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Post by bordeaux on Feb 24, 2017 21:07:11 GMT
A reprise? Or another go at it? Totally new production. I can't think of that many examples of an actor in the modern era playing a major Shakespeare role twice twice. Rylance did two Hamlets and Michael Pennigton did two Lears. Patrick Stewart has played Shylock in three different productions, likewise Helen Mirren and Cleopatra. Branagh two Hamlets, one for his own company, Renaissance, directed by Derek Jacobi, one directed by Adrian Noble for RSC. Plus a film, I suppose.
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Post by bordeaux on Feb 23, 2017 17:41:32 GMT
Thanks for replies re transfers. It's interesting to me that so few classic plays get transferred. An Inspector Calls, Jumpers and Noises Off, the latter two by living playwrights, in the past 25 years or so, it appears.
As to numbers, I'm grateful to Daniel Rosenthal's wonderful The National Theatre Story for some facts: 60ish is fairly normal for a classic play with good cast (Hytner's Hamlet was 60, his Timon 61) but occasionally they go above that - the Dominic Cooke Comedy of Errors got 80 performances (Lenny Henry) and the Hytner Othello 100, which is exceptional.
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Post by bordeaux on Feb 22, 2017 22:19:17 GMT
Just asking, HG , don't get too worked up. It is possible. It sounds like it is v good from what people are saying here and she is a bit of a draw, no? I wonder when the NT last transferred a Shakespeare to the West End. Did the Richard Eyre/Ian McKellen Richard III make it? None of the great NT Shakespeares I can think of did: Hytner/Lester Othello, Eyre/Holm Lear, Nunn/Goodman Merchant, though that transferred from the Cottesloe to the Olivier, I think.
Come to think of it, when was the last time the NT transferred a play to the West End that wasn't a new play? It rarely happens, if at all. The odd musical, I suppose: Carousel, My Fair Lady.
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Post by bordeaux on Feb 22, 2017 10:15:34 GMT
All very quiet on this, it ought to be announced any day. Anyone heard anything? No, but the cynic in me assumes it will be some Coward, a popular Shakespeare, an Alan Bennett revival (Forty Years On would have been the obvious choice) and a musical based on a popular British film...
The best things they have done in recent years have been the revivals of British comedies of the last 40 or so years: Hysteria by Terry Johnson, Bennett's Enjoy and Kafka's Dick. I'd love them to do something like that again. Perhaps with Church in charge he'll try something a little unfamiliar.
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Post by bordeaux on Feb 21, 2017 7:39:55 GMT
Anyone know when this is running to? I think it is going thru May but not sure. NT website has last performance as Sat 13th May, and there's a gap between Tues 25th April and Fri 12th May.
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Post by bordeaux on Feb 17, 2017 21:29:25 GMT
I'm afraid I don't think it's likely that Ros and Guil or Arturo Ui will get Best Revival nominations; plays just not good enough. Nothing for the SRB Tempest, which is in London this summer?
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Post by bordeaux on Feb 17, 2017 10:51:27 GMT
Very good news. Those plays of the 90s were wonderful, and some have had excellent revivals (Hysteria, Dead Funny). It's been ages since he wrote a new play, it seems. I also enjoyed Insignificance and the Carry On one, though found Hitchcock Blonde disappointing.
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Post by bordeaux on Feb 16, 2017 15:27:45 GMT
It is a long trek and agree it can be expensive. I will go and see Fiddler, it is still one of my least favourite musicals, but have recently see the excellent Broadway revival. General consensus on here points towards Lear transferring, what else do you think will transfer? None of the plays transferred last year, into commercial theatre. With the Gielgud and Harold Pinter been vacated hopefully there will be more chance? I would have thought the combination of Alan Bennett and Richard Wilson would ensure Forty Years on transferring. I certainly don't remember a London revival of it in 30 years of theatre-going. The show I wanted to transfer was the 2015 Howard Davies revival of For Services Rendered, which sounded superb. I've always thought Somerset Maugham a bit safe and middle-brow (novels and plays) but this might have made me reassess him. Sad it won't ever happen now.
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Post by bordeaux on Feb 16, 2017 11:56:17 GMT
Last year was the first time I didn't go to CFT for almost a decade Without being offensive I find it provincial And lacking ambition The only things I saw there which was really worth the trip was Gypsy and perhaps Singin in th Rain and Amadeus This season is relieving as it all seems second rate McKellan has played Lear before And Munby is hardly a prestigious director The Githa Sowerby was done at Orange Tree recently There is something not very good about each and every show they have announced Either the playwright or the director or case In each production TWO of the three seem promising but the THIRD seems baffling Hasn't it always been provincial, conservative and rather safe? It has a lot of seats to fill. Is it subsidised at all? I did see Lessing's Nathan the Wise there a few years ago, with Michael Feast, but it's usually pretty predictable stuff with the odd high-end transfer built in.
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Post by bordeaux on Feb 16, 2017 9:57:29 GMT
Some good stuff here; let's hope some of it transfers and/or tours. I was asking for some more Tennessee Williams the other day, and I've never seen Sweet Bird of Youth, so that is exciting - and Jonathan Kent's stuff often moves on. Very pleased about Forty Years On, for which with a name like Richard Wilson they must be hoping for a transfer. Would love to see the Githa Sowerby too. So James Graham is another playwright with two plays opening in less than a year (along with Lucy Kirkwood). He's almost as prolific as Richard Bean. It's a great subject for a play too. Caroline, or Change is a wonderful musical with some gorgeous songs. Norman Conquests is also great - Matthew Warchus' production at the Old Vic a few years back was brilliant and very funny. A very impressive first season.
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Post by bordeaux on Feb 14, 2017 11:15:45 GMT
It sounds great. I'm hoping, given that it is Emma Rice, that it will tour, rather less expensively, to the regions... It's the main house Christmas show at Bristol Old Vic from 30 Nov to 14 Jan. Tickets approximately half the prices in the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse. Was just about to post that! My home town too!
Glad to hear the Golem is touring, and intrigued at another Julius Caesar.
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Post by bordeaux on Feb 13, 2017 16:26:00 GMT
I saw this on Saturday afternoon (Beware of Pity in the evening, so an unintended double-bill of disabled young women) and loved it too. The whole cast wonderful, though I agree with Susannah Clapp in the Observer that Cherry Jones needs to rein in her arms a bit. I managed to get an ATC ticket for £20 in row D a couple of days before the show. Perfect view, though it's said to be restricted. Certainly, the people next to me in D1 and 2 left at the interval, probably because they could see so little of the action, much of which takes place at a table stage right.
My only previous encounter with the play was the Sam Mendes one at the Donmar, mid-90s with Zoe Wannamaker, Claire Skinner and Ben Chaplin, which was also wonderful. Interesting to note, having just read a review of that production, that a fire escape also featured there at the back of the set, that time used every time a character entered and exited.
It's been ages since I've seen any Tennessee Williams and it was good to be reminded what a great writer he is. I know I've missed a couple of major Streetcar revivals in the past decade or so and the all-black Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, but it seems like an age since a big national company did something by him whereas when I started going to the theatre in the late 80s, early 90s there was a lot of him about.
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Post by bordeaux on Feb 13, 2017 10:29:04 GMT
Interesting that Bordeaux preferred Sher, who played Carr as if reciting the language to a metronome -- as par for the course with this actor, he didn't begin to connect with the part emotionally. Hollander, by contrast, is tremendously moving, as well as verbally deft. I thought they were both wonderful in their different ways. It was 20 or so years ago but I don't remember Sher as being metronomic, but I suppose he played up the studied artificiality of the dialogue more. His memories of WWI and the 'in other words we're here because we're here because we're here' moment were very moving to me.
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Post by bordeaux on Feb 12, 2017 23:46:37 GMT
Thanks for your reply, Synchrony. In today's Observer Tom Hollander says he studied the play at A level and he and his classmates found it rather pretentious but coming back to it at the age of 49 was impressed by its 'bravura'. It all depends on whether you like bravura or not - I can see why one wouldn't, though I like it myself on the page, on the stage or the football field. To be honest Hollander refers to it as 'dick-swinging bravura', which is not an attractive phrase. I don't like 'dick-swinging' but it suggests Hollander thinks there's something very male about that sort of showing off.
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Post by bordeaux on Feb 12, 2017 23:13:49 GMT
Parsley, why did you 'trick' family members into coming to a play by a director you think is rubbish? What do you have against them?
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Post by bordeaux on Feb 12, 2017 22:33:08 GMT
I was referring to the first 15 months, which were tricky. I am delighted that he's hit his stride and there has been a lot of success since last autumn and the future programme looks good. Those15 months Were in fact programmed up to 2 years in advance Make of that what you will! But it was Norris' programme: Everyman, the Damon Albarn thing, Behind the Beautiful Forevers, etc. There was a sense until the autumn that he hadn't quite hit his stride. Unexciting revivals of Waste, The Beaux' Stratagem etc.
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Post by bordeaux on Feb 12, 2017 22:12:53 GMT
I was referring to the first 15 months, which were tricky. I am delighted that he's hit his stride and there has been a lot of success since last autumn and the future programme looks good.
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Post by bordeaux on Feb 12, 2017 22:04:30 GMT
Is this one of Tom Stoppard's better plays? Not pretentious tosh he normally does. I went to see this tonight. I thought the performances were great, but the play was sooooo boring. Agree pretentious tosh. What was the point of it? I hated it. I liked the "oh Gwendoline, oh Cecily" scene though. Maybe because it's a song. This once again teaches me to stick to musicals ;-) What does 'pretentious tosh' mean? Does it mean that talking about art, language, theories of art, the point of art, the damage done to art by politics, is intrinsically pretentious? That no one should be talking about these things? In other words the author was talking about things that were beyond you and so you feel aggrieved and a need to lash out? Or do you mean that these are legitimate subjects for treatment in a play but that Tom Stoppard doesn't have the knowledge or artistry necessary to make them into a satisfying play, with the implication that he's not able to create something that is intellectually up to your level?
The point of it is to make you laugh, to delight you (with the brilliant pastiche of Wilde, amongst other things), to make you think about issues relating to art and its functions, to admire the author's cleverness (he's a young man showing off a bit), to give you an entertaining evening in the theatre. It is a hymn of praise to Oscar Wilde and James Joyce and their views of art. The young Stoppard was trying to create something light and witty and yet also worthwhile and serious in a British theatre culture which was almost comically political in the sense that left-wing politics dominated so many of the plays of the period.
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Post by bordeaux on Feb 12, 2017 21:45:56 GMT
Comparing TRAVESTIES to Donald Trump is so perverse and preposterous that it defies analysis - and doesn't need further comment. This is actually a glorious production of a difficult play - MUCH better than the previous RSC one with the dreadful Antony Sher. Couldn't agree more with your first comment. Couldn't agree less with the second. Sher was just as good as Hollander in my view, if not better.
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Post by bordeaux on Feb 12, 2017 21:42:42 GMT
Just incidentally, what has Hytner been up to ? Has he directed anything since he left NT ? He needs to stay visible, his personal drawing power is on the wane already, just like Grandage who was the top must-see director in London at one point but is way down the pecking order now. I'm sort of reminded of Peter Hall's failed post-NT attempt to run the Old Vic, despite staging apparently attractive productions (eg. King Lear with Alan Howard) it bombed. I go to the South Bank quite a lot, NT, Young Vic, Southwark Playhouse, Union Theatre, Menier, Old Vic - this new place is quite a bit further from civilization than those. Hytner is still a big name and the difficulties the new regime at the NT has had settling in won't have done his reputation any harm at all. The book will help too. Grandage has directed opera at the Met in NY and at Glyndebourne, and produced and directed stuff in a five-play season in the West End relatively recently, though none of it appealed to me. I hear a new one is being planned.
Peter Hall found it difficult to fill the Old Vic, though they did some very good productions and some fairly worthy ones, though he was by no means unique in the difficulties he had. Didn't he take it over from Jonathan Miller whose programme was even more high-toned (Bussy d'Ambois, Corneille and Isaac Babel stick in the memory)?
I hope Hytner's new venture goes well - it's certainly easier to get to than the Almeida (though bigger, I grant you). But he must have a great contacts list, I'd love to see him directing again, though there aren't lots of great new plays for big-name actors that can fill 800-seat theatres for a couple of months.
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Post by bordeaux on Feb 12, 2017 21:21:44 GMT
After about 20 minutes I thought I was watching one of the worst productions of a classic I've seen in 30 years of theatre-going. How funny is an overweight posh girl with rotacism (or, as she would have put it, 'wotacism')? How funny a dim posh boy ludicrously overdressed (her brother) was a lisp? Later another speech impediment turns up too. Desperate stuff. And there was Lee Mack slightly naffly making references to the fact that it was (ooh!)a French play, as though some explanation needs to be given or excuse made for doing a French play in case people think there is something pretentious about doing one at all.
When Griff Rhys Jones appears (their father) things get a lot better. He is very good, though he appears to be in a much better production of the play than the lovers. There is some quite funny business with props, some good interaction with the audience, some witty updating of the translation to include references to austerity and cuts. Frosine, the marriage broker is good. On the other hand there are three pointless songs, which contribute to the absurdly long 2 hour 50 minute running time.
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Post by bordeaux on Feb 12, 2017 21:04:13 GMT
I thought this was excellent: wonderful ensemble performances, powerful story-telling, a whole world and disappearing culture conjured up on stage using McBurney's trademarks - the actors playing several roles, the microphones, some physical theatre, great soundscape, back projections that show you the wider picture of where the story is taking place.
It is nonsense to suggest that McBurney doesn't belong on the Barbican stage with the other great companies Parsley cites. Obviously Ostermaier rates him highly enough to ask him to direct at the Schaubühne, and he's done other stuff at other prestigious venues on the continent.
The reason the audience didn't leave was probably because they were gripped by what was happening on stage.
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Post by bordeaux on Feb 10, 2017 13:10:45 GMT
I suspect Billington will be very excited at the prospect of another revival - the 4 star review may be already written If the season also contains Schiller's Wallenstein Trilogy it will be 5* from Mikey. I imagine all of the critics will be kindly disposed towards this venture when it starts and will lament when it founders after a couple of years due to low attendances. Yes, how many great new plays are there out there that don't already find a berth and that can fill an 800-seat theatre for over two months?
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Post by bordeaux on Feb 10, 2017 10:31:35 GMT
That is good news. It'll be the first I've seen since the Deborah Warner-SRB-Anton Lesser-John Shrapnel-Ralph Fiennes one in 2005. I think Brutus is more likely than JC but he has a lean and hungry look so Cassio is a possibility. The only other production I've seen is a late 80s Terry Hands one which didn't convince with Roger Allam as Brutus. The fact that I've only seen it twice in thirty years of theatre-going (in which I've seen, say, 10 Lears, 6 Winter's Tales and Much Ados) suggests it's either not done as often as its reputation warrants, or it's not often done well or that it doesn't often attract big names.
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Post by bordeaux on Feb 9, 2017 8:05:53 GMT
Wow. I've got this the day after Angels in America two-show day. Say, what's nearly 11 hours of theatre in two days? Sounds fantastic. I've got Hedda and The Kid Stays in the Picture one Saturday in March followed by The Roman Plays the next day. Can't wait.
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Post by bordeaux on Feb 8, 2017 11:47:31 GMT
There is, The Guardian, exactly the same level of propaganda and biased reporting. For example, Daily Mail attacks UK Supreme court judges because they think their (supposed) political views will affect their judgement. The Guardian attacks the judge nominated for the US Supreme Court because they think his (supposed) political views will affect his judgement. Perfect symmetry. Sorry for being off topic but as a loyal Guardianista there's nothing 'supposed' about Gorsuch's political views! Not a wholly similar comparison. Yes, and of course he has been nominated precisely because of his political views, as are all US Supreme Court judges. They have a very different system to ours; our judges are supposed not to let their political views cloud their judgement whereas in the US it is expected, indeed hoped, by their supporters that their views will determine their judgement.
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Post by bordeaux on Feb 2, 2017 13:08:58 GMT
Many West End productions do routinely also sell via TKTS, though - I don't think that's necessarily a bad sign and if it helps some people attend, why not? No one's complaining! I am delighted. I just worry that people might be losing money.
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Post by bordeaux on Feb 2, 2017 7:59:46 GMT
I would so love to see this but unless I can arrange a last-minute day trip it's not going to happen, so a transfer/tour would be great news. So risky booking ahead for productions outside London (if you're based in the south-east), but if you leave it until the reviews are out, you either have no time to go (and it's going to "cost" you the chance to see a couple of things in the same day nearer home) or the train fares have become unaffordable. Wonder why theatres don't offer some sort of ticket-and-travel deal? Would it be too much hassle for them or do they not need the extra business or what? The same issue arises so often for me and I can't be the only one. Certainly in Germany evening theatre tickets always include free public transport from mid-afternoon to early morning next day. Joined-up thinking.
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Post by bordeaux on Feb 1, 2017 13:41:14 GMT
Have any of them been successes? i always see loads of offers for that place Certainly Much Ado, despite rave reviews, is half-price at the Leicester Square booth.
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Post by bordeaux on Feb 1, 2017 11:12:39 GMT
I don't want to see novels on stage; I want to see plays!
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