No's Knife - Old Vic

Thanks for the reminder, Marwood - just nabbed a £10 seat for the Thursday. Still a few up for grabs, especially in the dress circle...

Yes, that start time is weird. But handy for me as the theatre is only a 5 minute walk away from the office, and it will be good to get back home at a decent time without having to risk the drunks and muggers!

Even an hour of Samuel Beckett proved too much for some people at the Old Vic tonight. Because there was no interval, one bored couple decided to take advantage of the theatre being plunged into darkness for a scene change to scarper off home.

Unfortunately, because the whole place was pitch black, the rest of their row didn't realise until quite late that they wanted out. By the time they'd noticed, the scene change was over, the lights went up like a searchlight outside a prison, framing the luckless duo stumbling out, just as Lisa Dwan dramatically shrieked her next line, coincidentally exactly in their direction: "Leeeeave!"

Like rabbits in headlights... 

They've been offering £5 stalls seats for next week - can't be selling well.

I saw this last night too...

Amazing performance by Dwan (as always) and strangely beautiful in places. However, too arcane and the Old Vic is the wrong theatre for this production. Very well attended last night - even had to queue up to get inside the Old Vic - but will struggle to sell seats over the course of the run.

The amount of people who resorted to using their mobiles during the performance last night was also sad and worrying.

Cheers for the heads up regarding queueing, I'm going tonight so better get there early.

Hopefully it will be better tonight. I'm wondering if the Head Door Opener at the Old Vic forgot it was a 7pm start rather than the usual 7.30pm for this show ;-)

The theatre was pretty full last night (but I'm guessing probably because of the £10 tickets), no queue to get in but it was 10 minutes or so late starting (and it ran for about 75-80 minutes, so the info on the website was a bit misleading). No walkouts until the second scene change,when there seemed to be a mass stampede in the seats behind me, and again on the third scene change. A lot of people around me kept fidgeting with shopping bags during the show, there were also a lot of mobile phones going off - if a show only lasts an hour (or is supposed to), I can't see why people can't keep their phones switched off. It was Beckett, not Mamma Mia or Jersey Boys, maybe people should do a little bit of research into what they're going to see and whether they might get bored before buying tickets, regardless of the cost.

I thought the actual show was OK, some nice uses of sound,lighting and back projection - I also wouldn't like to say for sure what it was about (this was the third or fourth Beckett production I've seen, and none of them are the sort of thing you could easily explain to someone who hadn't been there what they were about). I also thought Lisa Dwan was great in this, I didn't see the previous Becket show she did a few years back, but I'd like to see her perform in something written by a different writer.

Of course, if it was Sartre there would be 'No Exit.'

Thank you, here all week.

Trying again...

Yes, I'd agree with all that. I think I read afterwards that it's based on 4 prose pieces, so it's perfectly possible it could/should be 4 different characters.

The fact that the actress's costume remained the same throughout suggests to me we were meant to see them all as connected somehow, but that's just my interpretation!

The bloodied landscape in the second segment made me think of birth, but I'm sure I read an interview where Dwan said the piece is meant to encourage people just to 'examine their own wounds'.

To be honest, the whole thing is so weird, I could probably make a convincing argument for it being about a penguin trying to purchase life insurance on the moon, and I doubt anyone could disprove it. ;-)