on Nov 1, 2019 11:00:47 GMT
That rather begs the question - me or her ..which is where I am with this atm For me it's defo "her". I think structurally it isn't a great play, and to say oh, it's playing with structure isn't a good enough response: you can play with structure without boring your audience (even the actors looked flat at the curtain call). Similarly, when I read about the set up - a table with actors' backs to you - I thought, '"provocative?" but it's not: some plum seats - the expensive ones they put the professional reviewers in - do get a decent view. As it's co-directed by Baker and the other director is also a designer, I don't think there's an excuse for this. On the subject itself, it didn't chime with either my experience in meetings/groups where stories are pitched and developed or the sheer wealth and joy people take in stories and world-building. As I've commented elsewhere, this year AO3, the fanfic website, won a collective Hugo Award, everyone from broadsheet press to Twitter is obsessed with dissecting season finales and drama trailers, Netflix's spend on 'content' is $15 BILLION this year and you can get Pop figurines of screenwriters. Writers - story creators - are lauded now in a way they haven't been for years (the nasty old Hollywood joke about the actress so dumb she screwed the writer), with podcasts etc. listened to by thousands. I find the set-up idea of a group of people struggling to come up with stories alien to my experience and to what is going on out there, and even when they tell personal stories, those stories just feel flat and in no way develop or build, have no impact on the way the other characters round that table subsequently view or interact with that character, apart from a brief poignancy for the chicken story. The doll fairy tale was amusing, but Caryl Churchill did the domestic fairy tale so much more powerfully and meaningfully in Imp. I did think, watching, maybe it's a middle-class, lauded American writer struggling with her own personal ennui or writer's block?
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Post by wiggymess on Nov 1, 2019 11:26:30 GMT
I do wonder why the debate so quickly turns to dismissing differing opinions on a piece of (subjective) art. Especially when it's prefixed with being annoyed at have been dismissed for their own opinion. Odd to me.
Another discussion being hijacked by the "People only like it because of the name attached" argument.
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Post by gazzaw13 on Nov 1, 2019 11:45:57 GMT
As a big Annie Baker fan I was desperately disappointed with this. A play about the creative process needs to engage the audience, otherwise it will inevitably degenerate into self reverential navel gazing. Laura Wade pulled it off in The Watsons but having previously thought Annie to be a fully dressed emperor, here she has no clothes. Struggle to award more than *
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Post by katurian on Nov 1, 2019 11:57:36 GMT
That's certainly true sometimes, leaving aside British TV writers (because they tend to write the whole of a show themselves), there are a crop of very well known showrunner type writers in America (Vince Gilligan of Breaking Bad, David Simon of The Wire, although he's just recently got himself into hot water over defending James Franco), and though there are exceptions, they are still mostly white middle aged men. But, I'm not sure beyond the showrunners' names, if a general audience (not people interest in screenwriting themselves) could reel off a list of writers for episodes of their favourite shows. Mostly, outside other writers, most TV writers aren't household names at all. Even if you told the audience which episodes of Better Call Saul or Game of Thrones they wrote and they realised "oh! I love that one!". That is reflected in Antipodes, if we go with the theory it's a TV show brainstorm, with Sandy as the big cheese, and the guy he was mentored by himself, and with Heathens being mentioned as his name making prestige show. The other writers in the room are just fodder for the endless churning mill. A lot of screenwriters are still treated poorly and underpaid behind the scenes, or suddenly dropped from a project with no warning. There always seems to be some problem going on with the WGA or a strike, and PAs are treated even worse. So given that, I find it entirely plausible that Sandy is a prestige drama showrunner who had a hit and now has the pressure of trying to recreate that magic in a bottle again, starting from scratch with a new bunch of writers. In the increasingly overloaded "golden age of TV" where everyone's bored of anti heroes, they've seen the hero's journey a million times, most historical periods have been done, violence/nudity/etc don't shock anymore, I can totally see it being a nightmare to try and find "something new to say". It's also maybe that Sandy is a one hit wonder and isn't really that good at his job. I kept thinking of William Goldman's line that nobody knows anything in Hollywood about what will work, everyone's just guessing and hoping. The play is about interaction between a bunch of people who know each other to varying degrees (some going back longer than others), but none of them really know each other, and they're there to work, so I don't mind that none of them develop deep bonds because that often isn't the case at work, and I actually like that depiction when paired with the fact they're all forced to tell intimate stories and fears, that doing that doesn't really open them up to each other, or seriously change anyone's opinion of anyone else, or make them truly empathetic to each other either. I like that the play both works as an ode to the power of stories, since every time they fall into despair, someone begins one and once again they are all drawn irresistibly into listening... but also, it's about the limits of stories, or the contradiction, that they are trying to find the heart of something in that room, but nothing they tell each other makes them really care about each other. (don't know if the below counts as spoilers, so I'll say just in case) Although I think in small ways there are subtle developments and changes of view. Sinéad Matthews cares about Stuart McQuarrie, from my memory I think they both bring each other water bottles and share stuff, quietly, while most of the team ignore him. I also think it's very pointed that they all wake up and realise the power of Fisayo Akinade's long story after its been pointed he and Matthews are the only two (not white men!) who the intern doesn't take notes from.
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Post by crowblack on Nov 1, 2019 12:31:06 GMT
who the intern doesn't take notes from. Good comments, though from where I was sitting (stalls) I couldn't see the intern at all, so his taking notes and Sandy's texting went unseen. From my glimpse of Conleth Hill, I thought maybe he was hair/beard styled to look like GRR Martin, and the carpet and set up an obvious nod to the Overlook Hotel (writer with writer's block goes muderously insane, though in that film other stories and backstories emerge in the rooms around him while his brain folds in on itself). Perhaps this play doesn't culturally translate from New York, or maybe it already feels dated with its overwhelmingly male roundtable (the women bringing in takeways or knitting felt a bit 70s sitcom to me) : women screenwriters and showrunners are a thing here and in the USA and I think the names of Sally Wainwright, Sarah Phelps, Jane Goldman are well known and lauded, and Emmy-garlanded Phoebe Waller-Bridge has just landed a whopping Amazon contract. I'm following the Amazon LOTR on Twitter and there has been a lot of excitement about the diverse writing team assembled for that. I think an aspect of the play I'd have liked to see explored but wasn't was the woman - disappeared - who had issues with everything. That, I think, is a big factor in storytelling at the moment - it's why I think dystopias, Marvel, fantasy and zombies/supernatural dominate the scene right now: no nationality/country/culture has to be the baddie, controversial issues around religion can be sidestepped, historical misogyny and racist structures can be ignored if you use a steampunk rather than 19thc setting etc., enabling the mega-dramas to sell globally without upsetting any potential audience market. Look at the furore over Joker - the Guardian published several negative pieces on it before it was even released, but then there was a backlash to the backlash. I thought it was an amazing, very timely piece of storytelling, absolutely on the nose of where we are right now, but some were dismissing it without seeing it because of the director and writers' previous output. It also addressed the role of stories in society in De Niro's casting and the stylistic and storyline nods to some of his films- Taxi Driver was said to have inspired the attempted assassination of Reagan, while his character in Brazil was a favourite of the Oklahoma Bomber, who used Tuttle as a pseudonym, though the writers and director are naturally horrified that their film has become a favourite with the US Right. I'm going on a bit here, but I think the way stories are created and consumed is fascinating - it's why I booked for the play months ago but it's also why I found her outlook didn't chime with me.
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Post by crowblack on Nov 1, 2019 16:05:42 GMT
Do you think that is who they are and what they are doing? I thought there were clear biblical and other nods in the text and staging but she threw so much into it nothing really seemed to stick for me - it was more like watching someone's copious essay notes: I didn't think it had that theatrical alchemy that, say, Caryl Churchill brings to similar material. Maybe if you were sitting somewhere else this would play differently (Vinay Patel was asking this question with this in mind on Twitter yesterday): for example, Conleth Hill with his George Lucas, JRR Martin, Charlton Heston Moses look was hidden from me by the staging.
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Post by crowblack on Nov 1, 2019 19:18:35 GMT
which caused me to really listen to the words, perhaps, making me think? Maybe that was the intention of the way they staged it, come to that. Stories are an oral tradition and most of the audience relied on that for much of the play. My first review comment on this thread was to say it might as well have been a radio play for most of its length. It would have saved me a lot of money and an 8 hour train journey if they'd just stuck it on Radio 3 instead. If events like Sandy's texting or the intern's note-taking (or not note-taking) are important to the theme or plot it would be helpful if all of us could see them. The RX staged a recent Beckett using a very slow revolve, and I'd have appreciated that here.
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Post by londonpostie on Nov 2, 2019 6:47:02 GMT
I do think the corporate environment is an important theme; the ideas will of course be better if a profit-making concern pools together a selected group, and pressures until they produce something profit-making (not just Netflix but Amazon and several other new providers). It seems highly likely that there has never been a time in history when platforms have looked so hard for potential content.
Wasn't the ultimate result 'is someone getting this down' intentionally ridiculous - surely a serious writer wouldn't validate such a process and I don't think Baker does. She ridicules it in the nonsense sub-Greek myth tale.
So the most intriguing stories we hear involve the humanity of Chicken Danny, the real-life calamities of the head guy, as well as - if that's what it is - the idea from foxhead guy of the extraordinary being all around us.
Postulating ... maybe the audience being somewhat excluded from the event - the process - is part of the point. Not sure that' going to mollify people who paid up to £60.
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Post by crowblack on Nov 2, 2019 10:29:22 GMT
That rather begs the question - me or her ..which is where I am with this atm The American reviews for this from 2017 are worth looking up (they're collected on show-score.com). They're more mixed than the mainstream UK ones. Several view it as a (possibly blocked) writer working through her own "difficult second album"-type process, rather than as something relating to the outside, which is rather how I felt. The Vulture and Entertainment Weekly ones chime with my feelings about it (especially the feeling that we've been given her working notes) - Variety is rather more blunt!
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Post by Steve on Nov 2, 2019 11:46:14 GMT
I'd go further and suggest we are looking at how the bible was written. A group of sages sitting around editing an oral tradition into a code by which to organise civilisation and live. A prize for the Monkey, I think!
Speculation and Spoilers follow. . .
I mean:
(1) you've got the disembodied voice of Max (ie the Maximum Guy), aka God or Godot, dictating the rules from the up on high;
(2) you've got the apocalyptic outside threats (eg Egyptians/Wilderness) raging beyond the Boardroom (aka Mount Sinai);
(3) you've got Sandy, aka Moses, saying he learned EVERYTHING from Max in that hilarious speech where he states just how all-encompassing is Max's hold on his every thought and utterance, and then passing on his knowledge to his fellow (Covenant) writers;
(4) you've got Danny 2 getting the boot for his subversive thoughts;
(5) you've got the story of the banished woman (aka Eve), who broke all the rules;
(6) you've got Sinead Matthew's plaintive affectionate statement of how much she misses Danny 2, suggesting a general Eve-like female inclination toward the subversive;
(7) you've got the Scribe going fearfully apocalyptically feral with primitive worship (the Golden Calf) and then getting replaced;
(8) you've got the actual brainstorming of a nascent Genesis-style story of Creation
AND you've got that title: "The Antipodes," which means the other side of the Earth, literally, suggesting the Divine; but more than that, maybe it's a reference to Benny Shanon's work "Antipodes of the Mind," and Shanon's speculation that Moses composed the Covenants under the divine inspiration of plant-based hallucinogenics.
None of this means it's a great play, just because it references important and unsolvable human questions, but I do think it suggests why she is so unspecific about where this play is set and what exactly they are talking about. She wants the multiple meanings, and she is inserting this into her body of work as a kind of ORIGIN STORY for stories.
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Post by crowblack on Nov 2, 2019 11:59:27 GMT
Sandy, aka Moses, saying he learned EVERYTHING from Max His previous hit show was called 'Heathens'. I do think there's a better play in here but for me it's not the one I experienced on stage. I think the bit with the whiteboard was where I flipped from "is this good, or is this just a shedload of essay notes?".
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Post by peggs on Nov 2, 2019 22:14:51 GMT
I think perhaps I could have done with reading your ideas before I saw it as i'd have been actively thinking and i'm not reading your thoughts and thinking it couldn't have been that, it could well have been, variations and parts of this or that. My response would appear to be laughingly simplistic, regarding Conleth Hill's look I just thought 'ahh maybe he's enjoying being able to have hair against post GoT and isn't it luxuriant'.
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Post by intoanewlife on Nov 3, 2019 1:52:00 GMT
This sounds pretty fascinating...
How do those who've seen it think the view from the 15 quid 2nd level side seats would be?
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Post by londonpostie on Nov 3, 2019 9:37:41 GMT
do think the corporate environment is an important theme Again, contrasting The Church - a worldwide corporate purveyor of stories for centuries, with Amazon and other publishing corporations, purveyor of stories for decades? The Church and Amazon seems an excellent idea to muse over. I'm not sure the bible itself works - or, say, Sandy as The Creator - because those stories were written over millennia and, while The Antipodes feels looong, perhaps not that long ..
Established religions do demonstrate the potential for empowering those who claim stories for their own.
Fwiw, I was actually thinking a little in terms of fake news/Facebook, and in particular Twitter's new ban on targeted political stories, sorry ads. Kind of interesting in a corporate brainstorming high stakes sense ...
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Post by Boob on Nov 3, 2019 19:58:02 GMT
Can anyone confirm who voices Max? My theory... Rufus Norris!
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Post by foxa on Nov 3, 2019 20:20:35 GMT
Andrew Woodall.
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Post by amybenson on Nov 4, 2019 7:07:39 GMT
I do think the corporate environment is an important theme; the ideas will of course be better if a profit-making concern pools together a selected group, and pressures until they produce something profit-making (not just Netflix but Amazon and several other new providers). It seems highly likely that there has never been a time in history when platforms have looked so hard for potential content. Wasn't the ultimate result 'is someone getting this down' intentionally ridiculous - surely a serious writer wouldn't validate such a process and I don't think Baker does. She ridicules it in the nonsense sub-Greek myth tale. So the most intriguing stories we hear involve the humanity of Chicken Danny, the real-life calamities of the head guy, as well as - if that's what it is - the idea from foxhead guy of the extraordinary being all around us. Postulating ... maybe the audience being somewhat excluded from the event - the process - is part of the point. Not sure that' going to mollify people who paid up to £60. I thought there was a bit of an oversaturation of the storytelling market thing going on, with these people being given a carte blanche and not actually having anything to say, except channeling their mostly unremarkable lives and pointless idle fantasies into the story.
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Post by intoanewlife on Nov 4, 2019 16:21:57 GMT
How do those who've seen it think the view from the 15 quid 2nd level side seats would be? OK. You just have to mentally filter out that you will be looking through the ceiling and big central light-fitting down on the action. You'll see faces better than those on lower levels for the first hour. So that's a no then lol So where would you recommend as the best place to sit?
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Post by crowblack on Nov 4, 2019 17:21:24 GMT
So where would you recommend as the best place to sit? I don't know where I'd recommend, but there are some audience photos on Twitter that will give you an idea of how it looks from higher up.
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Post by intoanewlife on Nov 4, 2019 18:07:27 GMT
So where would you recommend as the best place to sit? Sides of the first tier, fairly central or the ends furthest from the entrance. Cheers...thank you ! (and to the poster above as well x)
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Post by Forrest on Nov 5, 2019 22:35:02 GMT
I've been avoiding this thread because first I wanted to see the play without being influenced by your opinions, and then I wanted to review it and it didn't seem right to read other people's opinions before I put my own on paper, especially since I knew there would be some insights here so much more thorough and interesting than mine (and I didn't want to be tempted in any way to borrow those), but to be honest I could not wait to see what you were discussing. I found this to be the most mind-boggling experience I've had in the theatre this year, but I also absolutely loved it. To be honest, I'm still unsure what it was that she was trying to tell us, but I enjoyed every slow (and occasionally agonising) minute of it and found it absolutely brilliant. I'm struggling with the desire to buy another ticket and go see it again. That being said, again - I find myself thinking for almost a week now about it and I am still no smarter. The only thing I was pretty certain of is that there was criticism in there about our need to turn everything into a business, our obsession with corporate culture. I believe it was Steve who noted it that the stories happening around the characters all seemed to have so much potential (the storm, Doel's wardrobe...), and there they were sitting around the table completely uninspired, devastated that they cannot find anything to tell. I have just about a million ideas about what it could be that she wanted us to see on that stage, but am no closer to figuring out which answer is the right one. From the idea that the whole thing is a metaphor for a playwright struggling to produce a play, to outright criticism or our superficial treatment of stories and the need to glamourise and filter everything that has made us lost interest in the mundane, to the idea (which I believe @theatremonkey has also shared) that this is Baker going back to reconstruct the origin of the story of all stories, the creation of religion(s) - they could all be plausible explanations for what I've seen. An element that was also particularly interesting to me was the characters' intention to write a story that could be communicated beyond words, and I kept wondering if there was an exercise hidden in there that Baker was somehow trying out on us and if this was the reason that the lights in the auditorium were left on. I kept having a nagging feeling that observing the audience watching the play was the reason for this move; that we were all supposed to be part of the same event as the actors and were somehow invited to be part of the storytelling process through this. Although I'm no wiser as to the exact purpose of that either. So, yes, not really sure if I understood anything. But I loved how it made my mind literally fire up in all directions. Also, Steve , do you write reviews somewhere? If you do, I would love to read them. If you don't - you absolutely should. Your short reviews here are such a joy to read! There is, however, one tiny thing I disagree on in the whole long post you've written (and that has nothing to do with The Antipodes)... I found John quite heartwarming, as a play. While most reviewers seemed to strongly dislike the young couple, I found them - Elias in particular - quite likeable. I thought his insecurities were endearing, his determination to protect her from the side of himself he disliked (that YELLING scene, in capitals, broke my heart a little) quite gentle and his reluctance to let go, despite knowing that what they had was no longer genuine, quite sad. I also thought she had a sweet streak, although perhaps a bit less so - but her point of view of the relationship was different because she was the one wanting out, feeling stuck, and he was the one clinging to it more, afraid to move on. My impression was that the mismatch between them made them seem like the unlikeable, superficial people most reviews had concluded they are. To me they just seemed... Unhappy. And we tend to become less likeable versions of ourselves when we are unhappy. But I genuinely sympathised with them. And I didn't find the world they inhabited cold, simply... to me it all seemed to be one big mismatch of people and circumstances brought together in one place. As it often happens in life. By contrast to the above three works, I feel "John" and "The Antipodes" ditch the warmth, which is the reason I find them harder to warm to. In "John," the Set is a Motel filled with ghostly stories, of Gettysburg, and much besides. It is owned by a storytelling gossip, who seems to control the storytelling of the play, manipulating space and time by opening stage curtains and winding clocks, and her strange friend, so powerful in the realm of this story that she can even interrupt the audience's interval to spin us a story. The protagonists seek solace through telling each other stories, even as stories all around them consume them. The only genre warmth Baker offers us in this cold world is the bond between the Motel owner and her mysterious friend. For this reason, I didn't immediately like "John" as much as Baker's previous plays.
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Post by crowblack on Nov 8, 2019 19:07:29 GMT
Conleth Hill will be on Sunday Brunch on Sunday (obvs!). It's worth checking their line-up because they often have actors on talking about their current stage show - actors from The Son and Appropriate have been featured recently.
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