294 posts
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Post by dani on Jul 14, 2018 17:30:24 GMT
This is superior in every possible way to BEGINNING - and the less said about the execrable MOOD MUSIC the better ---- the walkouts at the half said it all. I think you mean the interval! The "half" is thirty minutes before curtain up. |
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449 posts
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Post by SageStageMgr on Jul 14, 2018 18:03:32 GMT
The idea that a play called Consent has to be about consent seems a little reductive to me. I was making the point that the promotional material, posters etc to someone coming in blind, combined with the title, implies a very different tone to what is the reality on stage, that’s all. It doesn’t really “cross-examine” the topic, sadly, in the way that I hoped for what is billed as a thinkpiece. The newspaper-style blurb outside the theatre, on a sandwich board, quotes the Independent’s Paul Taylor as saying something along the lines of “this couldn’t have come along at a more appropriate time” implying it was intrinsically or themeatically (although coincidentally) linked to the #metoo movement. It really isn’t. The rape subject is largely irrelevant. |
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449 posts
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Post by SageStageMgr on Jul 14, 2018 18:05:33 GMT
I also wouldn’t call it a pile of sh*t. It was well acted and some of the ideas were interesting and well presented given the staging provided. It just wasn’t at all the type of show marketed and left me cold personally as a general “relationships” piece because everyone is so thoroughly despicable.
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449 posts
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Post by SageStageMgr on Jul 14, 2018 18:09:32 GMT
This is superior in every possible way to BEGINNING - and the less said about the execrable MOOD MUSIC the better ---- the walkouts at the half said it all. I think you mean the interval! The "half" is thirty minutes before curtain up. Also, the half is considered usually to be 35 minutes before curtain up... but that’s a DSM’s pedantic nature coming out... |
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294 posts
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Post by dani on Jul 14, 2018 18:20:13 GMT
I think you mean the interval! The "half" is thirty minutes before curtain up. Also, the half is considered usually to be 35 minutes before curtain up... but that’s a DSM’s pedantic nature coming out... I am pleased to learn this! |
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Post by Deleted on Jul 14, 2018 18:20:16 GMT
Yes, but don't tell that to the actors, you'll never go up on time ever again.
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449 posts
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Post by SageStageMgr on Jul 14, 2018 18:22:57 GMT
Also, the half is considered usually to be 35 minutes before curtain up... but that’s a DSM’s pedantic nature coming out... I am pleased to learn this! And I’m thrilled to actually know something! |
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Post by Deleted on Jul 15, 2018 10:30:04 GMT
I am pleased to learn this! And I’m thrilled to actually know something! I don’t think you post very often, do you? I very much enjoyed your posts to this thread, and hope you will post more often. |
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Post by Deleted on Jul 16, 2018 8:16:11 GMT
TodayTix has a 24 hour offer today for £15 tickets (including stalls) for all performances up to 11th August.
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63 posts
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Post by pledge on Jul 31, 2018 8:56:39 GMT
Disappointed by this: as others have said, it's hard to become involved when the main characters just seem so glib and shallow - I knew from the very first scene that I was unlikely to ever care about any of them: the kind of loud and shrill lawyers who'd be laughing uproariously at their own crass jokes on the train back from the rugger at Twickenham! Similarly, a plot that depends on which of a pair of middle-class couples has or hasn't been having an affair seems desperately tired...(As for that ghastly parody of a bimbo actress, I just found it embarrassing.) To be fair I suspect the original cast and venue may have served the text better; as so often with West End transfers, a certain coarsening soon sets in, and a lot of the acting was of the "point and shout" variety. There were some striking and telling lines in the text, certainly towards the end of the (rather overlong) first half, but they were lost among too much shrill and sweary bickering. And it may well be that the plot finally pulled itself together and delivered a real punch in the second half, but if so I wasn't there to see it..
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3,578 posts
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Post by Rory on Aug 4, 2018 22:27:23 GMT
I saw this tonight, having been really sorry to have missed it at the Dorfman last year, and being slightly wary following some lukewarm reviews on here, and I have to say that I loved it!
Thought it was entertaining and by turns gripping and funny. Most of it rang true (ok had to suspend disbelief once or twice) but the audience lapped it up. Nice to see Claudie Blakley and Stephen Campbell Moore back at the Harold Pinter after the stonkingly stupendous Chimerica which was there a couple of years ago.
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1,250 posts
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Post by joem on Aug 8, 2018 20:48:20 GMT
I've come to this quite late but I think what some people have commented about the slightly misleading nature of the play is absolutely correct. I was expecting a state-of-the-nation consideration on consent and rape and instead got a clever tale about the trials and tribulations of married life amongst barristers - some of whom defend rape victims and some of whom help to destroy their lives. If the idea is to expose the shallowness of the criminal justice system well yes, we already knew that.
This is not a badly written play. It is not a boring play. But it is not really about "Consent". It is about how difficult it is to pay the mortgage if you do not do your job properly - even if that job happens to involve the character assassination of an innocent victim. It was well acted (not too sure about the stereotypical lower-class Gayle), it was smoothly produced. Are barristers really as nasty as this in their own spare time? Not many, surely. Adam James has almost got a patent on the kind of self-confident, middle-class bonhomie part with an edge which he plays here but the weight of the play is carried by Campbell-Moore's smug and cynical moralising lawyer - he has some of the worst lines - and Claudie Blakley as his wife Kitty (she has some of the best lines).
Have to say Lee Ingleby is an unconvincing Casanova as Tim, not so much through his faults but the way the text sets up him as a weedy, boring, malodorous loser only to then reveal him to be something entirely quite else. Mmm.
We live in the days of the HBO mega-series which cultivates loads of story-lines supporting the main arc. On the boards you are well advised to have one strong narrative and if there are others keep them in support. Otherwise you can fall foul of what has happened with this play, a conflict between aspirations and achievements.
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