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Post by bordeaux on Oct 31, 2016 11:25:40 GMT
Yes, very exciting! Given the producers involved in the McBurney and Butterworth shows I assume a transfer is on the cards for both of those. I was planning not to get sucked in to booking for the whole season this time but I suspect I will end up doing so! Yes, it's interesting that the McBurney and Butterworth are only on for a month at the RC whereas the usual run for a major work (e.g. new Lucy Kirkwood coming up) is more like two, isn't it?
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Post by bordeaux on Oct 31, 2016 10:16:00 GMT
You've got to admit, that is a pretty exciting announcement. McBurney, Mendes, Butterworth in particular.
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Post by bordeaux on Oct 30, 2016 11:22:52 GMT
All 4 of the actors in the 2005 Broadway revival were nominated for Tony Awards as well (with Bill Irwin emerging triumphant). I suspect that will be repeated for this production in the 2018 Oliviers, even though it will close MONTHS before the nominations. Considering Follies will opening in 2017 and be eligible for the 2018 awards, Imelda could win two Oliviers in the same year (play and musical actress). Has that ever happened before?! I think Judi Dench in 1996 who won for A Little Night Music and Absolute Hell, both at the National.
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Post by bordeaux on Oct 29, 2016 20:14:13 GMT
Any supporting cast announced yet? The Theatre Royal Bath website says 'further star casting to be announced'. Directed by Sean Foley.
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Post by bordeaux on Oct 29, 2016 18:49:43 GMT
I'm starting a thread in case anyone knows about this or sees it in the nether regions..oops, outer regions...and can guide us. I remember seeing Gryff in farce a million years ago and he was v good so am assuming he will be good in this. I'll be seeing it in Bath in February with some sixth-formers so will report back. I just hope that Rhys Jones can be as nasty as the part requires in places.
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Post by bordeaux on Oct 28, 2016 12:34:00 GMT
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Post by bordeaux on Oct 27, 2016 22:34:51 GMT
It's shockingly embarrassing for London theatre last year, but unfortunately totally justifiable, that the Evening Standard Awards have only three nominations for Best Play and that two of those three are the London remounts of the original American productions of Father Comes Home from the Wars (Parts 1,2 & 3) and The Flick. The sole nominated Best Play to originate in the UK is Harry Potter and the Cursed Child. Odd that Simon McBurney's The Encounter is not nominated. Or are monologues not plays in the ES's book?
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Post by bordeaux on Oct 27, 2016 18:20:32 GMT
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Post by bordeaux on Oct 26, 2016 19:57:55 GMT
Thanks for that elucidation; it makes more sense now.
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Post by bordeaux on Oct 26, 2016 18:58:42 GMT
It is a very good read and articulates some doubts I've had about Emma Rice's appointment. There is a good example of her naïveté, perhaps, when talking to journalists, or is it just clumsy thinking? When she says 'No 14-year old from Nottingham is going to work out what that means' is she implying that a 14-year old from Guildford is?
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Post by bordeaux on Oct 26, 2016 10:45:04 GMT
Very sad news indeed. He has been so good for so long and was still directing excellent stuff: I was looking forward to Wild Honey and last year both Hapgood and Temple were impressive. He seemed equally at home with new writing and classics. Amongst productions that stand out in my memory: Cat on a Hot Tin Roof at the National with that amazing cast in the late 80s, Philistines more recently at the National, The Shaughraun at the National, The Iceman Cometh with Spacey at the Almeida, the original Les Liaisons Dangereuses.
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Post by bordeaux on Oct 25, 2016 17:50:18 GMT
He was the director... My other-half and I spotted him in the bar at the Wyndhams recently and she had to stop me for going other to tell him what I thought of it! Oh right. He also appeared in it for RSC and was well-reviewed. Mark Rylance was a superb Ulster Benedick opposite Janet McTeer in a 1993 production by Matthew Warchus, a truly wonderful production of the play, which I saw on Shaftesbury Avenue (Queen's, I think). Produced by Thelma Holt. Makes one long to see Warchus and Rylance work together again (they did a brilliant True West at the Donmar and Boeing Boeing, I think).
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Post by bordeaux on Oct 25, 2016 14:15:23 GMT
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Post by bordeaux on Oct 24, 2016 11:08:15 GMT
Did someone higher up ask whatever happened to F. Murray Abraham? Well, he's appearing at the Ustinov at the back of the Theatre Royal Bath next spring in a new play by Daniel Kehlmann called The Mentor, translated by Christopher Hampton and directed by Laurence Boswell. I imagine they're hoping for Zeller-like success if they're casting a big name like Abraham.
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Post by bordeaux on Oct 24, 2016 10:48:01 GMT
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Post by bordeaux on Oct 22, 2016 22:59:49 GMT
Saw it in Edinburgh but will definitely revisit it in the Spring - if only to dissect Cherry Jones' performance even more. She's spectacular in Transparent and she also steals the first episode of the new Black Mirror on Netflix so I can definitely recommend. Although it does put to bed any hope I had of Sally Field bringing the Broadway prod over in 2017/18. When was the last time TGM was in London and who played Amanda? The only time I've seen it was 1995 at the Donmar directed by Sam Mendes (one of his finest hours) with Zoe Wannamaker, Claire Skinner and Ben Chaplin.
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Post by bordeaux on Oct 21, 2016 8:16:42 GMT
Love Cherry Jones, but this production did nothing new with the play at all. Does anyone know why it is garlanded as being revolutionary in some way? Aside from there being "oil" around the set, and Laura coming out of a settee at the start? Has anyone said it was revolutionary as opposed to being very good, full of psychological detail and emotional intensity? Your objection, that it presented the piece as Tennessee Williams intended it, might be a plus point for many.
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Post by bordeaux on Oct 18, 2016 11:25:43 GMT
Yes, a great production. I saw it in both the Cottesloe and the Lyttelton; incredibly powerful (and funny) in both places. There is a little footage of them performing the opening at the Olivier awards here:
Don't know who the guy playing Sweeney is; it's neither Armstrong nor Quilley.
Incidentally my favourite rendition of Priest, though, is from the Sondheim's 80th Gala in NY with Patti Lupone and two Sweeneys.
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Post by bordeaux on Oct 18, 2016 9:03:54 GMT
Quick, read the opening paragraph of the whatsonstage review for a wonderfully surreal typo...(before they change it).
40 mins later - a shame: they've now corrected it. Maigret read Magritte before.
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Post by bordeaux on Oct 17, 2016 9:39:56 GMT
Yes, the singing and dancing has always been there - it's in my copy of the text. This is an excellent production of a wonderfully witty and thought-provoking play (though I'd also put in a defence of Adrian Noble's wonderful 90s RSC production with Antony Sher superb as Henry Carr). There have been some cuts - I think the stuff at the opening of Act II has been improved; what was a long monologue about the Russian Revolution has been cut and transformed into a bit more of a dialogue, I think. I didn't notice any of the new jokes, though I was sorry to see some of my favourite lines go: on Saturday Henry Carr didn't say, for example, 'I had no idea Gwendolen knew any foreign languages and I'm not sure I approve. It's the sort of thing that can only broaden a girl's mind'. And they had cut, perhaps wisely, Lenin's remark added to the 1990s production 'To lose one revolution might be regarded as a misfortune; to lose two looks like carelessness.'
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Post by bordeaux on Oct 14, 2016 9:11:51 GMT
Yes, Lear is a long play unless cuts are made. I am amazed they did not realise this from the beginning! Expect plenty of latecomers! Great for the "Bad Behaviour" thread! Also Deborah Warner is an uncompromising director, not inclined to "make it more accessible" with big cuts - I think a 3:30 running time for Lear is still cut though, probably 3:45 for the full text. I saw Warner's last King Lear which was with Brian Cox, it wasn't her best work so that is presumably why she's having another go I seem to recall she'd done one before with Kick theatre too. I enjoyed the Cox one, though i seem to recall Cox putting a Red Nose Day red nose on the dead Cornelia's nose, which struck me as a terrible directorial decision. McKellen was Kent, of course, very impressive; and it was presumably a very fine cast, though I've seen so many I can never remember who were Goneril and Regan in any given production. Same is true with Polonius and Claudius.
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Post by bordeaux on Oct 12, 2016 9:12:05 GMT
but nothing from the rest of Europe? Dublin Oldschool from the Project Arts Centre, Dublin, Ireland, Europe. Us/Them from BRONKS, Belgium, Europe. Point taken, though Ireland is still part of the Anglosphere. Us/Them sounds great. I do regret the absence of big European names, though. When was the last time the NT did Molière or Marivaux or Racine (2009 was Helen Mirren's Phaedra)? Or Goethe, Schiller, Schnitzler? Or Calderon or Lope de Vega?
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Post by bordeaux on Oct 11, 2016 20:51:25 GMT
Some exciting things here (Follies, Salome, Lucy Kirkwood, perhaps the other new plays) but nothing from the rest of Europe? I know they're doing Hedda Gabler (after a fashion) this autumn, but it seems to be that enough of our culture is Anglo-American already without the National joining in.
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Post by bordeaux on Oct 9, 2016 10:12:53 GMT
It sounded to me like John Shrapnel, a familiar actor from TV and movies (I had to look his name up though). I also saw this this afternoon and thoroughly enjoyed it. The play itself hasn't aged well but I thought Branagh was just brilliant. The rest of the cast were good as well, but it's a real shame that John Hurt couldn't do the Billy Rice role. Gawn Grainger was fine but it was hard to stop thinking about how Hurt would have handled the part. John Shrapnel is also a considerable stage actor who has worked extensively with the NT and RSC and elsewhere. I last saw him in "A Number" @ Young Vic with his son Lex. One of his earliest roles was as the academic who gets into an argument with the footballers in the Czech hotel and is duped by Peter Barkworth in Stoppard's wonderful late 70s TV play 'Professional Foul', which has bizarrely never been released on DVD.
I also remember him as a wonderful Angelo at the Barbican in Nick Hytner's Measure for Measure (1989?), Julius Caesar in Deborah Warner's production (with SRB as Cassio and Anton Lesser as Brutus - three amazing voices there) and a very good Lear at the Tobacco Factory in Bristol a few years ago. And, if you're a real fan, he played a chilling Soviet cultural commissar Zhdanov in Tony Palmer's superb film of the life of Shostakovich, Testimony, with Ben Kingsley playing Shostakovich and Bradford playing Moscow. Thoroughly recommended.
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Post by bordeaux on Oct 6, 2016 12:27:26 GMT
Maybe a silly question - does one need to have seen Hamlet to particularly enjoy this play? You'll understand the play more if you're familiar with Hamlet and with stochastic processes. Some people get very frustrated with Tom Stoppard plays because he rubs his specialist knowledge in your face. Other people just enjoy his plays on their own level of understanding. How you personally respond to his plays is dependant on your personality type! Is he rubbing your face in it? He almost always manages to teach you just enough about the subject to enable you to enjoy the play and get the jokes. But, yes, a knowledge of Hamlet is a help, as is a knowledge of The Importance of Being Earnest for Travesties. Though they probably don't come under the category of 'specialist knowledge'.
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Post by bordeaux on Oct 6, 2016 9:53:55 GMT
There is a good reason Why Stoppard is critically acclaimed Yet at the same time actually rarely performed in any commercial venues A mismatch of ideals? More straightforward He is sh*t And nothing clever about his work Conceited arrogant deluded and irrelevant So far rammed up his own arse it might be classed as a new sport Clever? Don't think so Evidently I am too stupid to comprehend this revered playwright anyway Never again STAND UP STAND UP AND SING STAND UP STAND UP AND SING But he is frequently performed in commercial venues. Next year will see yet another major production of Ros and Guil. The first production, when it transferred to a commercial venue, made a packet for the National and helped it through a difficult patch. Many of his plays have premiered at West End theatres (Night and Day, The Real Thing, Hapgood, Invisible Ink etc). The Real Thing has had a successful afterlife with other productions in the West End and on Broadway.
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Post by bordeaux on Oct 6, 2016 9:48:33 GMT
Definitely another which, like The Dresser, appeals far more to the professional critics. Case of emperor's new clothes or do they really see things that differently? Well, I'm not a professional critic and I love the play, though I haven't seen this production yet. It's very funny and surprisingly accessible - my wife did it for A level in her inner-city comp in the early 80s.
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Post by bordeaux on Oct 3, 2016 18:47:37 GMT
Stoppard has been on tonight's Front Row (from the start) talking about Travesties, among other things. (Tues 3rd Oct)
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Post by bordeaux on Oct 3, 2016 10:02:56 GMT
I've said before - when we discussed the previous Stoppard at the NT, I think - that I, too, often feel stupid when watching his plays and not only do I not like to feel that (even if I am), I certainly don't wish to pay to be made to feel stupid and to leave the theatre baffled and dissatisfied. On this basis Stoppard's audience must be what is euphemistically termed a "mature" market", i.e. literally dying out, as younger people - and for once I include myself here - tend not to have had the type of education which enables them to understand all the references and in-jokes. Worth pointing out, I think, that Stoppard didn't receive the type of education that enabled him to make the jokes, in that he didn't go to university. He is self-taught. I think most of the adults enjoying the show too would have been able to get the jokes not as a result of their education at school and uni but their continued interest in whatever the play is talking about: the only key is some knowledge of The Importance of Being Earnest and its tone, plus a vague idea of what Dada and Ulysses are like. And I hope everyone has some idea of what the Russian Revolution involved.
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Post by bordeaux on Sept 30, 2016 11:31:16 GMT
Fantastic news! It's been quite a while since I felt this amount of buzz with a National Theatre announcement. Director? Who might it be? I'd be happy to see Maria Friedman give it ago after her success with Merrily. Norris himself perhaps?
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