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Post by joem on Apr 11, 2023 11:10:56 GMT
Revival of Brian Friel's Olivier (not Oliver as per the National's programme!) winning 1991 play.
Confession time: despite meaning to, I have never seen one of Friel's plays before, an odd lacuna, so I cannot compare this to any other productions or even plays by the same playwright. This is only an opinion based on what I saw last night and not learned in any way. In fact, I'd rather not start the thread but someobody's got to.....
First impression is how well the space has been used to create the (artistically unwalled) farm in the middle of nowhere in the Irish countryside, beautifully set out providing several levels for the actors. Chapeau. The Olivier stage which is indeed very big, looks huge here.
The play is basically a slice of life in mid 1930's Ireland with the arrival of the wireless heralding modernity, the narrator (loosely based on the author) comments as an adult on what happened in his childhood participating mostly invisibly in the live action. It's a moment in time, caught just before big changes are due to happen - at family and society levels. The five sisters who share the simple, impoverished country life will be going their own ways, the returned (possibly disgraced) priest will yearn for a return to Africa and the cultural fusion he adores, and the love child narrator will leave the family cocoon. Is it a nostalgia fest? Not really, they language is simple but at times lyrical and the wistfulness is not for the "old times" but for happy, uncomplicated times such as the dancing checked in the title with its links to a freer, pagan past of harvest festivals and living in tune with nature.
It's not dramatic with a big D but it is inspiring and thought-provoking and sensibly directed and acted by a fine ensemble cast.
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Post by mattnyc on Apr 11, 2023 14:45:53 GMT
I love this play and I’m sad I won’t be able to see it so hopefully it’s able to stream at some point. But it’s between this and “Motive and the Cue” for me and I had to go with the latter.
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Post by adolphus on Apr 12, 2023 12:23:48 GMT
This is such a beautiful production. As the previous poster highlighted, full use is made of the Olivier stage, and the ensemble acting is flawless. Ardal O'Hanlon and Siobhan McSweeney make the most of their eye-catching roles, and the ever-excellent Justine Mitchell anchors the whole piece as Kate.
I've seen this play quite badly done, but somehow knew I was on safe ground here when Tom Vaughan-Lawlor walked down the set to begin his narration. I still feel the play is slightly baggy in parts, but the love, humour and grace with which Friel recounts the story of these remarkable women is so enriching and haunting. (There's a good article about the Friel's mother and aunts who inspired the play in the programme)
Thank you to the National for this
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Post by alessia on Apr 12, 2023 12:37:12 GMT
I am going on Friday, looking forward! I have never seen it before.
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Post by Jon on Apr 12, 2023 13:07:09 GMT
I think the roles of Dougal and to an extent Jack Mooney typecast Ardal O'Hanlan as a comedy actor but he's a very good drama actor.
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Post by clarefh on Apr 12, 2023 14:19:41 GMT
I’m going to this on Saturday - absolutely love this play so very glad to hear it sounds like it’s as good as the casting seemed to promise.
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Post by adamkinsey on Apr 12, 2023 16:56:05 GMT
I can't decide whether to go or not. I sort of feel I should but I found Friel's Translations one if the dullest evenings ever spent in a theatre.
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Post by barrowside on Apr 12, 2023 17:41:57 GMT
I think it's Friel's masterpiece. So warm, funny, sad and so deeply moving. It wears it's themes much more subtly than Translations. I'm not seeing this production for another week or two but there seems to be a lot of love for it on twitter from those who have seen it.
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Post by adamkinsey on Apr 12, 2023 18:09:10 GMT
I just saw an opinion on Facebook that said the staging was beautiful but they left at half time as they were fed up not being able to hear half the cast! That seems a bit, well, weird.
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Post by rmechanical on Apr 14, 2023 6:10:05 GMT
Saw this last night and it is a fine production . I felt it needed a final tightening which I'm sure it will get as the run continues. By the way his best play is of course Faith Healer. The Royal Court production with Stephen Lewis made me see Blakey in a brand new light!
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Post by max on Apr 14, 2023 8:31:33 GMT
Very interested to see this. I love 'Translations' and some of Friel's earlier modern-set plays like 'Freedom Of The City' and 'Volunteers'. Less keen on his wistful elegaic writing, of which this seemed the start - all a bit sleepy to me in my early twenties when I saw the original production in the West End. But I have a feeling with more life experience of my own it may hit quite differently watching it now.
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Post by lookingatthestars on Apr 14, 2023 14:25:08 GMT
I think the roles of Dougal and to an extent Jack Mooney typecast Ardal O'Hanlan as a comedy actor but he's a very good drama actor. I agree. When I went to see the production of the Weir he was in I was fully expecting to see Dougal, but was surprised by his subtle characterization of Jim and how he delivered his ghostly monologue.
Don't think I'll get to see this, which is a pity, because it seems like a great production and I've seen far too many bad productions of this. It's an easy play to not do a good job with, because there is no real plot, no high drama moments, it's just about the relationships of these people and how they live. And a play like that needs really good direction and acting.
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Post by alessia on Apr 15, 2023 6:26:08 GMT
I don't know what to make of this, I didn't love it and didn't hate it. It has moving moments and some funny ones (although I perhaps found them less funny than some others in the audience). I thought Justine Mitchell(Kate) and Louisa Harland (Agnes) were the highlight. The character of Gerry annoyed me immensely and I suspect that from the moment he came along, I couldn't shake the feeling of irritation for *spoiler* another man who just comes and goes into a woman's life and leaves her to deal with the consequences. And how some in the play actually defended him. No. I was on Kate's side all the way. The priest coming back from Africa was entertaining- some of the dialogue about the pagan ceremonies were hilarious. For me the play was a bit too long and the ending could have been more poignant. It just ends with another speech. Going home afterwards I was thinking that perhaps Brian Friel's plays aren't my thing, as I've now seen three and they all left me cold (Translations was good but also VERY long, Aristocrats I can remember next to nothing). I wonder if, had I not heard so much praise for this, I'd have liked it more. Standing ovation from part of the audience at the end so most people loved it.
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Post by alexandra on Apr 15, 2023 14:25:11 GMT
Good performances from four of the five sisters. Everyone else miscast. And the pacing was wrong. I've seen a couple of very good productions of the play, and this just wasn't.
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Post by nottobe on Apr 15, 2023 15:00:34 GMT
I was looking to book this and was quite looking forward to seeing it based on the cast but I have to say I am now a little apprehensive about seeing it based on these comments and other things I've heard. I don't know the play at all and to be honest am not a big fan of character rather than narrative driven stories. I think I will still give it a go with a cheap ticket unless it gets terrible reviews but I have to say I am not as excited as I once was.
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Post by jgblunners on Apr 15, 2023 17:02:52 GMT
I’m sorry but it looks like they’ve just recycled the set for Translations
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Post by londonpostie on Apr 15, 2023 17:11:13 GMT
I’m sorry but it looks like they’ve just recycled the set for Translations Don't apologise, they have (this is the 4th occasion that fake grass has been used - first use was indeed Translations)
Also, Theresa May's wheat field from Phaedra (second use).
NT policy.
Should get them most of the way through Friel's oeuvre.
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Post by jgblunners on Apr 15, 2023 17:18:36 GMT
I’m sorry but it looks like they’ve just recycled the set for Translations Don't apologise, they have (this is the 4th occasion that fake grass has been used - first use was indeed Translations)
Also, Theresa May's wheat field from Phaedra (second use).
NT policy.
I’m all for recycling pieces of scenery - the less waste the better! It’s just that the design is almost identical, but with vibrant vegetation instead of dull grass and mud. I wonder if the designer did it subconsciously or if they were encouraged to go along similar lines.
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Post by teamyali on Apr 15, 2023 17:22:46 GMT
Didn’t NT pledge to be more sustainable regarding the materials they used for their sets? I think this was discussed way back in the production of Paradise in 2021.
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Post by barrowside on Apr 15, 2023 17:26:48 GMT
What did you expect them to do? The play is set in Donegal at harvest time. The design follows Friel's instructions for the layout of the kitchen and garden precisely and given the vastness of The Olivier of course they've filled it out with the landscape.
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Post by londonpostie on Apr 15, 2023 17:35:27 GMT
Don't apologise, they have (this is the 4th occasion that fake grass has been used - first use was indeed Translations)
Also, Theresa May's wheat field from Phaedra (second use).
NT policy.
I’m all for recycling pieces of scenery - the less waste the better! It’s just that the design is almost identical, but with vibrant vegetation instead of dull grass and mud. I wonder if the designer did it subconsciously or if they were encouraged to go along similar lines. Pretty much the same location 100 years apart - rural Donegal. At the time of Translations, Ireland was on the cusp of fundamental change, as was the case 100 years later.
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Post by londonpostie on Apr 15, 2023 17:48:08 GMT
Anyway, as for the play, well .. 'Poignant' and 'bitter-sweet' barely covers it.
<SPOILER BELOW!>
"Why would the girls disappear to London and never come back?" asked the Englishwoman to my left at the end. As usual when Friel's on at the National, plenty of Irish about today; I can't think any of those were under any illusions. Not so many years ago, I worked with a man who was born in south London and who spent his early years in an orphanage. I think he talked with me because I was delivering to the pub his mother had worked when she came over for a while. The pub was known back home as somewhere Catholic girls could go. By then, he knew the village his mother was from, and probably still living (and thinking about him likely every day) - no secrets now with DNA matching on Ancestry.com Very touching piece, Gentle, layered characterisations. Ya man Friel does a particularly rewarding turn in earned sentimentality, sweet nostalgia and raw-as-you-like social history.
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Post by max on Apr 15, 2023 17:54:15 GMT
I’m all for recycling pieces of scenery - the less waste the better! It’s just that the design is almost identical, but with vibrant vegetation instead of dull grass and mud. I wonder if the designer did it subconsciously or if they were encouraged to go along similar lines. Pretty much the same location 100 years apart - rural Donegal. At the time of Translations, Ireland was on the cusp of fundamental change, as was the case 100 years later. Yes - entirely appropriate. Set in Friel's fictional village Ballybeg (from the Irish Baile Beag) in Donegal. One internet source claims 14 of his plays are set there. I haven't checked that, but his breakthrough play 'Philadelphia, Here I Come!' (as early as 1964) is set there.
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Post by barrowside on Apr 15, 2023 17:56:06 GMT
It's wonderful that it's back at The National given that it was one of the key inspirations for Dancing at Lughnasa. When The National staged Fathers and Sons in the 1980s, Brian Friel and Thomas Kilroy walked along the South Bank and across Hungerford Bridge afterwards. The bridge was not the elegant design it is now, rather a long, open red shed that afforded a little scant shelter to dozens of homeless people. On seeing them Friel remarked to Kilroy that two of his aunts had ended up destitute in London. Kilroy encouraged him to write about it and it became one of the strands of this beautiful play.
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Post by jgblunners on Apr 15, 2023 18:26:30 GMT
Interesting, I wasn’t aware that they were explicitly the same location!
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Post by max on Apr 15, 2023 21:37:56 GMT
Interesting, I wasn’t aware that they were explicitly the same location! Yes - one day someone will do the Ballybeg cycle, with the plays in historical order on the same, similar, or gradually evolving/modernising set. Though - much as I love some Friel - that might be a bit much! lol
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Post by max on Apr 15, 2023 21:42:33 GMT
It's wonderful that it's back at The National given that it was one of the key inspirations for Dancing at Lughnasa. When The National staged Fathers and Sons in the 1980s, Brian Friel and Thomas Kilroy walked along the South Bank and across Hungerford Bridge afterwards. The bridge was not the elegant design it is now, rather a long, open red shed that afforded a little scant shelter to dozens of homeless people. On seeing them Friel remarked to Kilroy that two of his aunts had ended up destitute in London. Kilroy encouraged him to write about it and it became one of the strands of this beautiful play. That's so interesting. I love Thomas Kilroy's writing too. Yes, horrible to remember Cardboard City in the vile rotunda that is now the Imax. Literally dozens of people living in cardboard boxes there. I remember (and I wish I'd noted the date) an evening sometime in the early to mid 2000s when I realised I hadn't seen a homeless person that night in London. We've slid right back now though, based on the strand and adjoining streets with tents etc.
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Post by Dave B on Apr 15, 2023 22:30:45 GMT
I’m all for recycling pieces of scenery - the less waste the better! It’s just that the design is almost identical, but with vibrant vegetation instead of dull grass and mud. I wonder if the designer did it subconsciously or if they were encouraged to go along similar lines. Pretty much the same location 100 years apart - rural Donegal. At the time of Translations, Ireland was on the cusp of fundamental change, as was the case 100 years later. Some might suggest that Donegal hasn't changed at all since then either!
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Post by Steve on Apr 15, 2023 22:56:49 GMT
Saw this tonight and LOVED it. If you prefer a big action driven plot, it may not be up your street, and if you prefer one of Friel's clever innovative ideas to drive the play, this might not be up your street. But if you are satisfied with well-defined human beings occupying a time and place in an exquisite and evocative memory type play, then, for me, you can't do better than this. Some spoilers follow. . . I've seen 4 Friel plays now, and this is the least clever: "Philadelphia Here I Come" had two actors playing the same part (clever); "Translations" had people speaking different languages, though on stage they all spoke English, so the audience could bridge gaps the characters couldn't (clever) and "Faith Healer" has multiple accounts of the same story, forming a Rashomon-style puzzle (clever). This isn't clever. It's an explosion of memory and feeling, a capturing of a time and a place, an exploration of different character-types and the preciousness of a moment in time where they all exist together. It's like Shakespeare's "The Tempest," where 5 sisters and a brother live on an island of time together, but you know that once that time is over, and they leave that island, nothing will ever be the same. It's about how precious those experiences in a moment of time can be, a celebration of people coming together in that time, their quirks, their relationships, their lives. For me, it was wonderful. Tom Stoppard's "Leopoldstadt" was a bit like this for me: every play I'd seen by him some sort of display of cleverness, and then "Leopoldstadt" came along and it was an explosion of feelings and family relationships, with no pretenses: the heart unfiltered, and I loved it. My only experience of this material previously was seeing the film back in the day. Although time has faded my memories of it, I prefer tonight's theatre production. That's partly because life lived in front of your eyes by living actors is more encapsulating of the living of life in the precious moment (each night being slightly different, rather than some edited frozen thing). But it's also because I prefer some things about this production than what I remember of the film: (1) Ardal O'Hanlon's brother/priest, returning from Africa changed by the culture there, is so much more vibrant and alive than Michael Gambon's film counterpart, who seemed like a ghost that never really came back at all. Consequently, the sisters really have to face up to him and deal with his newfound strangeness, rather than simply dismiss him as a dead man walking; (2) As great as Kathy Burke's portrayal of the vibrant sister, Maggie, was in the film (the moment I realised Burke could really act and wasn't just a broad comedy expert), she was marginalised (maybe everyone always gets sidelined if Meryl Streep is cast as another character lol). Here, Siobhan McSweeney's Maggie is magnificently centred as the focus of the whole play, always on stage, always reacting, the only pure guide we have to the reality of everything. She's vibrantly alive dancing, hilariously alive when teasing the others and painfully alive when confronted by whatmighthavebeens, but she's ever present and inspires (for me) complete trust as an interpreter of the other characters' actions; (3) Cos the other sisters really can't be fully trusted as bellwethers of the others' actions: Louisa Harland's Agnes is such a poignant portrait of regret that we ache for her but can't trust her insights; Justine Mitchell's overbearing yet heartbreakingly compassionate Kate has had to play mother to the others for far too long to be trusted fully in her vision of them; Alison Oliver's Chris is too wonderfully romantic to see the world as it is: and being obviously neurodiverse and an eternal child, Blaithin Mac Gabhann's Rose can only be trusted not to be trusted; (4) all wonderful performances I felt, but having McSweeney's trustworthy filter, of an objective reality, being so omnipresent and alive, was illuminating and invaluable for me; (5) the only thing I much preferred in the film was the portrayal of Chris's love interest, the Welsh fairy-like father of her child: in the film, Rhys Ifans was evidently Welsh and ethereal, charming and magically captivating while being frustratingly unreachable and evanescent; here, Tom Riley's Gerry, by contrast, appears more upper crust Sandhurst than Welsh, and comes across as an obvious bounder and cad, albeit with soft edges - this whole interpretation makes him a bit incomprehensible as a character and it makes Chris seem more foolish than she should for falling for his shower of recklessness and irresponsibility. All in all though, I was captivated by this production, and felt very moved. Obviously, you might not be, especially if you prefer more of a plot and maybe more cleverness. But for me, 5 stars.
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Post by Jon on Apr 15, 2023 23:23:17 GMT
I saw it tonight as well and I liked it a lot. Not often does a play manages to stir the emotions and Dancing at Lughnasa does it and does it well. It's interesting that the events that befall the sisters are not of their own doing and make it a lot sadder because they are essentially victims of fate although I do wonder Why Aggie and Rose didn't apply for jobs at the knitting factory rather than leave to go to London. In terms of the cast, it's a tie between Justine Mitchell, Siobhan McSweeney and Louisa Harland on who I thought was the best and having only seen Louisa in Derry Girls, it's a pleasant surprise that she was able to pull off Agnes with such ease. Quite a mix of Irish and Americans in the audience.
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