A Tupperware of Ashes - NT Dorfman

It is incense

Thanks for the warning.  I'm really glad I didn't buy a ticket and now I shall drop plans to turn up on spec on one of my free evenings.  Reminds me of about 15 years ago when I turned up for a show in an old dockside warehouse and turned on my heel because the reek of patchouli was noticeable before you even got through the door. In these days when you get warned about a single cigarette being lit on stage many yards away, you'd think they'd be a bit more careful before subjecting audiences to other oppressive odours.

It makes sense that the aim of the music and incense (thank you hamletothello and parsley1) is intended to set the scene but I stand by what I said about the music being almost painfully loud and unavoidable and about the fact that some people don't cope well with loud noises and/or strong smells, both for reasons of mental and physical health. So it would be reasonable for the NT to provide a warning about both.

Can't remember the last time I queued up to buy a ticket to smell it.  

Thanks. Maybe I'll drop by on an evening when I'm not planning to attend and get a feel of it.  I like Meera Syal a lot and the play looks interesting.  And, of course, they don't really need me to fill the house; which wasn't the case for the warehouse production I mentioned above.  That looked like it could do with any passing trade it could get; but I had enough of being smoked out by patchouli, sandalwood etc when I was at college.  It really gives me a headache- even more so than the loud music mentioned.  I can usually put up with loud music if the play is appealing enough and the sounds are reasonably relevant.  Which reminds me of a production of Trainspotting I saw in Upper St a while back.  We all sat quietly waiting for the performance to start - which it duly did in a raucous club scene.  At this point, a couple in the audience walked out holding their ears. I couldn't help wondering what they expected an adaptation of Trainspotting to be like!  Thankfully, though, the production didn't use, ahem, exotic smells to set the scene.

Great natural acting and creative staging. I wouldn't be surprised if they would turn this play into a movie in the (near) future. The difference between the intense scènes showing the impact of the disease often in contrast with the scènes before/after, but perhaps that also helped the subject of the play easier to deal with in its entirety. I could see this already within a movie too. Truly deserved standing ovation, not in the least for the leading role.

Does anyone know how good/bad my view is likely to be for this in side circle seats N4/N5?

Saw this tonight and felt it built into something devastating.

The core plot trajectory is highly predictable, but that doesn't matter a jot as the subplots are very strong, the music is magical and the acting is majestic.

Some spoilers follow. . .

I remember attending Terry Pratchett's final book launch, with his assistant who was helping him cope with his early onset Alzheimers, and he said that he was determined to die as soon as he couldn't write as that was his reason for living.

There is something about the way Meera Syal's Queenie's early onset Alzheimers causes her to live and relive her life with her husband, Zubin Varla's Ameet, who died 20 years earlier, that feels much more intensely beautiful than anything Pratchett envisioned, as it's clear she and he lived for each other, that he was a funny and romantic man, with Zubin Varla's resonant warm embrace of a voice (perfect casting) and Nitin Sawhney's brilliant elegiac music sweeping us away with her and him into that lost world. The fact that the loss of her early memories of him will ultimately mean his second death, when those memories are lost, gives this play a doubly poignant landing.

The Zubin Varla subplot was my favourite, but the subplot, whereby her 3 children must resolve their feelings for her, for each other, and for the illness, is almost as powerful, and it allows us to see the nitty gritty unsavoury ultra-candid aspect of her personality (she challenges the possible paternity of her eldest child's newborn child) that makes her character feel more real than if she had been sentimentally idealised. That abrasiveness to her personality becomes MUCH worse as the disease takes hold.

Syal's Queenie's candid nature also has its funny side, such as when she points out that her doctor's name, Enoch, isn't ideal for treating immigrants lol.

There is a King-Lear-derived hilarious element to her relationship with her children, whereby she seeks to stay with each child in turn, that really made me laugh, and it's laughs like this that make the intense pain of the main plot manageable.

And the pain IS intense because Syal gives the strongest, most award-worthy, performance I've seen her give, her character slightly different in aspect and movement from scene to scene, in every scene.

Raj Bajaj, as her eldest, most alienated child, always evinces softness behind his alienation and fury; as her youngest, most responsible, most successful child, Natalie Dew flashes steely resentment towards her brother, while being the most pragmatic and loving towards her mother; and as the bridge between these siblings, Marc Elliott's Gopal is warmth incarnate.

Shobna Gulati is so funny and winning and humorous, as Indrani, Queenie's best friend, and "Auntie" to her kids; and as a care home worker, Stephen Fewell effortlessly conveyed the withholding and compassionate qualities necessary to make life bearable for an Alzheimers sufferer.

Anyhow, the ending is a little too protracted, and the main plot a little predictable, but the sheer emotive power of the whole was emotionally overwhelming for me, upsetting and wonderful simultaneously, to the tune of 4 and a half stars.

I picked the circle seating when I did the Rush because I'm not keen on those folding seats.