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Post by Steve on Apr 22, 2017 10:33:51 GMT
Loved this at the Rose Theatre. Affecting and sweary version of Dead Poets Society, set in a Bristol Playground, in which the power of the imagination stands to liberate some kids from their underprivileged and abusive backgrounds. Some spoilers follow. . . There is so much empathy and love in this show that I teared up. Be warned though, the love is hidden in the soft centre of a hard shell, in which the Bristol teenagers (played by young adults) posture and curse more than Renton in Trainspotting. You'd be hard-pressed to hear more c-words and f-words in any other show in town. Couple the swearing with the suspicious anti-authoritarian another-brick-in-the-wall attitude adopted by the kids in the show, and you have a production that is likely to win over such kids in the audience, just as it puts off their prudish parents. The first half of the show, the music and songs are Madness-inflected, with a marchy communal extrovert bolshiness; the second half, more Doors-inflected, with reverberant guitar strings and plaintive introspective lyrics. A couple of the songs are ear-worms, with the one about "the spider" still ringing in my head this morning. The show did not fit my inbuilt dramatic pattern expectation, which anticipated the nadir-moment of a generally cheerful show to occur at the three-quarter mark, but which instead occurred half-way. This expectation transgressed, the second half felt overlong, though I'd be hard-pressed to say what to cut. Erin Doherty is ferocious as Fizz, the furious, mischievous, irrepressible lead-character, and narrator, who opens up the milieu of the play. She completely fulfilled the high expectations I had of her from "Wish List." Calum Callaghan is more muted, endlessly relatable and reasonable, as Rick, the inspirational teacher at the centre of the adventure playground building project, yet equally as good, the yang to Doherty's yin. The whole ensemble is also excellent, with Scarlett Brookes' sad-eyed pregnant Debbie, Josef Davies's disturbed violent Ginger and Enyi Okoronkwo's vulnerable poetic Talc especially affecting. Despite the ending feeling long, this was a wonderful vibrant urgent heart-warming show, that could also work magic on the souls of the sorts of kids depicted, if only teachers and adults ignore the swearing and take them to see it! 4 stars
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Post by Steve on Apr 18, 2017 23:51:50 GMT
Saw this tonight from bang in the centre of the front row (Row C for this production) In summary - a good show, but with a lot of untapped potential. I'd give it 3 stars. JGBlunners, given where you say you were sitting, I think I was sitting next to you, moaning to you about how much I was missing the musical "I Can't Sing", which also featured the superb Simons Lipkin and Bailey, except unhindered by this monotone moroseness. I was grumbling about the song list in the programme, which showed that the two ghosts (Simon Bailey and Naimh Perry) got almost all the songs, and you were egging me on by pointing out that the one song with the most grimly teenage title, "Better to be Dead," got four reprises. Upon which, I started singing the praises of the marvellous "American Psycho" musical, which led me to buy the ticket to this in the first place via the Duncan Sheik connection, upon which the American lady on my left and I got into a discussion about how much I felt that it was wrong to cut the song "Oh Sri Lanka" from the show for Broadway. I think that must have been you, as my seat was front row, centre adjacent, and I'd agree the view was excellent, and the multi-tiered round lighthouse deck design is quite awesome to behold. Some spoilers follow. . . This show is one for adventurers and completists, who have already seen all the 4 star shows in town, and are looking for something that bit different, even if the things that are different have a tendency to sink the drama. The ghosts are sirens, peripheral to the main action, who seek to convince everyone involved in the show to end themselves. The songs they sing are samey, designed to depress the listener, with one being the exact same song sung five times (mentioned above). The songs sound to me like the bridge to grungy Nirvana numbers, with the proviso that just as you are about to rock out, the song stops, lest you accidentally get excited. Ironically, the one superb rock out song, "Take A Bow" is omitted from the programme and the show, and is performed AFTER the bows, in order to energise the audience to get up and leave, following the downbeat torpor of the main show. Simon Bailey and Niamh Perry perform it superbly, though I'm not surprised, as Bailey was the lynchpin of an awesome final London Jersey Boys line up, and Niamh Perry owned that Ben Elton show "The Beautiful Game" at the Union Theatre! In the main body of the show, Simon Lipkin is an invaluable boon, as his irrepressible vivacity brings humour to the character of the Sheriff, who moves the main plot, by pursuing the US wartime policy of the day, persecuting Japanese residents. Lipkin performs the heck out of his one number, "The Tale of Solomon Snell," a rare song not performed by the Greek chorus of the 2 Ghosts. Poor Nicholas Goh, as said persecuted Japanese resident, gets no songs at all! Beneath the siren songs of misery, two good dramas struggle to surface, one pertaining to Nicholas Goh's Yasuhiro's struggle against institutionalised xenophobia (very topical) and the other concerning the naivety of a judgemental child (which drama recalls the much more engaging "The Go Between" at the Apollo). That the cast make us feel a little something for these underwritten characters, involved in these two dramatic situations, over the wailing of the ghosts, is to the company's credit. Strangely, I don't regret seeing this show, as seeing a show that dares to be different, even when it fails to work dramatically, is always interesting, and with performers like Lipkin, Bailey and Perry to watch, you at least get some blood out of a stingy stone of a musical. 3 stars.
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Post by Steve on Apr 18, 2017 22:58:57 GMT
I took Jan Brock's suggestion and saw the Easter Monday matinee, and adored it! "Pride and Prejudice" remixed for maximum laughs, with an unforgettable star turn by Rebecca Collingwood! Some spoilers follow. . . There's alot of "Pride and Prejudice" in this story of caste (aka class) separating lovers. The central duo George d’Alroy (Duncan Moore) and Esther Eccles (Isabella Marshall) are exactly like Charles Bingley and Jane Bennet, but the set-up of this play differs in that the Darcy character, Captain Hawtree (Ben Starr) fails to convince his friend out of marrying below his class. Instead, hijinks ensue, as the unexpected newlyweds' family members react to a culture clash. Most extreme is the reaction of Susan Penhaligon's Marquise de St.Maur (a Lady Catherine de Bourgh clone, if ever I saw one)! Penhaligon's Marquise speaks like she swallowed 16 frogs, and at least two of those frogs sound like they might leap from her mouth every time she opens it. It's a hilarious performance, evidencing massive range by Penhaligon, as the last time I saw her in this venue, in Martine in 2014, she was the soul of lyricism in a sad poetic play. That this isn't the funniest turn in the show is a tribute to how terrific this production is (Jan Brock measures his praise cautiously)! The funniest turn is indeed by the delightful Rebecca Collingwood, who plays Esther Eccles' little sister, Polly, a frothing fizzball of a Lydia Bennet clone, with one massive difference: she is sharp as a tack! Disregarding class barriers, she swans around, taunting and tormenting the men around her, not with silliness, but with genuine quickness and wit! Collingwood was last seen (by me) in the "Love's Labours Lost/Much Ado" double at the Haymarket, where she was the small pretty one you expected to have lines, but didn't. This time she spurts lines at triplepace, resembling that little girl at school who had all the friends, and bossed them all around, then grew up, and behaved exactly the same. Collingwood's Polly is a human Tardis, in that her small frame contains more bottled energy and effervesence than ten larger ones. She is so amiable, charming, quick and funny that even the grumpiest looking audience members were audibly laughing. Plot developments were well realised, and apart from a melodramatic slump at the beginning of the second half, this was the most amusing, most delightful play I've seen all year. It's a joke in itself how much funnier this production is than "The Miser," which by comparison, is packing them in! Gods of theatreland, please give this production a run at Trafalgar 2 so other people can see it. While it's politics are in the rearview of history, like "Pride and Prejudice" itself, this show is pure pleasure. 4 and a half stars
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Post by Steve on Apr 18, 2017 22:07:56 GMT
Perhaps tipped with minks' teeth for that authentic tappity tap sound and maximum animal cruelty? Do you object when folks (frequently) wear leather in shows or are some animals worth more than others? Sorry, it's a gripe of mine. As an omnivore, with a craving for cheeseburgers, I avoid judging or criticising anyone's choices regarding what they wear, what they eat or what they hunt, so I take your gripe on board. On the other hand, although it's irrational, I fed ducks so often as a child, I developed an unshiftable sentimental fondness for them, so choose not to eat them. I have not ever looked into a duck's eyes and made an Albee style connection with them, I stress, lol. On topic though, with respect to the idea that a genuine mink coat is being used in this show, however, two points do strike me: (1) Unlike leather, mink skin is not a byproduct of the general food production process, so a legitimate distinction can be drawn by those who care to do so; (2) No show should be so dumb as to publicise the use of a real mink coat, as those who do care about this issue, care very much.
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Post by Steve on Apr 12, 2017 13:51:28 GMT
4 stars from The Telegraph and The Guardian: The Telegraph sent their opera critic, Rupet Christiansen, so I'm not surprised he privileged voice over performance, as opera critics tend to be forgiving of performance, but exceptionally picky about voice. But the Guardian sent Michael Billington, who wrote that Alfie Boe "admirably conveys the character’s complexity, combining a bear-like roughness with hints of an underlying gentleness." Complexity? Gentleness? Is he referring to the shampoo they clean the wig with, or are we just being trolled?
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Post by Steve on Apr 10, 2017 18:01:13 GMT
There are some moments in which I feel like I can hear all the hopes, dreams, and mistakes of mankind in a single musical phrase. Just curious: why on earth is this considered/marketed as a "semi-staged" production? To me, there was nothing "semi" about this staging in the slightest. Sondheimhats, I agree about all the hopes, dreams and mistakes of mankind. Lovely description. I think they only describe it as "semi-staged" because there are no helicopters (like in Miss Saigon) or spaceships (like in "I Can't Sing") or other massive set constructions, so I agree. After all, AAIP also uses projections as a backdrop, and like that, this features lots of choreography and dance. I expect the description lingers from the producers' initial cost-saving philosophy adopted in their previous two productions that did at the Coliseum, Sweeney Todd and Sunset Boulevard, but that they have grown increasingly ambitious since then. if it's an either/or situation I would always opt for the strong actor. I saw the Hytner production in New York with Michael Hayden as Billy and I well remember the criticism that was heaped upon him for, basically, not being John Raitt. He lacked that rich baritone sound that everyone seemed to feel was the essence of the role. In fact he sang the role just fine - listen to him on the cast recording - but, much more importantly, he created a lost and vulnerable character, desperate to earn Julie's love and be worthy of her yet lacking the essential confidence in himself - resorting instead to violence. The vocal stars were in other roles in that production - Audra McDonald was Carrie! - but the show worked so brilliantly because of Hayden's performance. If we, the audience, don't see in Billy what Julie sees, then Carousel makes no sense. I agree completely, Mallardo. Acting is everything to make this really work. Otherwise it feels like a concert performance. I also regularly listen to the recording of the Broadway cast you saw, and I love it!
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Post by Steve on Apr 9, 2017 10:03:11 GMT
Saw the matinee yesterday, and agree with sondheimhats. Great semi-staging, great chorus, great Gavin Spokes, great Daniel Hagen, better than expected Katherine Jenkins, all brought down by a sullen charisma-free misfire of a Billy Bigelow. Spoilers follow. . . Carousel is one of my favourite musicals. Sure, it's got problematic elements, not least of which is the concept of a "kiss with a fist," the dubious concept of the pain of violence evaporating through love and mysticism. Yet Carousel has a primal power that resonates more profoundly than any other musical, if you tap into it. In essence, it mines the same vein of deep desires that religion does, in particular, Christianity. Like Jesus, Julie Jordan is not a mere person, which is why feminist analysis can't contain her. Like Jesus, Julie Jordan is a font of love; like Jesus, when abused, she "turns the other cheek," her love unconditional; like Jesus, she offers the ultimate: redemption. The idea that whoever we are, no matter how we were born, no matter what we've done, no matter what nature, no matter what nurture, we can have hope, that's what Jesus and Julie Jordan offer, that's the beautiful desperate fantasy that Rodgers and Hammerstein have coded into this musical, with Hammerstein's coupling of the broken conditional "if" of now, with the "golden chances" of hope in a fantasy future (where you can always free yourself from the Carousel of traps that life brutally delivers), while Rodgers butters Hammerstein's religious bread with the most seductive soaring emotional melodies ever written. As a secular person, this musical is the closest I get to religion, with the first two 5 star productions I saw (in the late nineties at the Ahmanson, and in 2014 at the Arcola) leaving me helplessly and deliriously emotional. This new version did NOT hit the spot. . . On the plus side, it's got a half-Hytner approach to the staging that really works. Where Hytner staged his Carousel Waltz in a pincer movement, with the horses riding on wheels below, as a gorgeous giant umbrella enfolded it from above, here the semi-staging necessitates the dropping of the umbrella, so Lonny Price instead expands his wheeled horses to such a large size that the Carousel is nonetheless stunning. Like "An American in Paris," the backdrop is primarily projections of impressionist paintings, albeit they are not quite as colourful and luscious as those in AAIP. Also on the plus side, Gavin Spokes sparkles with comic whoops, giggles, genuine depth of feeling, bringing his effortless charm to transform the typically dull Mr. Snow into such a compelling and amusing stage presence, that I delighted every time he showed up. His "When the Children are asleep" and "Geraniums in the Winder" were highlights. But an even bigger highlight, the biggest of the afternoon in fact, was Derek Hagen, as the amoral Jigger, leading the ensemble of "Blow High, Blow Low" with such vitality and passion that the audience cheered louder for him than for the principals. So thuggish and unrestrained was Hagen's bearing that it struck me he'd make a perfect Billy Bigelow! The Billy Bigelow we actually got was stillborn. It's not that Alfie Boe can't sing, he absolutely can, and at times, he does, wonderfuly. But he can't project the qualities that make Billy Bigelow Billy Bigelow! I remember Patrick Wilson playing Billy Bigelow years ago in Hytner's touring production, so animalistic, as quick to anger or to grin, terminally unpredictable, with such depth of feeling beneath, charm and charisma constantly swamped by bouts of "toxic masculinity," the hope of who he could be as evident as the hopelessness of who he was! The Perfect Billy Bigelow. There is no hope in Alfie Boe's Billy. No animalism. No spark. No grins. No volatility. No charm. No charisma. No sign of a wonderful person within, crushed by circumstance. Instead, there is sullenness and hair. So much hair. It's like Price wanted to take a shortcut to characterisation, and grew hair from all sides of Boe's face. I suppose, like Samson, this should make Boe's Bigelow toxically masculine. It doesn't. It makes him hairy. And worse, director and actor mistake unsmiling sullenness for masculinity. Wrong again, that's just lack of animation, which promotes a lack of audience involvement. In fact, the most personality that Boe evinced all afternoon was when he flubbed a line, asking if his "daughter was a boy or a girl?" then correcting himself by quipping "baby, even?" He got a big laugh. I do think the director has to take responsibility for some of the choices around Boe's Billy Bigelow, as I've seen Boe do great work, as Nanki Poo in The Mikado, in particular. Another wrong-headed choice the director makes is to allow too much of Boe's and Jenkin's singing to be directed at the audience. Billy and Julie are falling in love during "If I Love You," with EACH OTHER not with US! And the director also has to take responsibility for some of Katherine Jenkin's choices. For example, she raises her finger on the "if" of "If I love you" as if she were a tease who may withhold her love. No! The emphasis in Julie's phrase, "somehow I can see just exactly how I'd be if I loved you," is not on the "if," it is on the "loved." The "if" is there to emphasise that Julie doubts she even deserves love, the tragedy that the love she so desires to give and receive may remain an unachieved fantasy, it is not there for her to wag her finger like a scolding matron. My opinion, lol. Generally, however, Jenkins is good. I've seen the youtube clips that suggested she may struggle with the songs, and she doesn't. She thrives. In fact, with the caveat that sometimes she focuses so much on singing that she neglects performance, I thought her singing beautiful. And her performance is natural and convincing, by and large, though her range is limited. At one point she needs to cry, which requires more emotion than she can manage, so she turns away from the audience to cry with her back to us, but when she subsequently greets Boe's Billy, she fumbles her emotional transition as there is no sign in her beaming countenance that she has ever been crying at all. Still, for a first time actress, she does astonishingly well. As to the bows, Boe and Jenkins came down TOGETHER, stood together, and then Boe and Jenkins each took a separate bow, but with the other standing right next to them. This means the the bows have been modified after the scandal in a teacup about bowing order in the first show. For me, the real scandal is that Rodgers and Hammerstein didn't come rushing down from heaven for the final bow. They are the true stars! Overall, Rodgers' and Hammerstein's musical is so good, that coupled with good staging and lovely ensemble choruses, sparky players like Gavin Spokes and Derek Hagen, it overcomes it's cardboard Grizzly Adams of a Billy Bigelow. However, as an antidote to this productions' deficiencies, I have united Patrick Wilson's Billy Bigelow (from the Hytner touring production) and Gemma Sutton's saintly luminous Julie Jordan (from the recent Arcola show) to perform together in my dreams. 3 and a half stars
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Post by Steve on Apr 4, 2017 15:00:59 GMT
Loved the first half, hated the second. Smug detached lawyers learn life lessons that turn out to be schematic, didactic and problematic. Fab cast redeems this, making it a thoroughly worthwhile night! Some spoilers follow. . . The fact that the cast is peppered with "unsympathetic" characters didn't bother me. They seemed like real people I know, in that criminal lawyers sometimes do consider themselves above the fray of petty human emotions, with their seen-it-before detachment and knowledge how to work the system for their clients. How could lawyers defending accused rapists even function if they didn't emotionally distance themselves from cases, after all? Nina Raine has evidently done tons of research into the way lawyers speak to each other about these sorts of things, the way they use the first person to talk about their clients' cases among themselves, as well as the tricks they use in court to plant ideas into the minds of juries. If only for this, the play is worth seeing, as if you don't know how these tricks work and how lawyers think, you'll know a lot more by the end of the play. For the first half, the general bonhomie among the lawyers and their wives, who are all friends, features zinging dialogue and superb performances. Yes, Adam James does his morally bankrupt wanker routine (again) to perfection, but what I love about him as an actor is his effortless naturalism, in particular the way he continues carrying his emotional ball long after his lines are done, how he continues to exist and react in scenes, alive to every action and reaction of other characters. I believe him, every time, especially when he's not talking. James' defense lawyer, Jake is sidekick to the main character, Ben Chaplin's Edward, another defense lawyer who represents rapists. Chaplin is more wired than James, but no less natural. I loved his dynamic with his onstage wife, Kitty, played by Anna Maxwell Martin, as they bat back and forth all sorts of little glances and ticks that clue us into a backstory that's begging to be told. Pip Carter's prosecutor character, Tim, is the most phlegmatic of all the lawyers featured, happily socialising with the defense lawyers who habitually defeat him in court. He has a honeyed Tim-Mullanesque sing-song tone to his every utterance that suggests he couldn't care less about anything, except maybe winning. It's a great performance. Over the course of Act 1, it's great fun to live with these characters, and listen to their banter. But in the second half, Nina Raine drops the bante,r and launches into dramatic plot machinations that are so transparent that boredom sets in, or if not boredom, then disappointment. There is a lovely coda once Raine's cogs stop their clunky spinning, so the second half is not all bad. Raine's overall plan is not only overly didactic, it is also problematic. Noone who plans to see this play should know what I'm referring to, so I'll put it in spoiler brackets: Raine's purpose is to demonstrate that lawyers, and the justice system, are too detached from the pain of victims. In order to make the whole thing real for the lawyers, she has Ben Chaplin's Ed rape his wife, Anna Maxwell Martin's Kitty, when she decides to leave him. Because no two rapes are the same, and because there are two sides to every coin, the characters devolve into recriminations that bring home to them, and the other characters, how much pain is endured by those who go to court in rape cases.
After experiencing this misery, Ed learns to care about humanity. Yes, that's right, rape turns out to be a character-building positive learning experience for Ed. So if Foxa were to suggest a takehome lesson from this play, one of them is that rape may be the solution to empathy problems. That's disturbing, even if the wider point about the justice system being too detached from victims is successfully made. All in all, this play has great actors, playing topically recognisable characters, that unfortunately get caught up in an overly schematic plot. For the acting, and for the intriguing complexity of the underlying issues (there is much to discuss after leaving this play), this is a worthwhile night out. 3 and a half stars
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Post by Steve on Apr 1, 2017 22:13:39 GMT
I haven't seen this production but I saw the original on Broadway. I think the most offensive thing about this show is that it wasn't written as a"cheesefest" or a rollicking musical comedy. It was written by 3 straight white guys of a certain age projecting their fantasies of what fun being a whore in 1970's New York must be. The first draft of this show was, I think in the early 80's if not before, so it's not a fond look back, they were writing it in "the present" but it took so long to get produced that it became "the past". I think the reason so many of us over here enjoy it ( not me but the rest of us) is there is a sense of detachment from the whole slice of life that it portrays. I wonder if there are any Yanks on this board who have seen it and what their response to it is. I'm not a Yank, as such, but I do agree with you that there is a detachment between the events depicted by the show and the exuberant singing and dancing. The events depicted are the worst kind of sex trafficking, but the mood is relentlessly upbeat throughout. I questionably described that as a "cheesefest," particularly as my audience were cheering on the performers after every song. To clarify, no matter how seriously the performers take their characters, the audience cannot. I have never been so happy watching a show about such miserable subject matter. (If, say, Carousel would typically rouse my tear-o-meter to 10/10 full on blubbing, this show is a flat zero on the blub scale, despite hellish subject matter). This show is just fun, and I wouldn't cut a single song. It comes around too rarely to leave Cy Coleman numbers unperformed. 😊
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Post by Steve on Apr 1, 2017 21:58:49 GMT
I am there again tonight And many nights to come It just gets better and better If this doesn't get rave reviews There is no point anymore Parsley, I liked your earlier analysis of the box office prospects of this, and agree with you that the reviews will be important. But I don't think you need to worry about the reviews. Critics are frequent theatregoers, as are members of this board, and the unanimous enjoyment had by board members (including such typically tough-minded holdouts such as yourself and Mr Barnaby) is bound to be reflected by the critics. The show has, after all, one massive USP: it is the most dazzling show in the West End. I predict 5 star reviews from all the critics, with Billington's review the one to watch, as he may dock one star on account of the production failing to solve the problems of the NHS. He really cares about society, dear Mr Billington, but even he might acknowledge that by keeping so many performers fit and healthy through vigorous exercise, the production is in fact serving the needs of the NHS. 😊
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Post by Steve on Apr 1, 2017 12:28:59 GMT
What Mallardo said. A play with an antagonist who doesn't appear, protagonists who bond Breakfast Club style, and a brilliantly hilarious Patsy Ferran. The fact that one character, a teacher, who may or may not be a predator, does not appear, sinks this show in the dramatic stakes. There is so much said by everybody about that character that I needed to see him.. Instead, the show coasts on comedy, as one kid talks too much (Tony Revolori), one kid talks too little (Douglas Booth), and one kid only talks about herself (Patsy Ferran). While it's nice to see Booth's ultra-laconic character disabuse the stereotype that every gay person in a drama be swimming in neuroses, all the fun lies with Patsy Ferran's Diwata. Diwata's touching and exaggerated sense of herself (her life is so apparently important she must sing her vlog as much as talk about it lol) is beautifully realised, but it's Ferran who really makes this show spark! I remember how Ferran stole a scene from Angela Lansbury in "Blithe Spirit," and how she stole the National's "As You Like it" from everyone but the "sheep," but in this she is an absolute star! Her musical tribute to the heretofore unacknowledged praiseworthiness of Mary Warren, the Proctors' treacherous servant in Arthur Miller's "The Crucible" had me in stitches! Ferran has a rare ability to signal comedic exaggeration, while still playing straight, her bright darting knowing attention-seeking eyes, and loose rubbery limbs, allowing her to double down on the quirky comic silliness of her character, without sacrificing any of the tragic underlying loneliness of a girl who spends more time recording her voice than speaking to people. Given how much we like letting our hair down in this country, how much we treasure actors with funny bones, I think Ferran is a dead cert for future Damehood, although by the time that happens, I'll probably actually be dead. For the musical comedy, and for Ferran in particular, I'm very glad I saw this. 3 and a half stars. PS: I just looked at the trailer for the movie version of this, and it's looks awful, with a horribly strained and screeching comedic opening, a disjointed and unintelligible sensitive middle section, concluding in what appears to be a weak-looking version of Pitch Perfect and Glee. There do appear to be more antagonists in the movie, but not the one named by the play! Very odd! Looking at the trailer, the movie desperately needs Patsy Ferran, and besides, the trailer needs recutting!
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Post by Steve on Mar 30, 2017 12:41:24 GMT
Saw this last night, and loved it. Thin plot and characters can't detract from the gorgeous tunes and sheer spectacle! Human beings marching in lockstep, mechanical men and women, pretty much every horrible event in history has involved this sort of thing, so I'm suspicious. Why should I be impressed by something the North Korean state could do better? If the producers of this show can put 50 people on stage and have them form perfect clone cogs in an ever-moving, clattering musical machine, couldn't North Korea get 100,000 people to do the same thing? Would that be more impressive or sickening? And isn't this the sort of glittering dog and pony show, involving marching to music, and scantily clad people, that gambling meccas use to make their punters stupid? A primal call to the baby in you to just get in line and dance your money and mind away? Yes, it probably is all these things, so, beyond the primal call to our inner child to leap up onstage and tap away in unison, beyond the instinct to admire perfection in form and beauty, beyond the desire to be lost in an earthquake of legs, what individual humanity makes this show worth watching? There's those glorious life-affirming tunes from Warren and Dubin. For the above-stated reasons, I loved that they included solos and duets as well as the whole shebang. Sheena Easton was surprisingly special singing "Boulevard of Broken Dreams," which even seemed to benefit from the wear and tear of the years on her now husky voice. She also managed to belt "I Only Have Eyes for You," which I found affecting. I loved Stuart Neal as Billy Lawlor. That is a horribly underwritten role, but he infuses it with such charisma and charm, and for my money is the best singer in the whole ensemble. There's a funny joke in the show about Lawlor being a better singer than Julian Marsh, and in my mind, it's even funnier when you realise the amount of songs that are started by other characters, like the above-mentioned "I Only Have Eyes For You," by Sheena Easton's Dorothy, that he comes on and finishes, packing a bigger punch, and infusing even more emotion. Basically, it's not only Marsh Lawlor sings better than, it's everybody! "Dames," which Neal's Lawlor leads on splendidly is an absolute SMASH, with it's structural sandwich around the song "Keep Young and Beautiful" giving it a variety in mood and tone and music that is only matched by the dazzling "42nd street" title song. The only thing that could have improved "Dames" for me, would have been if Theatremonkey and Mallardo (who are always duetting on the same theme on this board in their never-ending quest to see "faces") had donned bowler hats, jumped up onstage either side of Neal's Lawlor, and sung that cheeky refrain "What do you go for, go see a show for, tell the truth you go to see those beautiful dames" lol! Another charming human touch to this show was the lasciviousness of Clare Halse's Peggy Sawyer, succombing to multiple kisses. Indeed, Halse completely graduates from her former role as a Toreadorable in Gypsy with her impish loveable starring role in this. I also loved Bruce Montague's lecherous Abner Dillon. Incidentally, his presence made me think of "Funny Girl," in which he played Ziegfeld, and I was amused at how the plot of this show perfectly mirrors the history of staging that show at the Savoy, with Natasha J. Barnes the real Peggy Sawyer, and Sheridan Smith the real Dorothy Brock. Heck, even the fictional show in this show is called "Pretty Lady," which is just a knock-off of "Funny Girl," anyway! Ultimately, the sound and fury of this show overwhelmed me, despite my overly suspicious nature, and I too wished I was onstage tapping away myself. For the above reasons, though, this show will never be as impressive and romantic and characterful and all-round celebratory of humanity as the current version of "An American in Paris." 4 and a half stars
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Post by Steve on Mar 27, 2017 14:03:03 GMT
Saw the second preview, Saturday night, and loved it! A cheesetastic celebration of seventies dress-up and attitude, with a few disconcerting moments of genuine drama! Some spoilers follow. . . This is far too exuberant to be taken seriously. While dramatic threads are seeded from the moment we meet the characters, with David Albury's money-wasting, cocaine-snorting, loser-pimp Fleetwood seeding most of them, it's impossible to take any of this seriously. Cy Coleman's rousing sing-em-louder melodies, coupled with lurid seventies costume stylings and chorus-line type dancing announce this show as a fun camp exercise in let-your-hair-down-and-dress-up-and-cheer party time! This is the most sheer fun at the Southwark since Xanadu closed, a kind of reverse Porgy and Bess, in that Gershwin even made "Summertime" sound miserable, whereas Coleman makes "The Oldest Profession" sound like party-time, for Sharon D. Clarke's aging lady of the night, Sonja. And nobody is as ready to party as Sharon D. Clarke, who, equipped with full on Pam Grier comebacks and sass, melts into an astonishing full-voiced, meticulously calibrated rendition of "The Oldest Profession" that brings the house down. Even if it's just for this one song, no musical lover should miss her magnificent voice filling this small Southwark Space with this moment of glory. Real drama comes from Cornel S John, who in his own way, is just as impressive as Clarke in his role as primo pimp, Memphis. He has a slow motion way of moving his immensely imposing frame, especially in the way he touches his face with his hands, which, when coupled with his slow deep drawl of a voice screams, watch out! When he sings "Don't Take Much," it's an awesome combination of heartfelt blues and impending threat. He also forms a neat double-act with his number one moll, Charlottle Reavey's imposing April. When the threat drops in Act 2, it is nonetheless jarring, despite having been foreshadowed, in much the way it's jarring when you watch any postmodern cheesefest, like "Bad Girls" or "Prisoner Cell Block H" and suddenly something happens that feels a bit too real. The cast are all singing and dancing wonders. I loved the sensitivity of David Albury's Fleetwood, T'Shan Williams carries the sympathies of the audience effortlessly with her affecting performance, Jalisa Andrew's sparky Chi Chi benefits from her ability to project her voice at just the right moment, and Jo Servi's Lacy is so natural. Joanna Woodward, who recently graduated to play Carole King for a short while in "Beautiful," here returns to her wheelhouse, which is playing the borderline of innocence and experience, someone who can endure hard knocks and come up smiling. With burlesque in her background, it is she who is called on to play one of the most exploitational moments in the show (which moment might cause feminists, without a sense of humour, not to want to book), yet she projects such joie de vivre, and has such a graceful and sensitive way of transitioning from speaking to singing, that I was bowled over by her performance in this. So if you book this, know it's all just seventies dress-up, politically incorrect to a degree that will offend the po-faced, really just camp provocative fun, rated 18, blessed by Cy Coleman's glorious tunes, and you will have one of your best nights of the year! 4 and a half stars.
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Post by Steve on Mar 27, 2017 13:00:33 GMT
Saw this Saturday matinee. Incoherent but entertaining. Some spoilers follow. . . This production can't make it's mind up about how much integrity this Don Juan has. I remember Simon Keenlyside playing Don Juan's opera counterpart, Don Giovanni, and he was furious in his integrity, for a debauched but free life, a nietzschean superman. Marber, who is in total control of this production, having written, partially re-written, and directed it, opts for the "integrity" ending. But it isn't earned, as Tennant's Don Juan has no integrity whatsoever, a man who nonchalantly lies even to those he says he doesn't lie to. Marber certainly thinks that Tennant's Don Juan has integrity, and goes to some lengths to distance him from Donald Trump's "p---ygrabbing" antics, but the problem for Marber is that essentially his Don Juan is exactly the same as Donald Trump: a man with no integrity who thinks he does have integrity, ie a dreamer. In one scene, Marber tacitly admits that his Don Juan is a narcissistic dreamer fooling himself, and it is beautiful: as Don Juan sings the Ella Fitzgerald - Louis Armstrong romance duet "Under a Blanket of Blue" with Adrian Scarborough's equally delusional Stan, Don Juan's personal assistant. If Marber had focused on the theme of delusion he would have struck gold, and he could even have gone on to end this play by having Don Juan elected Prime Minister, just as Trump became President. Instead, Marber meanders from scene to scene, without clarifying who Don Juan really is, or what his play is really about. I found the production entertaining anyway. The aforesaid duet was lovely, and Tennant and Scarborough are in Blackadder-Baldric ribald humour mode for much of the play. Marber gets the tone right, in that he pushes the broad comedy as far as he can, without sacrificing the serious undertone he is going for. Central casting is just right, with Tennant and Scarborough both experienced enough to know how to play broad scenes, then retreat into callousness, and then wistfulness For people who like to laugh at rude comedy, there is plenty to laugh at. For anyone wanting a meaningful play, forget it! 3 and a half stars
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Post by Steve on Mar 27, 2017 12:26:44 GMT
Believe it or not, but Mr Cooney had another go at this play with a sequel "Two into One". I had the dubious pleasure of playing the hotel manager in it just last year. As much as I cringed at trotting out the lines, the audience loved it. They couldn't get enough Willey. I think "Two into One" was the original, in which Dick Willy MP began his philandering escapades at the Westminster Hotel, with his private secretary, Pigden, desperately trying to cover up for him, and this is the sequel in which Dick Willey MP is in EVEN MORE TROUBLE THAN BEFORE at the Westminster Hotel, with Pigden even more desperate than before. Cooney played Pigden himself in the first productions of both, with Michael Williams playing Pigden in both in the West End, with Sinden as Dick Willey MP in both. I imagine anyone who saw "Two into One" at the Menier last year, with Michael Praed as Dillck Willey MP, and actually liked it (admittedly the latter group might be smaller than the former), may wish to see this to find out what happened next lol.
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Post by Steve on Mar 23, 2017 0:13:31 GMT
Hedda Gabler is an unlikable person, but the whole time I was watching the Salisbury production I was intrigued by why she was the way she was. I was intrigued by what was going on in the Master Builder and Enemy of the People. And the play/production kept dropping hints through the context that surrounded the situation. In Hedda Gabler's case the attitudes and treatment towards women back then This production simplifies things for the sake of modernising it. It says from the start Hedda Gabler is isolated and lonely. Plain and simple. Stuck in this cavernous prison of an apartment. The subtext of the attitudes of women is reduced to fit with this modern setting, and I kept thinking what exactly is keeping Hedda Gabler in this apartment in this day and age. Things are better compared to the 19th century but its still not great for women. If you want to put Hedda Gabler in modern times tell me why you think it can be set in modern times. What David J says strikes me as right. However, weirdly, I saw it yesterday and absolutely loved this show! For me, this was was a sardonic Hedda Gabler (Ruth Wilson) I liked, rather than merely felt empathy for, and it spoke to me today, right now, rather than have me nodding along sagely about how sexist the world used to be, the rather redundant exercise of most Hedda Gablers. Van Hove's vision channels our Gogglebox world of social media users, enraged and engaged by things on the tv and the internet, yet powerless to actually affect the outcome. His set is a vast empty space, upon which people other than Hedda live real lives, while she sits on various seats (piano stool, chair, couch, etc) critiquing them, goading them, sympathising with them. Even when she stands, she stands apart, giving her pithy sarcastic "tweets" of remarks, as much for the audience as for anyone else, about others in the room. Van Hove places myriad rectangular shapes all over all the walls, which psychologically conjure up the image of life as a bank of endless televisions. On the left wall, he actually shows an image of everyone who rings the bell to enter Hedda's house, which means that everyone literally enters Hedda's life as a televisual image. The ever-present maid, played by Eva Magyar, sits and watches the entire show, Hedda's only loyal ally, a fellow sitter and watcher and reviewer, who also perceives life as a stream of events and images that she is disengaged from, but must endlessly watch. I had an uncanny sense of being part of their crew of powerless reviewers, as I viewed the maid, viewing Hedda, viewing, and reviewing, the real lives of action and passion lived by Lovborg (Chukwudi Iwuji) and Mrs. Elvsted (Sinead Matthews). Ruth Wilson was as wonderful as I have ever seen her in this, full of bile and irony, yet also excitement and naivety, and above all a deep silent sadness rooted in a sense of powerlessness, as again and again, she talks about power and powerlessness in relation to everyone and everything. That's how I feel, I thought, when I futilely curse at Trump or Gove or Johnson on the television, or snigger or weep, for that matter. I don't feel my opinion matters one jot, and that's exactly what I saw on stage with Ruth Wilson's Hedda Gabler. It just felt so modern. It felt modern precisely because Van Hove does NOT restrict Hedda's horrible ennui to the nineteenth century repression of women, but allows it to just be: here, screams this production, is what ennui looks like: don't you feel it too? When Hedda finally acts and does something terrible, her action is presented by Van Hove not as the twisted evil act of a twisted person (that we usually see), but as a spiritual becoming, accompanied by the playing of Leonard Cohen's Hallelujah, tears of relief flooding down Ruth Wilson's Hedda's cheeks, as she finally graduates from reviewer-of-life to be engaged with life, part of life, at last. Her ennui subsides. Brack doesn't feel ennui, in this production. He's society's automaton, with no understanding of despair. That is why Rafe Spall's non-naturalistic portrayal worked so well for me. Spall moves rhythmically with the beat of Van Hove's background music, doing the robot, literally, staccato in his movements, exaggerated in slow motion expression: of course this societal robot would conclude of Hedda's desperate actions: "people don't do this!" I loved Kyle Soller's Tesman. He is so affecting, natural and normal, not a secluded geek at all. His normality denies the contextual excuses for Hedda's ennui that might have allowed us to explain away her despair. Consequently, her misery lingers, unexplained and challenging, long after the performance ends. For me, this Gogglebox Hedda Gabler has enormous resonance in our Gogglebox world, and I won't, and can't forget it! 4 and a half stars
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Post by Steve on Mar 20, 2017 15:18:08 GMT
Thought this was excellent - didn't see Kings of War so can't compare with that. Spent a bit of time up on stage at which point I had a bit of a lightbulb moment that this is actually a very traditional thing to do - it was basically like being in the Pit at the Globe. Becomes quickly apparent that while being on the stage is a fun immersive experience you have a really terrible view of the action. Good opportunity to try out a few different seats! Agree with the above comments that "Friends, Romans, Countrymen ..." was the highlight. Wonder if video footage of Donald Trump in Shakespeare productions will become as ubiquitous as footage of George W Bush was a few years ago? One effect of seeing this is that I appreciate Robert Icke's Oresteia and Hamlet a lot less! Bob Dylan / Power Suits / Soft Furnishings / Countdown clocks for short pauses / Classical text spoken as naturalistic dialogue. Spotted in the audience - Angus Wright and several of the cast of Hedda Gabler including Ruth Wilson. Also saw this yesterday, saw Ruth Wilson, though missed the other famous faces. I did pretty much what Xanderl did (above), in that I sat on the stage for Coriolanus (sat next to Maria Kraakman at one point, who later ended up ruling the universe as Octavius Caesar), but decided to return to the stalls the moment Hans Kesting showed up, and stayed there for the next four hours. Being on the stage is a bit like being on stage in a Jamie Lloyd production, in that the other side get all the face time, which means you end up watching one of the tiny tellys on stage to see the actors' faces, which is silly as there's a cinema size screen on the other side. Hans Kesting made a massive impression on me as Richard III in the Kings of War (the best of Van Hove's amazing troupe, for me), so I just had to return to the stalls to see his performance front on. And in fact, what you get is the exact mirror of Kings of War, in that the latter two plays blend together to form one perfect whole. Whereas in Kings of War, the new whole was "The Rise and Fall of Richard III," here the new whole is "The Rise and Fall of Marc Antony." This latter combo is magnificent, with Kesting's Marc Antony speech a throbbing moment to moment miracle of acting, from the moment he tears up his speech, pretending to speak off the cuff, to his apparently agonised empathy with Brutus, slumping to the floor, apparently powerless, but actually just catching the audience off guard as a King Kong of ferocity seems to take him over, which giant monkey's gait he seemed to take on as he suddenly feigned leaving the auditorium only to return as a quivering quaking beast of an orator. From first to last, Kesting's Antony was a marvel, and it was great that Chris Nietvelt's Cleopatra was his mercurial and changeable match, her flighty hilarious tantrums dissolving into a heartbreaking gravitas (her final speech did flag in the middle, but was tremendous either side of the middle). The experience of joining the actors for the Coriolanus appetiser did serve to make me feel part of the hoi polloi of it all, so that by the time the main Kesting course played out, I was devastated. A crushingly brilliant piece of theatre, even better than Kings of War for me, on account of feeling more part of it. 5 stars!
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Post by Steve on Mar 19, 2017 14:17:21 GMT
A documentary about Robert Evans, the film producer, in the form of a play, you've got a like documentaries to like this (and it also helps if you are fanatical about seventies movies, like The Godfather, Marathon Man and Chinatown). Saw the matinee yesterday, and loved it. Some spoilers follow. . . I had seen the original movie documentary about a decade ago, and this feels similar to that, with added details. What you do lose here is Robert Evans own voice, as he narrated the documentary himself, sounding a lot like a world-weary Raymond Chandler detective, equal parts braggy and self-deprecating. What you gain here is a construction of movie-making taking place in front of your face, as well as a deconstruction of a personality, having him played by many fragmented voices and three faces. Of these, the most important face is Christian Camargo (who played Dexter's psycho brother on tv). It is hard to believe that Camargo came late to this project, as when he puts on those square glasses, his look, his mannerisms, his voice, everything about him uncannily resembles seventies-era Robert Evans. This is something the movie documentary did not have, a living breathing facsimile of Evans in his prime. Camargo is gold! There is something wonderfully androgynous, as well as modest about Robert Evans, which for me is part of the fascination of the man, that he does not come across as the priapic monster-famed-for-swimming-in-women-and-cocaine that the tabloids (and indeed, some of his friends) made him out to be. Instead of trying to take all the credit for films like Chinatown, he freely admits he couldn't make head or tail of Robert Towne's screenplay, that he never could understand that "Chinatown" was a metaphor rather than a place. And he tells us what it's like to be cuckolded by Ali McGraw. If Camargo's physical portrayal of Evans is definitive, Evan's definitive voice is that of Danny Huston, who plays the part that Evan's own voiceover played in the movie. This is a story about surviving, in some form or another, and Danny Huston's voiceover, accompanied by his shadow on the back screen, convincingly conveys the grizzled voice of a hapless survivor, and is the framing device for Evan's whole life story. Heather Burns, who plays the significant women in Evan's life (though only one of his wives, Ali McGraw - the other 6 wives are never even mentioned in either this show or the movie documentary) is examplary, a chameleon who morphs from playing a wispy Mia Farrow to a full-on seductive Ali McGraw, and more! She even nails her portrayal of the young Robert Evans, the show's obvious tribute to Evan's androgynous physicality. What the play uniquely achieves is having all aspects of Evans, and his life, as a clothes seller, an actor, a film studio boss, a producer, a stroke victim, exist at once, in different faces and voices, where the present, the past, and screen reflections of both present and past, combine to show how Evans, and by extension, ourselves, are all always fragments as well as forming some kind of whole. Fascinating and absorbing, with the caveat that you have to give a damn about Evans for any of this to work. 4 stars
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Post by Steve on Mar 19, 2017 13:32:22 GMT
Saw this last night, and absolutely loved it. Spectacular, colourful, enchanting and above all, romantic. I completely agree with Mallardo's eloquent spot-on review, so I'll just say a few quick things: Some spoilers follow. . . First, the book is a million times better than the disaster that was the film. In the film, a 40 year old man meets the loneliest woman in the world, flirts, takes her to dinner, then brazenly pounces on a teenager half his age in front of the lonely woman's face. It's an awful story, even if Vincente Minnelli made hay out of it in an incredible ballet sequence. Here, everything is different, from the order he meets the women, how he meets them, what he says to them, the ages of the protagonists, the emphasis on the post-war context, everything. Simply put, this new plot is depth, charm and romance personified. Second, the sets are visually stunning, even if a lot of what you see are projections. The radiant colours, in particular the blues, made my visual senses reel with delight; Third, the dancing was so well-choreographed, so athletic and elegant and expansive, and so moving to watch, to all those luscious Gershwin tunes; Fourth, the players in this are adorable across the board. Talented dancers, also emotionally expressive. I was thrilled to see the effervescent Zoe Rainey, who usually plays small parts in big shows or big parts in small shows, get a big part in a big show. She is incandescent, her full-throated singing, combining with her impish sense of humour. As are the two incredible leads, Robert Fairchild and Leanne Cope, both so charming and sensitive and all-round brilliant. Haydn Oakley brings humour, while David Seadon-Young brings humanity, it's all so lovely. And even if it would appear from this show that French accents are more difficult to flawlessly perfect than American ones, that didn't affect my enjoyment at all. This show had me in tears (of joy) from first to last. If you want romantic escapism, here's your show! 5 stars
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Post by Steve on Mar 18, 2017 13:15:05 GMT
For my taste, enjoyable broad comedy, but not dark enough, and the jokes are hit and miss panto. Like a mid-ranking Carry On movie. Some spoilers follow. . . The mention of Katy Wix parroting Hattie Jacques had me wondering which Carry On members the others were channeling. Griff Rhys Jones must be a less camp Kenneth Williams, as he's uber-haughty with a side of snide, Ryan Gage is Charles Hawtrey with a lisp, as he's prissy, meek and accident prone, Matthew Horne is Kenneth Connor as he's pompous but under Katy's cosh, and of course Lee Mack is Sid James, 'cos he's doesn't give a flying fig about any of it. Basically, the whole thing is a stage version of a bad Carry On movie, and it would have been better if it had starred the actual Carry On cast, because then the audience would have known they were going to a bad Carry On show, and could have got suitably drunk ahead of time. And I really do recommend getting drunk if you're close to the stage, as this cast, following Moliere's fourth-wall-breaking pattern (but also because most of them are comedians) really like looking you in the eye when they're telling you jokes. And this puts you, the audience, in the exhausting role of compassionate carer for the comedians who are trying very hard to please: straining to laugh even when not amused out of social compunction. Of course, if you are lucky enough to be a sociopath, you will be able to stare into the eyes of Griff Rhys Jones, as he turns his comic energy up to one million to get a laugh out of you, and look back stoneyfaced and uninterested without a pang of guilt. But normal people will look into his elastic gurning face and gurn right back out of courtesy, and it is this pretending to laugh that gets so wearing. For this reason, it's best to have a seat in the rear, or alternatively to be blotto, so that such social anxieties don't blight your enjoyment. Because there is in fact alot of fun to be had from the 2 out of 5 jokes that work. I'm not surprised that Ryan, in particular, would find draggy patches in this show, as I'm struck that Ryan's effortless off-the-cuff comedic remarks on this board achieve a hit rate at least double this effortful show (ie 4 out of 5 jokes are funny). The show is effortful because those comedians are working so hard to make comic lemonade out of comedy lemons. But when the jokes work, they work. The best two performers are Lee Mack and Ryan Gage for completely different reasons. Lee Mack plays the comedy, but his shoulder-shrugging affability means you laugh BECAUSE the jokes are bad, ie he's in on it with you laughing at how bad the play is, so it's hilarious. Ryan Gage makes no eye contact with the audience, and plays the character, a character so defined in his lisping, bumbling, campness, that he can say any line whatsoever and translate it into something else that is surprising and wacky. These two performances are great. In fact, all the comedians do a decent job but without enough sufficiently funny material. For my taste, Moliere works best if it's both broad and dark. This is broad but too light, the Keira Knightley Misanthrope was dark but not broad, whereas Marcus Gardley's reworking of Tartuffe at The Tricycle, "A Wolf in Snakeskin Shoes," being both broad and dark in tone, had me in stitches throughout (as Lucian Msamati's evangelist Tartuffe hit that broad dark cruel comic note that was genuinely edgy rather than panto light, like this show). So here's the thing. Two out of every five jokes hitting can make for a great evening as long as the three out of five jokes that miss cause you no distress. Drink it up, I say, unless you are an alcoholic, in which case, sit at that back! Or a sociopath, in which case, sit anywhere you want. 2 and a half stars.
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Post by Steve on Mar 16, 2017 20:00:51 GMT
Mallardo, for me, Dress Big was hampered by the small cheap-looking caveman-like furry costume, which didn't look like dressing big at all. Further, the guy who looked like Herakles was playing Shaw, not Herakles, so there was dissonance over Herakles acting the big man when he wasn't that big (he was a bit big) anyway, and the main duo weren't gelling for me, and generally the song came at just the point that an audience-member-with-high-expectations (in this case, me) would start to be deflated on account of expectation-overreach. And to add to all that, it was a HOT room, and poor Michael Matus was being asked to wear said caveman costume, which, despite it's cheapness, looked way too furry and hot for a man dancing and singing his guts out in a hot room, so I felt more sorry for him, and didn't feel the number at all.
FrontRowDress, it's a 4 piece band: 2 cellos and 2 wind (alternating flute, sax, clarinet, trumpet and flugelhorn).
And while I'm looking at the £4 programme, here's the songlist:
Act 1:
Invocation I Love to Travel Dress Big I Love to Travel Reprise All Aboard Ariadne The Frogs
Act 2:
Hymnos: Evoe! Hades Parabasis: It's Only a Play Shaw All Aboard - Reprise Fear No More Exodos Final Instructions
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Post by Steve on Mar 16, 2017 13:28:32 GMT
Yes, Nathan Lane was there, though it was the second night, and last preview, to be pedantic lol. The bigger kerfuffle, than the presence of the modest Lane, was the inability of the theatre to find Mark Shenton a seat for the longest time. At one point, they seemed to be indicating that the he should lean against a back wall, which with his back pain would have been beyond the pale. Miraculously, a prime front row side seat was conjured up for him thirty seconds before lights out, to the credit of the theatre. For me, the show had a weak and dispiriting first act, followed by a charming and delightful second act: our comedy duo's trip to the underworld was listless, but their stay there was a hoot. Some spoilers follow. . . My problems with the first act were these: (1) The reasons for the trip to the underworld (to snatch back a great artist from hell to help us in our troubled times) is merely stated, not dramatised, so there is little urgency to the proceedings; (2) In a stage space the size of an average kitchen, it's impossible to stage an epic journey, and there's only so many times you can watch the ensemble (dressed in black) step in front of our hapless heroes to form obstacles for them to step around; (3) Michael Matus' Dionysos and George Rae's Xanthias don't gel as a duo: Matus is perfect, a sweaty, endearing, nervous yet committed everyman, who I adored, but Rae's geeky bespectacled sidekick just seemed to exist in his own selfish world, never really forming a pair with Matus. This is partly the show: they are going for the Bing Crosby-dynamic-actor vs Bob Hope-selfish-numbskull pairing, which is difficult to begin with, so to make that work, you have to have a preternaturally likeable sidekick, to get the balance of audience affections right. George Rae can be uber-loveable, as when he played that lovely dying man in the Southwark's "Grand Hotel," but somehow I didn't warm to him here, as he's a little stand-offish and cold. I felt that if Callum Howells had played this part, he could have balanced Matus' loveability a whole lot better; (4) The songs in Act 1 don't add up to much, apart from the brilliant "Invocation," the romantic "Ariadne," and the Act 1 climax "The Frogs." Luckily, the latter two songs come at the end of Act 1 in succession, and I began to enjoy myself. By Act 2, which is not only much more fun than Act 1, but mercifully longer, I was having a whale of a time: Act 2's opening number, "Hymnos: Evoe" is a marvellous full ensemble treat in praise of Matus' Dionysos, and the second number "Hades" introduced the character Pluto, which is a Emma Ralston with a whip, who sings up a storm surrounded by an all-male chorus, including uuterly enchanting, camp and muscular Martin Dickinson (who later shows up playing Shaw). By this point the show is all-winning, because when Shaw shows up, Sondheim's howlingly funny digs at his literacy and pomposity start (the song "Shaw" had me howling), and then you get a wonderful competition between Dickinson's Shaw and the especially lovely Nigel Pilkington's Shakespeare about who is the better playwright, and who would better save humanity from crisis. . . For me, Act 2 works splendidly from beginning to end, as it has two dramatic tensions: what will Pluto do with Dionysos, followed by Shaw V Shakespeare, that sustain the drama, and the songs are wall to wall splendid. The duo split their attentions to other characters, so their lack of chemistry doesn't matter any more, and Matus just shines and shines, such an unassuming engaging leading man, at once overwrought and congenial. I remember that Matus absolutely stole "The Return of the Soldier" musical at this same venue, and he is the best thing in this, with his full voice giving the songs full expression. His only equal in the cast would be Rachel Dalston, who does the same for Pluto. Great support comes from Martin Dickinson as Shaw, Nigel Pilkington as Shakespeare, and Jonathan Wadey as a Charon who looks and acts like he walked out of Rocky Horror Picture show or Young Frankenstein. In his own way, George Rae is chirpy great as Xanthias, despite the lack of bonding and balance of his character with that of Matus'. Act 1 = 3 stars (saved by the final two songs); Act 2 = 4 stars (I'd go again just to see it, but there are no more tickets, so I won't); overall 3 and a half stars from me. PS: Running time = 2 hours 15 minutes
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Post by Steve on Mar 16, 2017 12:39:53 GMT
I feel your misery, addictedtotheatre. I hated the homophobia too.
My own take on that part of the play is that it fits what Mallardo said about it being an accurate portrait of a very real type.
Unlike say, Tarantino's sometime use of racism and homophobia as a spurious mechanism to give material an "edge," I'd say the homophobia here is part and parcel of the portrait painted, rooted in psychopathy, envy, aggression and competition, and is as important to this play as it would be important to a play about Trump to include his casual and not-so-casual racism.
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Post by Steve on Mar 13, 2017 18:33:36 GMT
Saw this yesterday, and loved it. A kind of "Daddy Dearest" for artistic types. Probably more fun for theatre obsessives (like the readers of this board) than a general audience, this two-hander features Adrian Lukis as a fierce alcohol-swigging Pulitzer Prize winning playwright, David, coaching his daughter, Jill Winternitz's Ella, on how to get ahead in theatre. Some spoilers follow. . . David considers critics (and I suppose us on this board as well) as the scum of the earth, but he himself is hypocritically a harsher critic than any of us, rating even Arthur Miller as "a hack" (his justification for this had me in hysterics). He does, commendably, worship Sondheim, and loves singing along to songs from "West Side Story," such as "Tonight" and "Somewhere," with a particular fondness for the latter. David's daughter has appeared in "The Seagull," playing the part of Masha, and Act 1 features father and daughter chatting about theatre, music and art, as they await Ella's press night reviews. To be fair, it is less of a chat and more of a lecture, as David barely lets his daughter get a word in. This means that Lukis has what is effectively a mountain of a monologue, and for me, it was never less than gripping, sometimes amusing, sometimes maniacal, but Lukis effectively embodies the ego and neurosis of a man who values artistic achievement over every other thing. Despite a lack of lines (or perhaps because of a lack of lines), Winternitz has a difficult part, which is to believably and naturalistically listen to, nod along to, laugh at, clap, praise and live the experience of a daughter who worships her father, simply listening, for protracted periods. She achieves this wonderfully, as she has a natural softness and an improvisatory immediacy in her moment to moment responses to Lukis' David's pronouncements and moods. Act 2 is much shorter, much different, and fulfils the promise of the Act 1 setup. For my taste, it goes slightly too far in the right direction, as once I felt that direction, I no longer needed to get to the destination. Perhaps American writers, such as this play's Halley Feiffer (daughter of Pulitzer Prize winning cartoonist and playwright, Jules Feiffer - shades of autobiography perhaps?), have more of a taste for going all-the-way than British writers, and that is where my taste seized up a bit. But it's a small quibble for what is a powerful and well-acted denouement. The play has much to say about art and artists, demons and drink, and parenting too, in which latter respect it echoes and expounds the themes of Philip Larkin's pithy poem, "This be the Verse" (aka "They f--- you up, your mum and dad.") The Finborough is a small venue, and sometimes strains to fit the plays and musicals that play there, but a two-hander like this play lends itself perfectly to the space. A claustrophobic drama with expansive themes, and a powerhouse turn from Lukis. 4 stars
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Post by Steve on Mar 11, 2017 13:16:12 GMT
This is a functional Othello, with a powerful feminist slant, that is ham-stringed by that slant. Average. Some spoilers follow. . . If from the start, Othello doesn't love Desdemona as much as she loves him, how can this tragedy achieve full throttle (pun unintended)? Ditto with Iago, if he has no seductive qualities, how can we appreciate him as anything more than a cartoon villain? If Cassio is a woman, how much does that manipulate this production towards the conclusion that "men are bad, women are good?" Othello is introduced as a gob-smacked and soft-spoken political type, who far from being towering and noble is more likely to be cowering and feeble. Multiple renditions of Lana Del Rey's "Video Games" right, from the start, sound great but announce to us that while Desdemona feels "for you, for you, all for you, everything you do" about Othello, he'd rather be playing his metaphorical "video games." When Brabantio makes his disgusting and racist allegations about Othello's connection to Desdemona, Kurt Egyiawan's Othello looks more like a deer-caught-in-headlights, an elected official caught with his pants down, rather than a man defending a great love or passion. There is nothing about Sam Spruell's Iago that makes him relatable or charming, or indeed, anything other than a terrible villain. One contrasts, for example, how Rory Kinnear's bloke-from-the-pub naturalism made him sound like a friend whose jokes we'd laugh at, or how Ewan McGregor's conspiratorial charisma was electricly engaging in his childish excitement. If Othello and Iago are unlikeable men, Cassio, who is very likeable, has now had a sex-change into Joanna Horton's soft and endearing Michelle Cassio. That's right, there are no principals who are men, who are redeemable, and Othello's jealousy now concerns a suspected lesbian affair, which implication is that Othello is particularly offended about this because he secretly hates women generally. The lesbian love song of the show is Katy Perry's "I kissed a girl (and I liked it)" which seemed just a bit trivial for a weighty play like Othello. Looming over the whole play is Othello's omnipresent patriarchal bed, which is presented as something of a character, and which has an appropriate character arc, although it involves something of a misuse of PJ Harvey's song, "In the Dark Places." At the end, said bed is torn to pieces by the lesbian lovers, Cassio and Bianca, which fits the men-bad-women-good thesis of the play, but which impact is muted by the use of PJ Harvey's "In the Dark Places" which appropriately reflects the verdict that this bed is a "dark place," but somewhat defeatingly rolls back the feminist agenda with it's refrain that "not one man has, and not one woman has, revealed the secrets of this world." If the women tearing the bed to pieces does not reveal the secret that men's abuse of power MUST be disrupted, then what was the point of hammering the feminist message so hard at the expense of nuance and drama? I liked Thalissa Teixeira's noble and sensitive Emilia very much, and I liked more generally all the performances in the play, but I felt that the overall dramatic impact was muted by an all-too-obvious agenda. On the other hand, the production's clearly articulated thematic bent, coupled with it's use of popular music, make it likely that this is a Shakespeare production that could easily connect with young Shakespeare neophytes, who might otherwise be alienated by the archaic language. 3 stars
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Post by Steve on Mar 11, 2017 12:32:08 GMT
What some see as slight (pejorative), I see as smallness (complimentary). I'd agree with HG that it's on the surface, but for me, it has enormous resonance, a little gem.
More spoilers follow. . .
I describe it as a "gem" because there is a wonderful symmetry to the production, like a gem, a mathematical precision in both physical and character design. Look at the little chapel and observe it's front pentangle, a central square with a fifth point on top where the roof converges. The ground corners of the central square are like the two grandmothers, seeking to support their grand-daughters, who are represented by the top corners of the central square. See how the stones on one side are falling into ruin: that side represents the Welsh grandmother desperately trying to raise her grand-daughter, in the absence of her daughter, the girl's mother, who has left them. The pinnacle of the pentangle, at the top of the roof of the chapel is like Scarlett, who has roofed and housed and cossetted both her daughter and grand-daughter for years, and is now, in a sense being asked to care for a stranger's grand-daughter.
The scenes in the play allow for all aspects of the pentangular relationship to interact and intersect and resonate with each other: the two old ones, the two young ones, grandmother and grandaughter (times two), and show the inter-relation of all these relationships with that one precious lost middle-aged person, Scarlett, who in a sense is being asked to care for them all, a roof for them, a completion of a family bond regardless of who were previously strangers.
How poetic this simple set-up is, a house that is also a chapel, five people who have some kind of connection, spiritual in the sense that they are all awakened. Will the house fall to pieces because of the dents, or will it repair itself because of the new pieces added?
Sometimes the simplest slightest poetry is the most resonant, like Andrew Marvel's "To his Coy mistress," which makes one simple point again and again. This play is like that, for me, simple but clear, without the kind of forced twist that makes me think the whole play is a con job (like Stoppard's "The Hard Problem," which purports to address complexity, but actually schematically codes it's religion-over-science bias by making scientists unsympathetic, religion sympathetic, and coincidence and contrivance everything). This play stops before it can pull a con, and I love it for that. It sets it's pattern out twice, in words and in visuals, and just lets it's poetry resonate.
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Post by Steve on Mar 9, 2017 13:19:10 GMT
Saw this last night. A lovely thoughtful play, beautifully realised. I could pretend I saw this play on International Women's Day deliberately, as it is written by a woman, directed by a woman, and stars 5 women (and no men). As it happens, I didn't know any of that, nor even that it was International Women's Day until I read it on the train in the Standard on the way home. It is, however, a triumph for all the women involved, a gem of a production that contains within it's smallness sparkles that radiate outwards to shed light on mighty issues regarding all our lives. Who are we? Are we where we are supposed to be? What do we owe our families? What do we owe strangers? What is a stranger? Some spoilers follow. . . The smallness of the play is reflected in it's brief 75 minute running time, it's single small rundown yet bucolic set, featuring the world's smallest "chapel," it's focus on a singular issue: is it ok for Scarlett (Kate Ashfield) to leave her mother (Joanna Bacon) and grown-up daughter (Bethan Cullinane) behind in London and move to rural Wales to get away from her stressful (and failing) life? Scarlett sets her sights on buying said "chapel," and befriends two locals, a 14 year old girl, Billy (Gaby French) and her grandmother, Eira (Lynn Hunter). Eira owns the chapel, and is reluctant to sell it, as she hopes her own daughter (Billy's mother) will return to live there, but she must juggle her relectance to sell it with the fact that her grand-daughter adores Scarlett. The tensions between all 5 characters that develop, when Scarlett's own mother and daughter come to Wales to get Scarlett to come back to London, are beautifully realised, a perfect blend of comedy, drama, connection, disconnection and some slight surrealism due to the ambiguity about how Scarlett intends to live and support herself in this alien setting. . . "Ninety eight percent of our thoughts are repetitive," declares Scarlett, when explaining her need to escape London's rat race, and start again. It is the 2 percent of thoughts that are not repetitive that the play touchingly and humourously explores. Kate Ashfield (who was in the Royal Court's original run of Sarah Kane's "Blasted") is suitably lost and mysterious as Scarlett, Bethan Cullinane (who was Innogen in the RSC's recent Cymbeline) is suitably confused as her daughter, and Gaby French makes an open and generous and loveable debut as the young girl who befriends Scarlett. Humour is mostly generated by the two wonderful older actresses, Joanna Bacon and Lynn Hunter, going to war with each other in their roles as protective mothers and grandmothers. If there were more wonderful plays like this, you wouldn't need a women's day. 4 and a half stars
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Post by Steve on Mar 7, 2017 12:18:12 GMT
An abject (and object) lesson in how to make the funny unfunny, I hated this. Some spoilers follow. . . As with much comedy, Shakespeare gets laughs by subverting highfalutin notions, especially romantic love, with base ones. The higher a production of this play builds the tower of romantic love's pretensions, the greater the shock and surprise of the comedy the tower makes as it clatters to the ground. Joe Hill-Gibbins has no handle on Shakespeare's humour, so he builds us a filthy dirty muddy crass concept of romantic love, leaving himself with no notion to subvert over the course of the play. Since the tower of love has already tumbled from the opening of the play, as we witness the actors sploshing around in mud in the opening scene, Shakespeare's comedy is itself subverted and destroyed. Hill-Gibbins fondness for desecration can work in non-comedy settings. His dirtying up of "The Changeling," which included great sploshing food fights, also at The Young Vic, seemed to illuminate the essential filth at the heart of that play. But if Hill-Gibbins is going to desecrate a comedy, tossing away it's raison d'etre, he'd better replace all those lost laughs with something else worth watching. If he thinks that showing us that love is akin to rape is a revelation, he's wrong. That is already apparent in Shakespeare's design, so all Hill-Gibbins achieves is to reveal Shakespeare's design too early. I think what might be going on is akin to an acting exercise, where Hill-Gibbins is trying to break down both the play and actors by degrading them, so he can build them back up, making something fresh and new. In one sense, he succeeds, as Anastasia Hille seemed preternaturally youthful, skipping around like a little girl, as she emerged from the mudpit, and Leo Bill seemed genuinely humbled by crawling around on all fours like a dog, seeking hugs from his fellow actors. Indeed, the sploshing fetish is known to trigger psychic liberation from repressions implanted by childhood cleanliness-obsessive parents, and whether it is food or mud, Hill-Gibbins always seems to seek psychic exorcism through sploshing. But the effect on myself was less revelatory. I felt I had been invited to a tawdry dogging, sitting there fulled clothed, peeping at people at their most vulnerable, sploshing and crawling in mud, as if peeping through the window of a car in the dead of night. Luckily, not all of Shakespeare's comedy in this play relies on subverting highfalutin notions. At the end of the play, Shakespeare has already achieved this subversion, so he has the rude mechanicals indulge in an outright celebration of baseness, stupidity and crudeness. Crudeness is something in Hill-Gibbin's wheelhouse, and the rude mechanicals are genuinely funny. I laughed at Leo Bill's Bottom, and even more so at Aaron Heffernan's Flute, who unselfconsciously appeared as the most stupid man alive, playing Thisbe. But if stupidity and filth are the destination, it is a shame that Hill-Gibbins started in much the same place. He gave himself nowhere to go, pointlessly gutting the comedy over the course of the first three quarters of the play. Unfunny comedy is something I can't stand. 2 stars (for an attempt at something original, despite it's dismal failure). PS: This flop Midsummer makes me mourn anew the banishing of Emma Rice from the Globe. Her Midsummer was one of the funniest I've seen, as she used music and art and dancing and interactivity and roleplay and sheer joy to build a towering conception of love, which degenerated into the most playful and childish broad comedy I have ever witnessed. Bon voyage, Emma!
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Post by Steve on Mar 4, 2017 12:18:56 GMT
If you like both Beckett and Hamlet, it's entertaining. I do, and I enjoyed it. Some spoilers follow. . . Marwood's point about Daniel Radcliffe being underpowered is well-taken, though I feel differently about it. Having seen Samuel Barnett's take on the same role, where his smug conceited Rosencrantz constantly seemed to be laughing in Jamie Parker's Guildenstern's face, I appreciated the sheer serenity of Radcliffe, a wholly amenable companion for Joshua Maguire's budding Sherlock. And Sherlock is how Maguire plays Guildenstern, in a version of Stoppard's play that could be titled "Sherlock and the Mystery of Life," where Maguire's Guildenstern is energetically, earnestly and enthusiastically questing for answers about everything in every scene. This puts Radcliffe in the role of a very staid and sturdy, but above all, serene Watson. And of course, there is David Haig's Moriarty (aka The Player), stalking the stage like everyone's favourite mastercriminal, creating existential obfuscations and hurdles for Maguire's Sherlock to solve. Actually, Haig is more dashing than that, more along the lines of Mandy Patinkin's swashbuckler in "The Princess Bride:" I would have loved for Haig to declare "My name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die!" With Haig and Maguire bringing charisma and wit by the bucketload, it's a blessed relief to have the good-natured Radliffe flopping about the stage like a puppy in search of a stroking. Indeed, Radcliffe is SO like a puppy that this show is like Herge's Adventures of Tintin, starring Maguire as Tintin, out for an existential schoolboy adventure, with Haig as arch-villian Rastapopoulos, and guest-starring Daniel Radcliffe as Snowy, man's (and Guildenstern's) best friend. Radcliffe brings a much-needed human/puppy warmth to a show which can otherwise fall prey to Stoppard's precise cold alienating cleverness. Overall, I had fun with this show. Existential angst has never been so cosy. 4 stars.
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Post by Steve on Mar 4, 2017 11:45:29 GMT
Your TSWST thing is fascinating, Steve. Would I be right, I wonder, in thinking that American playwrights of the current generation are particularly prone to this? Speech and Debate could fall into this category as would something like The Flick. American optimism per se seems to be a thing of the past - especially now - but the playwrights can't quite consign it to the graveyard so we have small optimism or TSWST. It's still rare to see an American play of recent vintage go the full pessimist route - not so rare for UK or European plays. Or am I way off base? Yes, I do suspect that recent American playwrights have been more likely to add an optimistic coda, as well as more likely to feature characters that are across-the-board empathetic. Even Neil LaBute, who I NEVER thought would write one of these plays, given how misanthropic he used to be, now seems to want to write a whole trilogy of TSWST plays. Well, we shall see, as the third part in the "Reasons" trilogy hasn't yet surfaced, but I'm predicting he stays "reasonable," that Tom Burke will star, and the title will be "Reasons to be Reasonable." I love Theatremonkey's way of putting it lol!
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