Mood Music

The reviews don't seem to have ensured it sells very well though. It doesn't deserve to but it is interesting how badly Red was selling and now has full (weekend at least) houses based on reviews.

Oh but it does. It's one of the most excruciatingly boring things I've sat through in a long time. Even Dame Eileen Atkins to my left wasn't enough to make me like it. I wanted to take one of those dangly microphones and wrap it around Ben Chaplin's neck just to end the misery. In fact there were moments I considered wrapping one around my own neck if it would have made it stop.

I don't think it's helped by the fact that the character we're supposed to sympathise with (the singer) is just as dreadfully irritating as the producer. I couldn't have cared any less about them. Apart from the lead two, you have to wonder about the sizes of the mortgages of the rest of the cast to guess why they accepted such rotten roles in this.

It is strange how the pro's and anti's for any show often appear in clumps! I have to say I really disliked this play. The female lead's accent was grating to say the least (and I am Irish myself), both lead characters were unsympathetic and the supporting cast just fumbling around in search of a plot.  There must be better plays that merit a production than this?    

I didn't love this but didn't think it was that bad either. It was entertaining enough. I did like the artist/therapist/lawyer points of view to get a message across.

Although it's a pretty basic layout it isn't the usual Old Vic proscenium presentation - it's created a thrust stage. That means that (a) seats have been taken out and (b) the playing area is huge. I can see why they thought they didn't need all the seats normally used but the play was somewhat lost on that larger stage and relatively cavernous arena. it would have been better suited to a smaller venue.

I'm going to go out on a limb from most people here on this one. I enjoyed it and I thought it was a good play. I particularly want to address the point of the Ben Chaplin part (Bernard). First, the guy can act and to complain about his being inexpressive is frankly to confuse the character with the actor. I think there were plenty of lines where the character showed his complete lack of empathy with others and his overweening ego, and many of these were the best lines in the play. The devil does tend to have them.

The role of the exploited artiste was less meaty but Seana Kerslake, as Cat, coped with it reasonably well, especially on the musical side - not sure if her accent wasn't more Ulster than Dublin but I'm not an expert on Irish accents. The rest of the cast were attendant lords.

I particularly enjoyed the scenes where the conversations between different sets of characters began to merge and feed off each other. Required good timing and was dramatically very effective.

For me this was an entertaining and interesting piece on exploitation, specifically within the music industry and how it is targeted particularly against women, but it was also a wider critique of the relationship between creativity and commercialism. It sounded good too. My biggest quibble was the poor sightlines, at one point the Chaplin character was being blocked by a chair with someone sat on it and by the piano so basically you could barely see him. Not the first time this has happened to me at the Old Vic though.

Last night it was full, there were no walkouts and the audience applauded enthusiastically and enjoyed quite a few laughs.

Saw the final matinee performance of this. I liked it. An interesting take on power dynamics in the music industry. Funny, and also managed to not be pretentious.