Lemons Lemons Lemons - Harold Pinter / Manchester / Brighton

£45 is the top price other than just a few premium seats in Manchester. Got the front row of the stalls for that price. Excited to see this show again. Just been watching Jenna Coleman this week in The Sandman on Netflix.

This is a great play but those prices are stupid. I’ve seen this play probably two or three times over the past few years, done either by am dram or fringe companies. It’s not the kind of play that needs a West End run.

Could be a hot ticket with those leads. Aidan has a strong fan base after Poldark and Jenna is just coming off of one of the biggest Netflix hits in recent years

Yes we do, but then Manchester and Brighton would have to go. Compromises sometimes have to be made! 🙂

Booked front row in Manchester for £40 (fiver off with a theatrecard.) London equivalent £85. 😲

Yeah was about to say, Lemons^5 would work! (Or Lemons*5?)

I was excited about this, but yeah. £££. And I find the HP a really uncomfortable theatre with a lot of rubbish seats. I’d like to see it but will wait to see if discounts happen, I’d have happily paid £40-60 in advance for a reasonable seat, but not three time that!

Booked a £25 ticket in the Circle. I enjoyed watching them on stage in Lieutenant of Inishmore and All My Sons.

Some unjustifiable ticket prices for this

Completely agree re. the pricing. I'm interested but not that interested. The cheap seats at the Pinter aren't worth the money in my view so wouldn't even want to give them a go.

Thank you, still quite pricey for what look like rather bad seats. I really want to see this but I think I'm going to wait more and hope for a today tix offer...

Yes I noticed the same! I still don't think the offers are good value though & haven't bought anything yet.

£25 offer on TodayTix today

I noticed. Glad of it, Hopefully I'll manage to catch it once during the run...

This production doesn't, in fact, last an hour: it's a solid 95 minutes based on tonight, so you'll get an extra 35 minutes for your money lol. That is by design, rather than just a feature of it being an early preview, as the signs around the theatre all say "95 minutes without an interval." I think it's been reworked significantly by the author.

I absolutely LOVED the show tonight! I laughed and I was moved to tears.

Two wonderful, teasing, vulnerable, humorous performances, that completely convey the value of communication, words and love itself.

Some spoilers follow. . .

Great love stories generally work better for being denied something. Frequently, that thing is life itself, as in "Romeo and Juliet," or any number of operas that have one of the lovers collapse with tuberculosis, choking out one last magnificent aria as they do.

Even great happy love stories are enhanced by some great lack (eg Darcy's lack of tact and humility vs Elizabeth Bennett's lack of money and opportunities).

Often we set love stories in historical periods where there was some great lack: eg gay or interracial love stories when horrible laws made things illegal and dangerous.

In this love story, the period is the future, and the illegality pertains to speaking more than 140 words per day.

It is of course a gimmick of a premise, that only holds up through a wilful suspension of disbelief on the part of the audience. For example, if it is ok to tap morse code on the floor, why not just learn British Sign Language and say whatever you want? Why even enact such a silly law in the first place?

If you let the gimmickiness get to you, you will be like a person who watches "Back to the Future" and says it's no fun because time loops make no sense. I'd say just run with it lol.

I did, and Aidan Turner and Jenna Coleman are so incredibly precious together in this, their relationship chemistry adorably believable and believably adorable, with Turner's rising playful cadences perfectly balanced by Coleman's equally playful mimicking caustic rejoinders.

Class imbalances, money imbalances, and Orwellian political imbalances, specified by the script, build insecurities and vulnerabilities into these two characters that make you doubly root for each of these playful witty people, and even more for a potential love match that might salve these deficiencies and create a more perfect romantic whole.

Scenes that involve fulsome playful banter become poignant in the knowledge that the word-denying law will take this all away. And scenes that follow the law become poignant for awareness of the banter that is no longer possible. And by intercutting such scenes in a nonlinear way, we are always heartbreakingly aware of all of it.

And, as if by magic, small things like cheeky wordless gesturing glances (Turner) and nose twitching playfulness (Coleman) are magnified into the potential of a great love.

The whole non-linear, flashing from scene to scene, shape of the play is similar to Nick Payne's "Constellations," and this show captures the magic of that play's sense of life's infinite possibilities.

This being an early preview, Turner forgot his lines once, and repeated a scene, and never has such a thing felt so perfectly part of the concept (words proscribed by memory are as much a denial of something wonderful as words proscribed by law) that the magic of the concept felt enhanced by the moment.

I expect that it has been hard for the actors to learn this ever-expanding play, as it is still listed as 75 minutes running time on the ATG website, and it was fully and intentionally 20 minutes longer than that in tonight's preview.

I wouldn't lose a single extra precious word. Wonderful, and I'd love to see it again in a more mature form after press night. 4 and a half stars from me.