3,350 posts
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Post by Dr Tom on Dec 4, 2018 18:12:59 GMT
Saw the matinee today (and still picking bits of straw off my clothes).
This is a new adaptation, performed without an interval and running a snappy 75 minutes. This has also been touring nursing homes and other community venues around London.
It’s a simple production with a cast of seven playing multiple characters. Several actor musicians as there are songs (I think two songs, but reprised multiple times).
I’ve only seen the musical before so can’t compare this to other productions of the play, but the plot seemed intact, including the controversial parts (but without swearing). Possibly cut down a bit.
This is staged in the round in one of the smaller rooms (possibly a rehearsal room). Two rows of seats, holding about 50. Due to the nature of the space, the lights stay on throughout and there’s an introduction to say this.
For those of you who like warnings about gunshots, there is a gun held but it’s not fired. There is a balloon burst and also party poppers used. But nothing to get too worked up about and they’re over quickly.
The only warning given in advance is for people allergic to hay.
The (mostly young) cast work hard and never leave the stage. There are blocks integrated with the seating where they rest. They’re also innovative with the staging and props, including a large cloth that initially covers the performance place. This is designed to tour into various rooms and also raise discussion questions.
Worth a visit if you’ve got time. Officially this is sold out, but I think there’s a good chance of getting returns or filling a seat when someone doesn’t make it. There were two empty seats at this performance and I think I heard another small group saying they managed to get seats without tickets.
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Post by Jan on Dec 5, 2018 7:41:15 GMT
Bit of a lazy choice of play in my view, it's the only one of his plays that ever gets staged and is familiar to a lot of people already via the musical. Would have preferred to see Wedekind's two "Lulu" plays instead.
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Post by learfan on Dec 5, 2018 9:46:34 GMT
Bit of a lazy choice of play in my view, it's the only one of his plays that ever gets staged and is familiar to a lot of people already via the musical. Would have preferred to see Wedekind's two "Lulu" plays instead. I had tix for the Almeida production with Joanne Whalley in the early 90s which got cancelled after she had an accident backstage if i recall. |
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Post by Jan on Dec 5, 2018 14:50:55 GMT
Bit of a lazy choice of play in my view, it's the only one of his plays that ever gets staged and is familiar to a lot of people already via the musical. Would have preferred to see Wedekind's two "Lulu" plays instead. I had tix for the Almeida production with Joanne Whalley in the early 90s which got cancelled after she had an accident backstage if i recall. There was a production only a few years ago by Headlong but as they’d got Anya Reiss to do the adaptation I wasn’t interested. A few years before that it was on at the Lyric Hammersmith. |
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Post by learfan on Dec 5, 2018 20:42:45 GMT
Yeah not bothered, i only booked at the time because i fancied the lovely Joanne.
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1,499 posts
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Post by Steve on Dec 6, 2018 0:43:06 GMT
I had tix for the Almeida production with Joanne Whalley in the early 90s which got cancelled after she had an accident backstage if i recall. There was a production only a few years ago by Headlong but as they’d got Anya Reiss to do the adaptation I wasn’t interested. A few years before that it was on at the Lyric Hammersmith. I saw the Anya Reiss production, and she worked a miracle on it, because she succeeded in making a play, in which parents eff up their kids by not explaining sex, relevant in an age in which every kid has google and an iphone to look it up. Basically, Reiss suggested that parents can similarly let their kids down if they allow them too MUCH unfettered access to the internet, showing how extreme and copious internet porn, and the expectations it generates, can be just as confusing as not being told anything about sex at all. This new Young Vic Unpacked Production suffers from a lack of relevancy, by comparison, as it is very faithful to the original, which is one of two problems I had with it. One problem I did not have with this is that it is not "Lulu," as the Young Vic Unpacked programme (which I hope continues) apparently isn't about us regular theatregoers, but about those who have never seen a show before. Being a kind of outreach project, "Young Vic Unpacked" productions will be presented "Free of charge," with the Young Vic itself merely a bookend to the shows where critics can get a look at them. Taken in that light, a title that carries some awareness like "Spring Awakening" might serve to drum up some interest in otherwise disinterested people, who have never taken an interest before, in places like Millwall Football Club and Homeless Shelters, where we were told this show has been performed.
Some spoilers follow. . .
We were apprised that the Young Vic presentation of this show would adhere to all the "Young Vic Unpacked" cheap and cheerful traveling roadshow rules, so there was no lighting, as such, with just the ceiling lights turned on throughout, and the walls were bare of any decoration. Further, in order to introduce folks to their first ever play, some lines are spoken at the beginning, to clue the audience in why they should care, and what they should think about, and we were told we would experience the show in the same way: so we were asked to raise our hands if we carried secret burdens, and to raise our hands if we ever asked for help with those burdens. People raised or didn't raise their hands accordingly. Therefore, this play is presented as a kind of after-school special about what happens if you are secretly suffering and if you do, or don't, ask for help, a clever way of making relevant a production that is set in the context of the oppressive morals and widespread sexual ignorance of the past. And this leads me to my second problem with this adaptation. In order to make the play fit the afterschool topic, the character of Ilse is jettisoned, as she is a character who helps Moritz, but which help he rejects. The simplistic set-up of the play requires that the proffering of "help" must rescue a character, and the complexity of Moritz's self-hating rejection of Ilse's help, in the Wedekind original, is avoided by excising her from the play. This has the side-effect of abbreviating Moritz's story so much that he is side-lined as a character, his story arc truncated, a mere exemplar for the other characters.
The production is very good with the other characters, though, with both Olivia Caley's Wendla and Charles Furness' Melchior giving affecting performances. Caley's Wendla is introduced singing a hippyish song redolent of Florence and the Machine at their most flowery, backed by the plucking of the strings of a cello and a violin wielded skillfully by the actor-musicians playing Hans and Ernst. From here, the violin and cello turn discordant and screechy as harsh plot twists ensue, and unlike the musical version, this retains the full harshness of Wedekind's original plot progression, allowing Caley's flowery innocence to be beaten to mush by her parents prudishness and Melchior's actions.
As Melchior, Furness, who briefly but effectively recently tyrannized Lesley Sharp in the Royal Court's "The Woods," and who looks and feels like an unformed version of "A Clockwork Orange's" Alex, treads the line between sensitivity and potential ultra-violence beautifully, so that you sit on the edge of your seat, never quite knowing what he's going to do.
Caroline Byrne, who directed two great productions recently, in the Gate's "Eclipsed" and the Globe's "Taming of the Shrew," has less budget to work with here, but still comes up with some innovative and effective work with costumes, some hay, some buttons, and a democratic in-the-round staging that gives all sides a fair view (although it should be noted that there are two rows of seats, and no rake, so the fifty percent of the audience in the front row are privileged over the fifty percent in the second row).
I felt that this was the closest version to the original Wedekind text that I have seen, I felt that two of the trio of central performances were allowed the room to breathe to be effective, despite a swift 75 minute running time, and I felt increased admiration for Anya Reiss' success in making this dated play feel so topical in her Headlong version. That said, while the sexual mores of this production might be dated, the after-school special set-up of how we get by only with a little help from our friends is not, and does indeed prove effective here.
For me, this version had 3 and a half stars of impact, exciting for it's staging, and for the central duo, but held back by the excising of the Ilse character and the dating of Wedekind generally, but as a democratic idea, stretching out the arm of the Young Vic's subsidy to Homeless shelters and football clubs and prisons, this merits a full 5 stars.  |
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1,287 posts
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Post by theatrefan77 on Dec 6, 2018 10:12:55 GMT
Thank you for the review. Look forward to seeing this tomorrow
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