The Grönholm Method (Menier)

I will never understand why the Menier think that a bottom price of £32.50 (in previews!) is acceptable for a fringe venue. I rarely tend to book anything there anymore.

The reviews for the play and film makes this seem like it could be good. One reviewer mentioned both Glengarry Glen Ross, and Nine Queens which definitely seems like an intriguing combination.

However, the ticket prices are probably a little steeper than I'd pay on a punt. Is the weekly cheaper tickets deal they have on for Kiss of a Spider Woman a regular thing?

Likely they will need the cheap tickets if the reviews are not stellar as it is totally unknown, currently not tempted as the price is a bit high for a punt.

Title for some may indicate that it is about how to drive Rally Cars, could be some very confused petrolheads in the audience.

Jonathan Cake plays Frank. His theatre credits include Baby Doll (National Theatre / Albery Theatre), Medea (Queen’s Theatre / US tour), Coriolanus (Shakespeare’s Globe), A Flea In Her Ear (Old Vic), Antony and Cleopatra (RSC), Cymbeline (Lincoln Center, New York). Television credits include Mosley, Legends of Tomorrow, The Affair, Criminal Minds, Camping, The Killing, Desperate Housewives, Chuck, Extras and Empire. Film credits include Brideshead Revisited, Krews, True Blue and First Knight.

Greg McHugh plays Carl. He is best known for playing Howard in the TV series Fresh Meat. Other television credits include The A Word, Fresh Meat, Marvellous, Dates, Two Doors Down, Bad Education, Bob Servant and Gary: Tank Commander. His theatre credits include Celebrity Autobiography (Kings Theatre, Glasgow) & Will & Greg: A Sketch Show (Pleasance Courtyard, Edinburgh).

Laura Pitt-Pulford plays Melanie. Her theatre includes Barnum (Menier Chocolate Factory), Nell Gwyn (ETT, Globe and tour), Flowers for Mrs Harris (Sheffield Crucible), Oliver! (Leicester Curve), Seven Brides for Seven Brothers (Olivier nomination – Regent’s Park) and Mack & Mabel and Side Show (Southwark).

John Gordon Sinclair plays Rick. He returns to the Menier Chocolate Factory having previously appeared in The Invisible Man. Other theatre credits include Jeeves & Wooster (Duke of York’s Theatre), The Ladykillers (Vaudeville Theatre), Absurd Person Singular (Garrick Theatre) and The Producers (Theatre Royal Drury Lane). Film credits include Local Hero, World War Z, The Girl in the Picture and Gregory’s Girl. Television credits include Siblings, Frank Stubbs Promotes, Your Cheatin' Heart, and Mad About Alice.

i saw this today

its well acted and funny in places, but has an incredibly misjudged 10 mins of naked transphobia in the middle which made everyone very uncomfortable and killed the crowd.

its a little sub mamet as well. at 90 mins its definitely short at least!

That part was quite funny and wasn't too badly received by the audience when I saw it.

Loved the play but the seating was soooo uncomfortable.  Does the Menier win the award for least welcoming bar area ?

yeah. it was only a couple when i saw it, but the way they presented it in a jokey way was really tin eared

My hot take on it is that it is not a transphobic play. One character is hideous to and about everyone and everything, so when transgender comes along as a topic, he continues to be vile about it. He's shouted down a lot by the other three characters, who tell him how hideous he and his opinions are. I really do not think that makes the play transphobic any more than it makes it homophobic, sexist or racist when the same character trots out his caveman opinions on those matters either. This didn't feel like the playwright was shoehorning his opinions into the character's mouths like it does in The Writer, for example.

We aren't supposed to side with or like the character who is so everything-phobic, so the fact that I didn't and that I enjoyed his takedown by the other three in this and all other scenes where's spewing bile to me means the tone and the direction was actually in the right ballpark. Compare it to something like Mood Music, where Joe Penhall purports to be telling us how terribly men in power can treat women, but is actually giving all the best lines to the men and making them seem pretty funny and cool and really, aren't women just a bit whiny and spineless? That is the perfect example of a tone deaf, tin eared, jarring play as it's put a sociopathic misogynist at its core, but is a tediously misogynistic play. I don't think the same can be said for this one. Personally.

Not sure i agree: in that particular scene, no other character was on the side of the person being abused. They disagreed with the way the transphobia being presented but not the sentiment.

The whole thing felt sub mamet. Even Mamet is sub mamet nowadays!

I agree about mood music as well but i guess thats what happens when its a guy writer and u cast the guy with such a charismatic actor

How is it played for laughs??? Cake's character is horrible about it and says many mean things HE thinks are funny, but it's clear that the other three characters (and on the night I saw it, the whole audience) didn't side with him, since we clearly aren't meant to. You can't single the play out for transphobia when the character being transphobic literally doesn't have one redeeming feature and doesn't solely choose to be awful about transgender people but a total sweetheart about everything else.

Surely you discover at the end why they don't call him out. The audience aren't meant to side with him and it's not a requirement of every play that it should present opposing arguments for every issue.