When We Have Sufficiently Tortured Each Other (NT)

Are you a relative of hers or is she just paying you defend her on message boards?

Whole bunch of tickets there for this weekend right now. I'm working alas, and also not sure if it's worth forty-odd quid.

i’m going to the Saturday matinee so you can join me for a Seedlip in the bar beforehand!

The Ballot was only for UK residents. 

I can't believe people are SO hung up about the ballot for this basically-fine-but-not-exactly-earth-shattering play when the real biggest crime the NT has committed since RuNo took over was only running their incredible production of Pericles for a mere three performances, and those so close together that there simply wasn't any opportunity to word-of-mouth it.

Well a lot of people go to see plays if there is actors they really like in them even though they have no idea the play is about.. I do and I've seen a few in the last 4 years.(I still don't know what to think about Dr Faustus)

So I understand the frustration and I was a bit upset when I didn't win the ballot. But in a way... I got returns tickets and the price is OK when for example tickets for All about eve are 4 times the price now. Cate Blanchett will probably come back, in another play, and everybody will be happy...

Is the play that bad though? I read a few reviews I'm a bit scared for Saturday

Well. If you missed out on the ballot then you need not worry because you really didn't miss much. Except for Stephen Dillane in some scanties, a few bits of violence, a surprising amount of blood, a load of old nonsense about some cherries and La Blanchett lolling about the stage with a strap-on dildo ready to penetrate anything that moves via the, ahem, tradesman's entrance.

It's really all a bit same-old, same-old once you've got past the first scene or two and it's all very much variations on a theme - power, sex, control and suspenders - so much so that it does get a little dull and my mind wandered a little to begin to wonder with thoughts like, how did they manage to keep the garage so clean? Did Cate really lube up the dildo with hand sanitiser? It's a double garage, where is the other car? How did the karaoke machine work when it wasn't plugged in? And more importantly, what happened to the cherries? I got a little peckish half way in. As did Cate later in the play. Fnar.

Stephen Dillane gets a nice scene where he talks about buying said cherries which is fun and La Blanchett is absolutely smashing throughout (she gets a great 'mansplaining' scene). It's like she had a checklist of "things in my acting range" and managed to squeeze all of them into the play like a Greatest Hits album and it's fun to hear some words slip out where she sounds really Australian as opposed to her normal, more clipped accent. 

One final thing though. Who keeps a dildo in the garage? Isn't that a little unhygienic? I mean, I know she was slathering on the hand sanitiser like she was buttering up a crumble dish but that's going to sting no?

She's not looking her most glamorous "Cate Blanchett" in this to be fair but she's still traffic-stoppingly beautiful and you just can't hide that, even when it's under a nasty wig and a cheap wedding dress. I'm surprised anyone will go near her with those cheekbones though just in case she slices them open.

Talking about the business aspect of plays is a no-no, because people don't understand it??  

There are a large number of people on this forum who actually work in the theatre so I'm pretty sure they understand the business aspects of the theatre and producing a play, they just don't perhaps agree with you on this occasion. It's really a rather lazy response to say that someone who doesn't agree or has a different point of view simply "doesn't understand" something.

I've learned a lot from other people on this board like where to sit at the theatre (@theatremonkey), The North (TallPaul), how to stalk the stars of 'Dreamgirls' on the street (danieljohnson14), the size of Andrew Garfield's hair (@emicardiff), the fact that women actually get to vote nowadays (@baemax), how to look hot at the theatre (couldileaveyou), how to leave at the interval (@parsley, God rest his soul) and so much more besides from so many other people. Granted, I still know more than all of them put together but it's still nice to learn something new. You never stop learning until you die.

Try it, you might like it.

I've got a namecheck from @ryan, in a thread about Cate Blanchett. Nothing, but nothing, will ever top that. 🙂

To celebrate, I'm going to have chitterlings for tea, washed down with a pint, or two, of Timothy Taylor's Landlord.