My Name is Lucy Barton - Laura Linney - Bridge Theatre

So glad people are finding good deals on seats.  I'm traveling from the U.S., planning an intensive 2-week play-a-thon, and I've already booked one week's worth of shows.  I would love to see Laura Linney, but I'm torn between paying for an expensive ticket now or rolling the dice for a good day seat.  I hope to hear more reports from you lucky day-seaters.

Well this was wonderful tonight. I didn’t know anything about the play, and only went because I love Laura Linney and she did not disappoint! She made great use of the space playing to all corners of the theatre. It didn’t feel like a preview at all and felt like she’d been doing it for months. A well deserved standing o at the end.

I was in gallery 1 J5 tonight (£15) and the view was perfect - i was worried it was going to be an extreme side view and maybe looking at her back most of the time, but didn’t feel like that at all. You’re pretty much in her eye line and half way down the performance space, and most of the performing is towards the back. If anyone’s going for the cheap seats that appear in gallery 1 I’d recommend the low numbers side first (as far away from the end of the row as possible), as she sits in a chair for quite a while which is angled a bit towards that side.

Well. The front row of the stalls at the sides are almost like being on the stage with Laura Linney herself. I could have grabbed her ankles and tripped her up as she walked by if the mood took me. It did not. The carpet around the edge of the stage feels nice though.

Whether you enjoy the play will depend on whether you were a member of Oprah Winfrey's Book Club I think. I'll bet she LOVED the book. There are some amusing parts however and Laura Linney is very good at doing that 'I'm about to cry but I will stop myself' acting which was nice. Laura though, is just something else. She's really rather glorious and has such a presence about her, she's luminous. I think she should be allowed to come back to the Bridge Theatre every year and choose whatever part she likes. Strangely I think I preferred her when she was playing her mother though, she was more interesting.

Heaven knows how she remembers all those words though.

This site is such a treasure trove! Just got a good £25 seat for next Wed. Thank you.

Thank you, Monkey!

4* in the Torygraph too.

Yes, we loved this saturday too!

Found this surprisingly disappointing. Great performance from Linney but there was little to no story to justify it. No incidents of interest. No modulation. It just floated along. Kept waiting for something to happen to make it interesting but it never came. Not sure if the book is the same. The play would have been equally good if Laura had just been standing there reading the book. There just wasn't quite enough story development for one person to be entirely engaging for an hour and a half. Time went quickly though. 4 star performance. 2-3 star play. Shame. Won tickets in TodayTix lottery for £20 each though and ended up in premium £70-£80 seats. Which was nice.

Perhaps I’m a bad person but this slightly felt like 90 mins of self-indulgent whinging to me. Great performance but I’m not rushing out to buy the book. However this is clearly a minority view as there were tears everywhere and everyone else jumped to their feet at the end.

Agree with what TheatreMonkey has previously said about this theatre as well – it rolls the audience reaction back to the stage in a lovely warm way.

Saw this a couple of days ago and found it interesting but not unmissable; as @theatremonkey says, it was well done but the story was nothing special. Having braved gallery 2 for Julius Caesar, this time I was relegated to gallery 3, row B, and wouldn't choose to sit at that level again as it was too reminiscent of the dreaded Cottesloe/Dorfman in requiring you to lean forward to see over the rail, though fortunately not also sideways at the same time.