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13 - Art - Theatre Royal - 13th April

Serge has just spent 200k on a painting - its white on white with white lines (if you squint!). Serge is showing it off to his friends Marc and Yvan. Marc hates it and calls it sh*t, Yvan tries to placate them both by agreeing with the pair of them at different times. One night as all 3 prepare to go out for dinner the scales fall from everyones eyes as their views of the validity of the painting as art tests their friendship.

Somehow this is one of the most successful comedies of all time.

Here we have Nigel "The Charmer" Havers, Denis "Justice Game" Lawson and Stephen "Brassed Off" Tompkinson playing the roles.

A breezy 80 minutes with the occasional chuckle - just not something I can get worked up about in any way. I guess I'm Yvan about it, I'd tell people I had fun but the reality is I'm just confusing myself in an attempt to please everyone. it just seemed a long winded way of saying that people are different and that our friends are our friends even though we don't like the same things. Tompkinson steals the show with his 5 minute rant on wedding invitations and Havers and Lawson are perfectly competent but it’s a fizzer than never does anything more than fizz along.

6/10

And a follow up blog on Tremor
thenerdytheatre.blogspot.co.uk/2018/04/tremor-brad-birch-sherman-theatre.html

14 - Gut - Traverse 1


Maddy and Rory are parent to 3 year old Joshua, when granny Morven takes him to the Supermarket she opens a can of worms around who you can trust. As Maddy falls into a state of paranoia about people harming her son she cuts off those close to her….but would a loving mother go as far as hurting her own son?

Turgid for the first half. Histrionic nonsense in the second. One parent over reacts and from this the drama comes but the drama is small potatoes as for the first half it’s a series of scenes that don’t actually have an end, they just stop -
that man in the park, STOP,

the work colleague round for tea, STOP,

the trip to the Police, STOP.

And then we get exposition after exposition in the following scenes to explain what we haven't seen. SHOW DON’T TELL!!!!! And then the second half lost me totally when its revealed that our Mother character has a history of mental illness and thus we become focussed on that rather than the more interesting story of a family torn apart by doubt and suspicion. Also a bit of a Busman's Holiday for me with talk of Glitter and Saville. 4/10

15 - Creditors - Lyceum

Gustav and Adloph sit and talk one afternoon, having recently met - Adolph is awaiting the return of his wife from a trip on a School committee whilst Gustav seems content to be in the presence of the artist Adolph. Over the course of an afternoon Gustav seemingly points out all of the flaws and imperfections in Adolph, his relationship with his wife Tekla and his life in general. But when Tekla returns its clear Gustav is her abandoned ex-husband. Can love survive? Is Gustav motivated by hate?

A game of two halves, the subtle manipulation by Gustav is well done and Stuart McQuarrie is exceptionally still and yet menacing in the role but in the second half the actual impact of his words just don’t hit home. We get 50 minutes of very subtle manipulation that should set up a dramatic confrontation between husband and wife, wife and ex-husband and husband and ex-husband but instead things just meander along and the only fireworks are supplied by a campfire that is lit on the stage. The lack of an emotive finale, for me, was because the confrontation between Gustav and Tekla is played inside an onstage hut but filmed and projected onto a screen hanging above said hut - we cant actually see the actors as they are inside a hut on the stage (although at times they walk past the window of the hut and are followed by the cameralady) and if I wanted to watch a film I'd go to the cinema. I connect differently to live productions than I do with film and spending 20 minutes watching a couple go over their previous relationship effectively killed the tension stone dead for me. Couple that with some utterly baffling directoral choices around a group of girl guides that slow things down twice to a glacial pace and its just a complete meh! Of a production.

5/10

Made In Dagenham - Mountview - Cast 2
(Bernie Grant Arts Centre)

Think this may have been my first ever theatre school show.

An excellent professional standard production with very clear sound. Actor musician style performance, which is good for the graduates looking for jobs as that’s where the industry seeks to be going.

Also reminded how much I like several of the songs.

Standout for me was Alex Spirdikis as Rita. Great voice and presence. Bit of drama too though as she was taken ill during the interval and her counterpart from Cast 1 replaced her (also good).

I do think this is a challenging show for such a young cast being a historical, but featuring people of living memory of many of the audience.

The bit that just didn’t work was the ending. The cast tried but failed to get anyone on their feet, so it fell flat. And it does seem like it ends at a pivotal moment where you want to know how things unfolded.

Running time 2 hours 40. Comfortable raked theatre with good views everywhere. And not full but also nice and cool on a hot day.

Most people in the audience, I imagine, were connected with the show or cast. I paid for a ticket and it’s a good value choice. Runs another week.

While I'm here-

Education, Education, Education- Wardrobe Ensemble (Touring- I saw it at Sherman)

LOVED this. It's set on May 2nd 1997 in a Secondary school (we saw it on May 2nd so points to us). As someone about the same age as the kids it focuses on (the Year 11s of the school) this was a real nostalgia piece for me. But that aside, it is a really interesting look back at the moment of real hope (depending on political leanings obviously) of that moment- Cool Britannia was rife, the music (seen here in the EXCELLENT soundtrack) was brilliant, and there was a sense that Britain was on the up. Coming back to that 20 years later is a sobering affair in itself, but the production manages to pull together an array of human interest elements, and genuinely moving moments too.

My favourite line of a play so far this year is in this too, spoken in a German accent: "No offence, but you're 15 and I like men"

The combination of movement and the truly 'ensemble' work of the company make it very theatrical in the best sense, and really genuinely funny also. Do see if it comes your way.

Added nerd points for going to see it with someone who was also in year 11 around then and grew up to work for the Labour party.

Apologies- your original post read as a bit defensive to me, and given it was such an old post I genuinely wondered why it was suddenly being posted. 

haha yes another mate of mine was there and we are both ex-teachers and we had a good old chuckle at a lot of that. Also that no matter what time or place you drop into Staffrooms are ALWAYS the same. 

Ah, thanks for reminding me about the Rashdash, I knew there was something coming up that I was going to travel into Manchester for!

Tempted by the Three Sisters when it comes to London in a few weeks, can you confirm the running time? it states 1hr on the website which seems absurdly short.

It was around 1 hour 25mins for Saturday's preview. It started just after 7.30 (a bit late because we waited for someone to nip to the loo!) and finished at 9.

The Be-All And End-All - Jonathan Guy Lewis - York/Colchester/Windsor

This is the latest in the author's series of plays about the education system, though there seems some debate about whether this is the second or third. The author also takes one of the roles, as does his partner, Imogen Stubbs, and there are two other characters: their teenage son and his girlfriend, both at the same school and taking their A Levels.

After seeing it in York last week (first public performance of the short tour) I found it very hard to assess and am still struggling, but it was PN last night and though The Stage has given it a disappointing 2 stars only, both the British Theatre Guide and the Public Reviews sites are much more positive - possibly more so than I would be.

I did find it engaging and thought-provoking but felt that the writer had over-egged the pudding by cramming in so many issues, including exam stress, job insecurity, drug-taking - and major health issues for two of the four characters, to name just a few. I also felt there were too many histrionics and that the tension was ramped up to the point where it was not only sustained beyond the point where it remained credible but that its descent into physical violence was also unconvincing.

The subject is fascinating and there's a good play in there somewhere but it would benefit from some tweaking to tone it down a little and to sharpen the focus on fewer issues. The cast were all brilliant, given that they had a lot of overlapping, quick-fire dialogue to deliver and didn't once falter, and it must be quite a physically demanding play to perform, too. Certainly worth a look and it seemed to go down well with the York audience.