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Post by BurlyBeaR on Jul 31, 2020 6:27:10 GMT
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19,799 posts
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Post by BurlyBeaR on Jul 31, 2020 6:27:48 GMT
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Post by Jan on Aug 28, 2020 7:22:42 GMT
Thanks for the warning. Not obvious casting for this, as the poster indicates. Would be better with someone more nuanced (ie. almost anyone).
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Post by Deleted on Sept 12, 2020 18:14:52 GMT
I'm watching it now and think she is quite wonderful in the role.
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Post by lynette on Jan 28, 2021 0:27:27 GMT
Anyone else watch this? Bravura performance. A lot of explanation in the script, historical stuff. I wanted to get a pencil out and edit. But a worthy effort and a bit like proper theatre.
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2,389 posts
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Post by peggs on Jan 28, 2021 17:46:19 GMT
On sky arts last night? I did.
I was meant to have a decent amount of sleep the night before so obviously didn't fall asleep until gone half 4. Finished work an hour early to have a sleep, joined the globe thing, then over to a talk elsewhere then wondered back to this on the basis that 'maybe I won't like it and I can go to sleep'. Obviously that didn't work. I found it deeply moving, could easily imagine it in the theatre, where the laughs would come, were i'd be doing that frown thing that I have always imagined conveyed how deeply I was being moved and now from zoom know is not remotely visible and I look as vacant and disinterested as ever. Made me want to go away and look up the historical stuff, was thinking surely we didn't do that, of course we did.
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19,799 posts
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Post by BurlyBeaR on May 6, 2022 12:31:56 GMT
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Post by Dave B on Jan 25, 2023 9:19:32 GMT
The show will play at Ambassador's Theatre for 28 performances, from Tuesday 23rd May 2023.
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Post by joem on Jun 1, 2023 22:15:28 GMT
Having originally confused this with Andrew Davies' 1979/80 play of the same name which was a star vehicle for Glenda Jackson, I missed it at the Park but saw it tonight.
Obviously very static, an 80 year old woman sitting on a park bench on her own for two and a half hours does not make for an action-packed thrill-fest, but Maureen Lipman really is very good indeed in telling us the tale of this Jewish survivor from World War Two. Might this even be a career high point? She catches the deceptively rambling but sharp as needles nature of her character and gives a storming performance - racing through a whole gamut of emotions and beyond. Yes, the script is a bit too long and sometimes rather "Hollywood Jewish" with some jokes Groucho himself would have been pleased to quip, but it is poignant, warm, engaging and funny.
Lipman was also great with an ad-lib when someone blew their nose really loudly (did he/she really have to be that loud?) breaking the fourth wall - admittedly the whole of the monologue is addressed at the audience anyway - to remark that she thought it was someone from her retirement home, which is where we were at in the play when this happened.
I often praise theatre staff and would to do so again here but I can't. The Ambassador's really needs to get its act together. One person checking all tickets soon creates a long queue even in a smallish theatre. Once inside the usher directed us to the wrong entrance and they wouldn't sell programmes upstairs but no worries you can get it at the interval. Yeah but how do I check out who's in the cast before it starts??? Next a ten minute delay due to some issue with seats and, finally, the ushers were most in evidence before the end of each half when they would trundle down the noisy, creaking steps to break the tension at crucial points in the performance. Can't they wait till the curtain falls to move for goodness sake?
Still, at least the performance was worth it!
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