Present Laughter - Old Vic / Cinema July ‘24

Agree with all the positive reviews- great entertainment and awesome acting. Strongly recommended.

Q3 obviously has a pillar directly in front of the stage but doable with leaning. You’ll just sit in a quite unpleasant draft during the interval when they air the theatre.

Really enjoyed this tonight. Andrew Scott is just brilliant as Garry and does steal the show in more ways than one. Sophie Thompson and Indira Varma are also very good as Monica and Liz.

I saw this yesterday afternoon and regarding the earlier comment about avoiding matinees because of energy levels, there didn't seem to be any problem on that front. I saw a piece online this week saying there weren't many mainstream, light entertainment-type plays on in London - well, there's this, in a huge flagship theatre. It's not really my kind of play (I'd rather see Andrew Scott in whatever it is Luke Thallon's character had in his bag) but I enjoyed the performances and the liveliness and all the Art Deco. Scott really seems to be enjoying himself (I was in row F, which in this is the third row, and got the impression he and Varma were about to make each other laugh a couple of times), and it's a shame Luke Thallon kept getting shoved into a side room because he was marvellous. I generally really like Enzo Cilenti's work (perfect in Jonathan Strange), but as others have already said, he's miscast here - a very odd choice - and I don't think the chemistry in those scenes worked.

Apart from the woman in the centre front row who was still texting at the start of the second half, the audience seemed pretty well behaved. Maybe evenings are drunker, especially in that heat. The Old Vic is being refurbished so we had to queue for the stalls along the side street - baking hot - because the front entrance isn't in use. They've got portaloos on the left side of the theatre but they're not like Glastonbury (though I daresay Millennials' Glastonbury has amazing bogs too these days).

St George and The Dragon was not a comedy, it was neither funny nor interesting, it was a black hole of entertainment from which no pleasure emerged. We'd do better to forget it ever existed.

I didn't see it, but I got the impression comedy was the intention somewhere down the line. Common wasn't bad - I think it had been rejigged a bit by the time I saw it, but it was an interesting play albeit in the wrong venue.

Are we running into the problem of productions that were intended to be comedies just not, actually, being funny?
Because let's face it, there's nothing more *excruciating* than an unfunny comedy.
My most soul-destroying experience at the National remains that Peter Hall Twelfth Night that somehow forgot to be funny for most of the night.

I really loved it! It defo played like a dark comedy/ragicomedy to me, even more so when I saw it again much later in the run when they'd changed some lines and retuned some moments. I don't mean broad like Present Laughter (which I have to say is the sort of thing my Mum would probably have enjoyed more than me), but more along the lines of a Sadcom (Flowers, Don't Forget the Driver, that sort of thing).

First time I’ve come across the term, 'sadcom' which is very useful. Does Mum come into this category? It has a happy ending on the whole but has some quite dark stuff in it. Best sitcom for years. 

But did he programme Home, I'm Darling, or just inherit it?

I'm sure I read somewhere that Laura Wade and Tamara Harvey were working on it before Tamara Harvey got the Artistic Director job at Theatr Clwyd, which google tells me was in 2015, a few months after Rufus Norris started at the NT.

Prices for the NT Live of this are quite a bit cheaper than All My Sons was at my local Cineworld (just over £13, compared to £20) so hopefully will encourage more people to go.

an enjoyable evening.Very charismatic performance from Andrew Scott.Not sure that changing Joanna to Jo adds much. For me SophieThomson tries too hard in a not very constant Scottish accent. Thought Joshua Hill excelled as Fred as did Luke Thallon as Roland.I personally just didn't join in the gales of laughter from the rest of the audience.and a bit pricy!!