A Christmas Carol - The Old Vic

I like Rhys Ifans, but isn't he a bit too young to be playing Scrooge?

He's had a rough life...he's not exactly youthful looking hhaha

I don't know, Dickens doesn't seem to have given Scrooge a definitive age, and the internet generally theorises he could be anything from 40 to old (thanks, internet), so a 50 year old (as of tomorrow) Ifans sounds pretty reasonable.

Couldn't they do a more interesting, less overdone story though? Couldn't Warchus find anyone better than Jack Thorne, or did he just want the adaptation done quickly?

I may be in a minority of one here, and I haven't seen Girl from the North Country which seems to be going down a treat, but I'm almost yearning for the Spacey days where you got a decent run of some classic, well cast plays and the marketing was altogether more attractive and distinctive. Maybe it's just me but it all just seems a bit too random under Matthew Warchus even though I know he is going for diversity which in itself is no bad thing. There has been a lot of good stuff like Groundhog Day, and I enjoyed The Caretaker and Rosencrantz, but still a lot of his programming seems a bit meh.

I miss the Spacey days terribly.

Two Salomes, RSC and NT now Two Christmas Carols, RSC and OV. Don't these theatre peeps talk to each Other? S'pose RSC serves the shires and Old Vic the metropolis but really.

He had a very tricky opening year, though. It took quite a while for him to get into his stride. And how many of the non-Spacey productions do we remember?

I find the Old Vic hit and miss nowadays. I didn't much like Rosencrantz and Woceyk. Girl from the north country was excellent though, as was groundhog day.

I wait for the 12 pound previews nowadays.

Yes, Much Ado About Nothing with James Earl Jones and Vanessa Lady Redgrave was such an outstanding critical and popular success.

I suppose the following just slipped your mind then:

The Entertainer, Gaslight, All About My Mother, The Norman Conquests, The Real Thing, The Bridge Project's The Tempest / As You Like It, Design for Living, A Flea in Her Ear, Cause Celebre, The Playboy of the Western World, Noises Off, The Duchess of Malfi, Hedda Gabler, Kiss Me, Kate, The Winslow Boy, Sweet Bird of Youth, Other Desert Cities, The Crucible, Electra, High Society plus most of the stuff Spacey himself was in such as Richard II, Richard III, Speed-the-Plow, Inherit the Wind, A Moon for the Misbegotten and Clarence Darrow.

It is interesting you use the word "snobby" as I would completely agree about the Old Vic audience. I go to the theatre a lot (obviously) and attend many theatres and the Old Vic is the one theatre I find myself distinctly uncomfortable, always feeling slightly underdressed - despite my immaculate smart casual clothing!. The front of house staff seem to have "attitude" and there is always this ticket checking going on as you even re-enter the auditorium after the interval as if you are trying to "steal" a look at the second half. I always feel like telling them they are lucky I am returning to my seat at all!

There's a lot of fairly dull, safe middle-of-the-road things in that list - Gaslight, The Winslow Boy, High Society and others may have been enjoyable evenings at the theatre but they're not exactly cutting edge or going to make anyone's list of great productions of the decade. Some of them were classics done just as well or even better elsewhere within recent memory (The Real Thing, Electra, Hedda Gabler), or just rather dull: The Entertainer for example. I saw all five Bridge theatre productions and enjoyed them but none was as good as the best Mendes work at the Donmar or RSC.  The standout productions on that list are The Norman Conquests, Richard II and A Moon for the Misbegotten, but little in Spacey's time had the impact of the best of Hytner's reign at the National or Grandage at the Donmar or the current regime at the Almeida.  Were there any notable new plays, for example?

  Were there any notable new plays, for example?
[/quote]


To be fair, not really. After several unsuccessful attempts to showcase new work such as Cloaca, National Anthems, Resurrection Blues and Complicit, he concentrated on revivals like Dancing at Lughnasa and Noises Off and had better luck with those.

I've just noticed this on the Old Vic website:

"Recommended for ages 11+
Contains haunting supernatural themes and some content which younger audiences may find upsetting."

Part of me after reading that is now thinking "What in God's name are they doing in this version?!"