Red Speedo - Orange Tree

Finn Cole has filming commitments so it wouldn't be straight away. Probably would be a bit big as well since @sohoplace is 602 seats compared to OT's 180.

It was completely unnecessary! My pal has tinnitus & did not enjoy those bits at all. He also jumped out of his skin every time it happened.

You weren't sat in B13, were you?

My companion in B14 was the jumper. Bless him.

Pretty much sold out now, hoping for a transfer.

Saw today’s matinee. Started nearly 10 minutes later than advertised but was still finished before 4.00pm.

Had a sinking feeling when it started as rapid-fire dialogue like that is one of my pet hates. Even though the timing is undeniably impressive, I just find it annoying.

But what a great little play this is. Ended up buying the playtext on the way out. Thought the rushed dialogue was down to the director but it’s in the script, as are the klaxons and the looped Roy Orbison. And speaking of the klaxons I was also sat by a ’jumper’ who clutched her ears every single time.

If this is Finn Cole’s first play, I hope it’s the first of many. I think his inexperience only really showed in that I felt like he made eye contact with me quite a few times, where the others were able to just act like the audience weren’t there. Hell of an outfit to make your stage debut in too. Never felt so much in need of joining a gym😂

The midweek matinees feature a post-show Q and A, which featured Finn Cole, Ciarán Owens and the executive director Hanna Streeter. Quite interesting. More information on how certain elements are achieved, fights, tattoos and whatnot. Someone asked about a transfer. Can’t remember the exact wording but was basically they can’t say “yet.”

I saw this Thursday matinee, and LOVED it.

I agree with the positive views above that this is as much an insightful comedy as a thriller.

Finn Cole's character, Ray, is a particular gem.

Some spoilers follow. . .

When this started, it seemed like it was all going to be a bit too David Mamet, predictably hard-boiled, with unlikeable, fast-talking, sly, self-interested men tearing each other apart.

But Finn Cole's Ray is something else. He is just too funny. Where others would turn left, he will turn right. When others wear clothes over their bodies and intentions, he will hang around in a Red Speedo, an open book, confessing every damn thing a typical Mamet character would try to disguise.

His naive openness seems unintelligent, yet somehow he deals with everybody else's obfuscating moral notions, in this play, like a savant counting cards. He always says the quiet part out loud. He's like Jim Carrey in "Liar Liar" but he's not unhappy about it. Everything really great about this show is about how he deals with the normies and their slippery norms. Ray is a hoot of a character, and Finn Cole brings the narcissistic lack of awareness, the deadpan reactions, the ever so reasonable sounding unreasonableness.

His massive serpent tattoo on his back is so cameras will differentiate him from other swimmers in overhead shots ("good for publicity"), and he hopes to partner up to create limited edition serpent speedos. If the Orange Tree had been selling the serpent speedos as merchandise, I would have bought a pair, that's how much I love this character.

Probably my biggest laugh was how he justified "jerking off" to his ex-girlfriend "18 times a day." You'll have to see the show to know what he says about that lol!

Anyway, the actors are all great, bouncing off Finn Cole's extra-terrestrial with suitably dumbfounded and confounded shock and awe. Parker Lapaine, as Ray's ex-girlfriend, also brought a whole extra layer of righteous anger, beneath an apparently frozen affect, that really energised the production for me.

I'd see this again if the run were longer.

I preferred this to the author's later written "The Doll's House" sequel at the Donmar, though I liked that a lot. It's a shame that "Dana H" never transferred to the Royal Court in the end.

I'd give this 4 and a half stars for one hour twenty minutes of humorous, provocative and insightful banter.

PS: I did attend the post-show chat, and while most of it was about how the effects were achieved (it's better not to know, if you haven't seen it yet), I do recall that Finn Cole explained that he did a movie about underwater diving, which is why he finds staying underwater for 50 seconds totally doable, and he reckons he could do more. What he should do more of is this character.

Those notes were adorable and really made me feel welcome at the theatre. Ive never had that anywhere else and it was such a lovely personal touch.

Oh, I wondered what those were. There was one on my seat the other day, but assume someone got their wires crossed as it had my surname and seat number but a different first name, so I handed it back to the FOH.

He signed the Xmas card they sent me last year along with the rest of the team - it featured a seasonal cast photograph from She Stoops to Conquer.

I'm alway impressed by the Orange Tree casting, I assume a lot of the actors do plays there because it's either a short commitment or live locally, maybe even both?

No one here happens to have a Saturday matinee ticket they want to get rid of, do they? Haven’t had any luck with returns so far…