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Post by bordeaux on Sept 21, 2023 7:15:46 GMT
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Post by bordeaux on Sept 19, 2023 17:29:54 GMT
The Deborah Warner project that was going to be part of this has been postponed for some reason. Means there's a lot of time in February to mid-March where nothing is on at the Ustinov (January seems empty too). A shame - I'm sure there's a good reason; there always is. Would be good if something could be found to replace it. You can get your ticket refunded or wait for when it is ready.
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Post by bordeaux on Sept 5, 2023 12:11:01 GMT
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Post by bordeaux on Sept 5, 2023 12:08:44 GMT
I’m gonna say it and then go away. This play is the one play that is better as a musical. My Fair Lady is an improvement on the play. Whatever you do with the ending, just hearing a couple of lines of dialogue and a song emerges… said it. Bye. Arguably Verdi's Falstaff is better than The Merry Wives of Windsor too!
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Post by bordeaux on Aug 18, 2023 10:14:25 GMT
I saw him at the Almeida in 1996 when he was touring his Oscar and Steve album and enjoyed it very much indeed. Clearly the voice is unusual but if you like that, I'm sure he'll do a great show. I have just googled the 1996 reviews and there is a mixed one from Edward Seckerson in the Independent if you want another view. I loved his albums from the 90s - I'd recommend Experiment if you don't know his work.
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Post by bordeaux on Aug 12, 2023 10:53:07 GMT
Also did you notice the shout out when Southgate was explaining what places we came in each World Cup? The shout out from a bloke in the audience (I nearly wrote crowd) when Southgate said “1974? we didn’t qualify. 1978?” And before he could deliver his line the shout out “we didn’t qualify” came from the stalls somewhere. I saw him putting his palm to his ear as if he was expecting the audience to join.. and they did. It felt spontaneous and made me smile actually as I love theatre just for that. Yes, that was me six weeks ago! He clearly gestures to the audience for the answer...
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Post by bordeaux on Aug 4, 2023 17:10:07 GMT
I'm fascinated that such a big name as Marber is on board with this, which suggests it's rather good. I've seen a couple of of plays by von Mayenburg. Actors' Touring Company did Martyr a few years ago directed by Ramin Gray about a teenager becoming a Christian fundamentalist and how that affects everyone around him. Then the Bath Ustinov produced Plastic in 2017 directed by Matthew Dunster, which I remember as a fairly entertaining satire of the usual middle-class hypocrisies.
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Post by bordeaux on Aug 4, 2023 13:27:52 GMT
I agree the Robin Lefevre/Ian Holm/Lia Williams production from the Gate at the Comedy (now Pinter) theatre in 2001 was superb. Even better was the National Theatre 1997 production directed by Roger Michell. David Bradley was the father, Keith Allen and Lindsay Duncan were the couple and two of the siblings were played by Eddie Marsan and Michael Sheen. Probably my favourite Pinter production ever.
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Post by bordeaux on Jul 17, 2023 17:53:25 GMT
The prime example of a living English playwright who has a huge reputation abroad (France and Germany in this case) but whose work hardly ever gets staged here these days (quite understandably in my view) is Edward Bond. Some of our younger readers have probably never heard of him. I notice on imdb.com that Bond is credited as one of the writers (Homer is one of the others) on The Return, a story of Odysseus' arrival home in Ithaca, starring Ralph Fiennes and Juliette Binoche, directed by Uberto Pasolini, now in production. And that he'll be 89 tomorrow.
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Post by bordeaux on Jul 13, 2023 11:24:04 GMT
I've left five times in 35 years of theatre-going, probably over 1500 shows. Gogol's Government Inspector at the Tricycle in the early 90s with Sylvester McCoy - I didn't realise quite how allergic I was to McCoy till the play started. A terrible double-bill of Mike Leigh plays at Stratford East also in the early 90s entitled It's a Great Big Shame. I usually love Leigh's work for cinema and theatre but this was tedious in the extreme. 1953, Craig Raine's adaptation of Racine's Andromaque, a rare misfire for the Almeida in the 90s directed by Patrick Marber with a very good cast, I seem to remember; certainly Emma Fielding was in it. Stephen Jeffreys' The Libertine at the Royal Court one New Year's Eve. One this century: Mike Bartlett's Earthquakes in London, NT production on tour at Bath Theatre Royal about a decade ago; can't remember why - did I just feel I was being preached at?
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Post by bordeaux on Jul 11, 2023 9:30:02 GMT
I loved this last night. Fast, clear, superbly acted. I loved the use of dance/music - the Prokofieve is superb, of course. Went with a daughter who has just done it for GCSE and she too was wowed by the whole thing.
My one question or cavil may reveal a certain prejudice in me, but why did Juliet have a slight west country rural accent if she is from a posh family? It's the sort of accent you might find in a comic character in As You Like It, say. I can see that if we're being race-blind in our casting we should be able to be accent-deaf too but I did notice it and it took me out of the action. It may be the (excellent) actress's normal accent, of course, but are we entering an era in which even doing accents is frowned upon or simply regarded as unnecessary?
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Post by bordeaux on Jul 3, 2023 17:16:37 GMT
I've returned a row B seat for next Monday if anyone needs one.
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Post by bordeaux on Jun 28, 2023 21:02:03 GMT
The London subsidised sector has no interest at all in general in plays coming out of the EU addressing European issues. They are however very interested in equivalent USA contemporary plays. It is a great paradox given their handwringing over Brexit. Roland Schimmelpfennig is a prolific German playwright who is produced throughout Europe but you’ll struggle to see anything by him here. Why ? I would have thought the very fact he was popular in Europe would make it interesting to see his best work. Oh, yes. Someone (English Touring Theatre?) did The Golden Dragon a decade or so ago, directed by Ramin Gray, which I quite enjoyed. Reading a review, to remind myself what it was about (a Chinese restaurant), it does sound little like the Icke The Doctor with its cross-age, cross-gender, cross-race casting.
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Post by bordeaux on Jun 28, 2023 11:00:41 GMT
And of course a lot of European writers who are regarded as major figures in Europe don't get a serious look-in over here. They tend to be done in studio productions or not at all, rather than being put on at prestigious national houses with big name casts. I must admit I can understand why - I have seen plays by people like Peter Handke, Botho Strauss, Elfriede Jelinek, Bernard-Marie Koltes and they are all very oblique, fragmentary, difficult in that modern way, which even I who likes to think himself open to modern art find challenging and ultimately unengaging. The French authors who have been successful in recent years in the UK, Yasmina Reza and Florian Zeller, write much more straightforward plays, often very witty social comedies, which go down much better over here (and are translated by the very witty Christopher Hampton). One thing that has been so unusual about the success of Stefano Massini's The Lehman Trilogy is that it is a translated contemporary play. It is a rare success where the author's name is less well known than the director too. No one say's 'I'm going to see Massini's The Lehman Trilogy'.
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Post by bordeaux on Jun 27, 2023 11:01:15 GMT
I'd say the Fuente Ovejuna by Lope de Vega done by Declan Donellan in the Cottesloe in 1988/89 was truly fabulous and I have vague memories of what struck me then as an excellent Young Vic production of Peribanez directed by a young Rufus Norris in 2003. Complicité did a very good job with The Chairs in the late 90s with Richard Briers and Geraldine McEwan. But your larger point stands. Some things don't translate well. There are presumably UK writers for whom the same applies - though given how popular UK writing is abroad there are perhaps not many. I don't imagine Terence Rattigan strikes many chords in France and Germany for example. I think the same is true for Alan Bennett. Equally there are writers who are more highly valued abroad than they are at home. That may apply to contemporary writers like David Harrower and Simon Stephens who seem very highly in demand in Germany. I always used to think that novelist Lawrence Durrell was more highly regarded in France than the UK. Of course, some people are just lucky with their translators. The prime example of a living English playwright who has a huge reputation abroad (France and Germany in this case) but whose work hardly ever gets staged here these days (quite understandably in my view) is Edward Bond. Some of our younger readers have probably never heard of him. Howard Barker another one. His Scenes from an Execution was brilliant but the other couple of things I've seen were very hard work.
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Post by bordeaux on Jun 27, 2023 10:55:09 GMT
I really enjoyed this last night too. Perfectly happy to stand at the back for a tenner. It is of course a fascinating history lesson and a wonderful evocation of the time and of early radio. It is really well performed, funny, moving and full of contemporary echos in its consideration of the relationship between the BBC and the government. Brilliant sound work too, particularly relevant due to the subject mattter.
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Post by bordeaux on Jun 24, 2023 19:55:28 GMT
I'd say the Fuente Ovejuna by Lope de Vega done by Declan Donellan in the Cottesloe in 1988/89 was truly fabulous and I have vague memories of what struck me then as an excellent Young Vic production of Peribanez directed by a young Rufus Norris in 2003. Complicité did a very good job with The Chairs in the late 90s with Richard Briers and Geraldine McEwan. But your larger point stands. Some things don't translate well.
There are presumably UK writers for whom the same applies - though given how popular UK writing is abroad there are perhaps not many. I don't imagine Terence Rattigan strikes many chords in France and Germany for example. I think the same is true for Alan Bennett.
Equally there are writers who are more highly valued abroad than they are at home. That may apply to contemporary writers like David Harrower and Simon Stephens who seem very highly in demand in Germany. I always used to think that novelist Lawrence Durrell was more highly regarded in France than the UK. Of course, some people are just lucky with their translators.
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Post by bordeaux on Jun 24, 2023 15:56:58 GMT
Straightforward booking today after half an hour's wait. Lots of front cheapies for Bernarda Alba, lots of availability for the Annie Baker. Will be plenty left when it opens to other members, I hope. It's not really that long since they did Bernarda Alba (2005) when the combined talents of Howard Davies, Penelope Wilton and Deborah Findlay didn't manage to raise it above the average. I assume it has been selected for revival because it helps Norris meet his overall gender quota but there are other Lorca plays that don't get revived that often which would have been more interesting for me. Interesting points. In thirty-five years of theatre-going I don't think I've seen a convincing Lorca play here (I missed the Simon Stone-Billie Piper Yerma). I'm hoping Rebecca Frecknall can do something interesting with it. I've seen brilliant Chekhov, Gorki, Ibsen, Brecht, Schiller, Moliere, Racine, Lope de Vega but Lorca doesn't seem to travel well - or have I just missed something? I must say Pirandello is another author whose work has never really travelled - I'm sure the plays are great, but I've never seen a production worthy of his reputation.
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Post by bordeaux on Jun 22, 2023 15:23:03 GMT
Yes, you get there in the end. I was waiting three hours, then it goes fairly quickly. Scary moment of two when you get in and no dates are showing - says none available but click on refresh and it should come up. Need to put postcode in with bank card details too - easily overlooked. Got 4 at £50 each. Lots of reasonably priced seats available.
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Post by bordeaux on Jun 22, 2023 14:46:51 GMT
Straightforward booking today after half an hour's wait. Lots of front cheapies for Bernarda Alba, lots of availability for the Annie Baker. Will be plenty left when it opens to other members, I hope. Any idea when AMEX booking opens please? Sorry, no. Advance is Monday 26th.
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Post by bordeaux on Jun 22, 2023 12:33:21 GMT
Straightforward booking today after half an hour's wait. Lots of front cheapies for Bernarda Alba, lots of availability for the Annie Baker. Will be plenty left when it opens to other members, I hope.
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Post by bordeaux on Jun 21, 2023 16:43:43 GMT
As someone once said: classics are classics for a reason. At the same time, it's all very well a bunch of middle-aged and old men on here bemoaning the state of the world, but there is no choice other than to platform and encourage next generations. What's the alternative, tell anyone under 40 to sod off to the Royal Court or Netflix?
Just a question of where the balance is, and it will vary depending on so many considerations.
You're right that it's all a question of balance. I would disagree with your implication that only the over-40s are interested in the classics, though. I was interested in the classics as a young man and I have taken 100s of sixth-formers to plays by Shakespeare, Sophocles, Euripides, Moliere, Pinter and Brecht - and they loved them. And no one is telling anyone to sod off anywhere or that we don't need new writing at the National.
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Post by bordeaux on Jun 21, 2023 13:24:09 GMT
I don't get this obsession people have with the classics, surely it's not a bad thing that the Dorfman is used for new work. Obsession seems an unduly negative word. Passionate interest is what I feel. I love the classics because they are good: entertaining, gripping, funny, moving, profound, thought-provoking and, in many cases, worth seeing several times. I imagine many of us on this forum like paintings, novels, music, buildings, films too that are more than 10 or 20 (or 100) years old. If I love an art form, I'm interested in its great past too. I imagine a lot of us on this forum feel that way. If I felt a desire to be a bit more controversial, I would also argue that Shakespeare's relation to the theatre is different from the greatest practitioners of other art forms to theirs in that he is out on his own both in terms of quality and quantity in a way that doesn't happen with other art forms. In the novel you have Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Proust, Balzac, Dickens, Austen, Eliot, Mann, perhaps one or two others who are at the top. In painting you have Michelangelo, Leonardo, Titian, Rembrandt, Velasquez, Picasso all there. In music Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, Wagner all in their way equally extraordinary. But there isn't really anyone up there with Shakespeare: the Greeks, Chekhov, Ibsen, Racine, Goethe, Schiller are all great, but to me they are all on a level below Shakespeare - which is why he's done so often in Germany, France, Japan and elsewhere. It's not only sheer artistic greatness, but the sheer number of first-rate works which is unique in literature. There are five great plays by Chekhov, a handful from most of the others, 10 or so by Ibsen. No one compares to Shakespeare. I'm in favour of new work being in the Dorfman, but I think it should be used for classics too, and not just the less well-known ones.
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Post by bordeaux on Jun 21, 2023 12:14:25 GMT
One thing I don’t like about Norris’s programming is his decision to fill the Dorfmann with 100% new plays, it means the NT has entirely abandoned the lesser and more obscure classical repertoire because they can’t fill the two bigger auditoriums with them. For example he totally ignored the 400th anniversary of the birth of Molière as he has Ben Jonson, Shaw, Marlowe … it is a long list. Not just the lesser classical repertory. Four of the very best Shakespeare productions of the 90s - Deborah Warner's Richard II with Fiona Shaw, the Sam Mendes Othello with David Harewood and SRB, the Richard Eyre King Lear with Ian Holm, the Trevor Nunn Merchant of Venice with Henry Goodman - all started in the Cottesloe and benefited from the intensity that small space gives.
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Post by bordeaux on Jun 18, 2023 20:30:37 GMT
over the next 12 months, 19 out of the NT’s 21 productions will be by living writers That's absolutely incredible, and disgraceful really. I agree. It's absurd. Going back to Richard Eyre, just trying to defend his tenure. Some great productions of Shakespeare - his Richard III with Mckellen and Warner's Lear with Cox, Ian Holm as Lear too, the Mendes/SRB/Harewood Othello, Fiona Shaw's Richard II; Volpone with Gambon and SRB, Borkman with Scofield/Redgrave/Atkins, Fuente Ovejuna, the best Brecht I've ever seen - the McBurney Caucasian Chalk Circle, The Way of the World, An Inspector Calls, Rodney Ackland's Absolute Hell, Machinal, The Voysey Inheritance. Superb Sondheim and other musicals - Sunday in the Park, Sweeney, Little Night Music, Carousel, Guys and Dolls. Amazing new writing: Racing Demon and Skylight (Hare, sorry), Ma Rainey's Black Bottom, Bennett's Single Spies and Madness of George III, Arcadia, Dancing at Lughnasa, Dealer's Choice and Closer, The Cripple of Inishmaan, Broken Glass, The Rise and Fall of Little Voice, Angels in America. Plus giving lots of superb directors a chance to shine on a bigger stage: McBurney/Complicité, Katie Mitchell, Declan Donellan, Stephen Daldry, Deborah Warner, Phyllida Lloyd, Sean Mathias, plus lots of stuff for more established names like Howard Davies and Nick Hytner. Lots of other things too, of course, but my memory of the decade was hit after hit - though of course these things also relate to one's own time of life - I started going to the theatre in London in 1988, the end of the Hall era, so most of that first decade when one is seeing a lot and very excited about everything coincided with Eyre at the National, Kent/McDiarmid at the Almeida and Mendes at the Donmar. A superb decade.
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Post by bordeaux on Jun 17, 2023 12:04:01 GMT
Jan, I'm afraid I can't agree with you there! I think the Eyre decade was the best I've experienced. In terms of productions of classic plays, including Shakespeare (the odd failure aside), giving new directors a chance and new writing, it was a golden age. I'm a Trevor Nunn fan but with the exception of that truly fabulous year when he did six plays in rep (Merchant of Venice, Troilus and Cressida, Summerfolk etc), his was a relatively lacklustre era. What do you have against Richard Eyre, out of interest?
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Post by bordeaux on Jun 17, 2023 11:59:18 GMT
Re Rufus Norris and repertoire, in his generous summing up of the Norris era, Michael Billington recalls an early interview with him in which he challenged Norris on the lack of classic plays. Norris replied that he wanted to achieve gender parity and you can't do that by programmming plays from the male-dominated classical past. Whilst I can understand the desire for gender parity in new writing, it seems absurd and wrong to deny historical reality and the NT's duty to keep the great plays of the past alive. In 35 years of theatre-going with lots of women, I've never met one who turned down a suggestion of Shakespeare, Chekhov, Ibsen or Sophocles on the grounds that they were written by a man. Does anyone outside academe and the arts really think like that? And of course the male-dominated past would presumably mean the era before Norris became AD.
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Post by bordeaux on Jun 17, 2023 7:48:20 GMT
Utopia wasn’t very good, subChekovian long winded stuff and mostly inaudible from the gallery. The Invention of Love should get a revival, topical subject after all. Arcadia is a masterpiece. To be uneven isn’t a crime ( Cymbeline, anyone?) but tastes do change. I think that is a little harsh on Coast of Utopia. Apparently the New York production was very different, much better and a great success - perhaps sections had been rewritten or cut.
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Post by bordeaux on Jun 15, 2023 15:36:30 GMT
I do think as long standards aren't slipping quality wise, the national should be doing more new writing than old. Maybe invite new writers to adapt older plays as well for the modern day? Some revivals are fine, but i could without another classic Shakespeare play at the national. Given we have the RSC, I think there is an argument for not expecting the RNT to stage Shakespeare unless there is a compelling reason for doing otherwise. Of course, the RSC would possibly then need to return to bringing Shakespeare to London on a more regular basis. Given the state of the RSC I'm very glad the NT and other places are doing Shakespeare; otherwise I wouldn't get to see much! The NT and the Bridge are where I go for him these days. I do agree with you that I'd like the balance shifted in favour of more classics.
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Post by bordeaux on Jun 15, 2023 13:01:53 GMT
Whilst this does look one of the strongest seasons under Norris, the balance is out for me. I know he is more into new writing than existing texts, but this is meaning that the resources of the National are not being brought to so many genres of theatre. Whoever replaces him has to deliver a more balanced programming ethos. Without that, plays that can only realistically be staged by a major subsidised company will not get professional productions ever again. Yes, on a closer look, there are only three revivals out of 12 announced shows: Coriolanus, The House of Bernarda Alba, Dear Octopus. A quick look at the National Theatre Story indicates that in the 90s and 2000s there were usually two-thirds revivals, more or less, and about a third new writing. Whilst I agree that this year's new plays at the NT have been excellent and some of next year's look very good too, I would like more of the classic repertoire to play a role in the next AD's programming. As I've said before the NT, the Royal Court, the Donmar, the Hampstead, the Almeida, the Bridge all seem to be chasing the same playwrights.
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