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Post by Deleted on May 10, 2017 14:52:45 GMT
Awful
And I have told Yael
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Post by crabtree on May 10, 2017 15:22:38 GMT
And no doubt there will be all manner of defensive conversations about the rights of the director to explore her vision and such, and any outrage seen as triumphant. The first rights are to the audience and not other onanistic pleasures.
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Post by Cardinal Pirelli on May 10, 2017 16:16:27 GMT
Directing is not a science.
If you don't want Salome, you don't get Mies Julie or Les Blancs. If you don't want Obsession, you don't get The Roman Tragedies or A View From a Bridge. Risk brings reward or failure, if you don't want the risk than all you will get is safe, bland and dull.
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Post by Jan on May 10, 2017 16:59:11 GMT
Interesting to me that almost all the criticism of the piece here could have equally been applied to the last production of Salome the NT staged which was masterminded by Stephen Berkoff. Perhaps they should give up on it.
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Post by Honoured Guest on May 10, 2017 17:07:19 GMT
It was very early in his artistic directorship that Richard Eyre programmed Steven Berkoff's Salome. It was reported at the time that Richard Eyre didn't personally like Steven Berkoff's work but that he wanted to broaden the range of theatre proggrammed by the NT, to reflect more fully the range of work going on in British theatre. I seem to remember that the advertised lead player missed many performances (Was it Antony Sher?) but that audiences who saw the less wellknown alternate performer said that they were glad to have done so because the first-cast actor would have dominated the play too much. Am I getting muddled in my memories?
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Post by lonlad on May 10, 2017 17:28:24 GMT
Was Sher in it later? Possibly. The lead at the National (where I saw it in 1989) was Berkoff himself as Herod, with Katherine Schlesinger in the title role. I remember its slow-mo ponderousness but it must have done at least reasonably well for the simple reason that it transferred to the Phoenix-admittedly, this was back in the day when Berkoff was a big name.
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Post by Honoured Guest on May 10, 2017 17:31:30 GMT
I think I've probably conflated two shows and Antony Sher was (or wasn't) in the other one!
EDIT: Yes, Sher was (or wasn't) in Berkoff's NT production of The Trial.
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Post by lonlad on May 10, 2017 17:40:48 GMT
Aha, yes, exactly right - which, if memory serves, happily was NOT in slow-mo :-)
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Post by Deleted on May 10, 2017 18:02:38 GMT
I hate to detrail what is genuinely a fascinating discussion. But this is driving me nuts: there's a musical with the lyrics "Sal-o-me Sal-o-me" and I can't place what it is. AND IT IS DRIVING ME INSANE.
Please put me out of my misery.
Thank you.
EDIT: I put myself out of my misery there's a bit in Great Comet that goes like that.
As you all were.
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Post by Latecomer on May 10, 2017 18:49:02 GMT
Interesting to me that almost all the criticism of the piece here could have equally been applied to the last production of Salome the NT staged which was masterminded by Stephen Berkoff. Perhaps they should give up on it. I really liked the Headlong production done by Jamie Lloyd in 2010...toured to Oxford. Didn't know Zawe Ashton at the time but she was excellent! It was all oil drums and camouflaged soldiers....I remember it was quite thrilling!
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Post by caa on May 10, 2017 19:04:41 GMT
Saw the play this afternoon, it has its moments but overall is too long, too much singing and the script is really poor. I was sat in the stalls and missed seeing most of the subtitles.
Sorry if this is inappropriate, but when Isabella Nefar is naked she seems to be wearing a wig to cover her private parts, which I thought was a bit odd.
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Post by horton on May 10, 2017 19:08:37 GMT
Why was my last post deleted? Did I commit a blasphemy in preferring this to Angels in America?
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Post by horton on May 10, 2017 19:14:19 GMT
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Post by Cardinal Pirelli on May 10, 2017 19:44:25 GMT
Sorry if this is inappropriate, but when Isabella Nefar is naked she seems to be wearing a wig to cover her private parts, which I thought was a bit odd. A merkin (they've been around since the middle ages)!
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Post by martin1965 on May 10, 2017 21:00:57 GMT
Sounds like another winner for Norris!!
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Post by caa on May 10, 2017 21:21:49 GMT
Sorry if this is inappropriate, but when Isabella Nefar is naked she seems to be wearing a wig to cover her private parts, which I thought was a bit odd. A merkin (they've been around since the middle ages)!
Thanks not seen one before
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Post by Honoured Guest on May 10, 2017 21:43:08 GMT
Merkinette - merkin for women
Merkini - small, two-piece merkin
Munchkin - merkin which stays on during oral sex
Merkinel - merkin shaped like the German Chancellor
Murkin - luminous merkin, visible in the dark
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Post by Jan on May 11, 2017 5:59:56 GMT
Was Sher in it later? Possibly. The lead at the National (where I saw it in 1989) was Berkoff himself as Herod, with Katherine Schlesinger in the title role. I remember its slow-mo ponderousness but it must have done at least reasonably well for the simple reason that it transferred to the Phoenix-admittedly, this was back in the day when Berkoff was a big name. Yes I saw Berkoff in the part. My main memory of it was that it proceeded at a glacial pace, as you say, and tedium set in very early. The dance of the seven veils was mimed by the fully clothed Schlesinger so that was disappointing too. Actually I quite liked Berkoff's work at the time but this was a total dud. It would be interesting to see a revival of "East" - his play in verse about East End yoof - I thought it was great at the time but I wonder how it looks now.
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Post by stefy69 on May 11, 2017 6:18:53 GMT
A terrible slating of this in the review in today's Times, struggled to get a one star rating.
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Post by couldileaveyou on May 11, 2017 6:47:24 GMT
Sorry if this is inappropriate, but when Isabella Nefar is naked she seems to be wearing a wig to cover her private parts, which I thought was a bit odd. A merkin (they've been around since the middle ages)!
Ooh I was sitting in second row and thought there was something weird down there, but not being familiar with female anatomy I did say nothing. But I was very suspicious.
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Post by Deleted on May 11, 2017 7:03:35 GMT
A terrible slating of this in the review in today's Times, struggled to get a one star rating. To be fair, the Times 'critic' doesn't have much credibility and dishes out daft reviews for attention. It's the fact that the rest are uniformly bad that worries me...
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Post by Jan on May 11, 2017 8:06:05 GMT
A terrible slating of this in the review in today's Times, struggled to get a one star rating. To be fair, the Times 'critic' doesn't have much credibility and dishes out daft reviews for attention. It's the fact that the rest are uniformly bad that worries me... Times review is worthless. Billington quite amusing on this, complaining about the terrible script; "Herod has the worst of it: at one point, he informs Salomé, “Between your thighs are secret ravines that will quench my thirst,” "
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Post by schuttep on May 11, 2017 9:40:02 GMT
Interesting to me that almost all the criticism of the piece here could have equally been applied to the last production of Salome the NT staged which was masterminded by Stephen Berkoff. Perhaps they should give up on it. The 1989 NT production was the Oscar Wilde version. This is a new play. I've seen some really poor reviews so I'm glad I'm seeing the RSC Wilde version in July rather than this one.
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Post by crabtree on May 11, 2017 12:02:07 GMT
Does Wilde's Salome actually work on the stage. The Royal Opera's opera version is terrific, especially the last ten bloody minutes. But oh I have just remembered the Ken Russell film.....oh yikes.
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Post by lonlad on May 11, 2017 12:08:26 GMT
No it doesn't --- Wilde's play is overripe twaddle and probably the only way to do proper justice to it is to indulge its camp excesses - i.e. not treat it (or the story itself) reverentially/portentously as would seem to be the Berkoff and now the Farber norm. Wonder what the morale is like backstage on this one? god only knows how they will power through NT Live ....
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Post by Deleted on May 11, 2017 12:16:11 GMT
No it doesn't --- Wilde's play is overripe twaddle and probably the only way to do proper justice to it is to indulge its camp excesses - i.e. not treat it (or the story itself) reverentially/portentously as would seem to be the Berkoff and now the Farber norm. Wonder what the morale is like backstage on this one? god only knows how they will power through NT Live .... I guess this just shows how unpredictable theatre is - on paper this should have been a sure-fire hit and an obvious choice for NT Live. Poor sods...
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Post by Deleted on May 11, 2017 12:21:24 GMT
I don't know, the director's not huge enough that you could necessarily expect the non-theatre-going public to be passingly familiar with her and/or her work, and there's not exactly a bunch of well-known faces in the cast to draw the punters. I can only assume they thought the title would attract/mislead the ballet/opera crowd to try a different sort of screening, because I literally cannot think of any other reason why they'd throw this one out to the cinemas.
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Post by Deleted on May 11, 2017 12:26:56 GMT
That's interesting - thinking about it, you're probably right - a big name in the theatre world but I guess that's a small section of the country. And no big acting names to sell it either. Yeah, now I think about it, odd.
I wonder how committed the new regime is to NT Live? Maybe they want to say it's failing so they can bin it and spend the money on something else.
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Post by barrowside on May 11, 2017 16:56:10 GMT
Interesting to see Olwen Foueré is in this as the older Salomé. She was the original Salomé in the Steven Berkoff production which originated at the Gate Theatre Dublin. It was hugely popular in Dublin and has been revived countless times over the last thirty years. It is still played by the original Herod and Herodias, Alan Stanford and Barbara Brennan although Salomé and Jokanaan are cast with younger actors. Berkoff was livid when the Gate took it to the Edinburgh Festival where the London critics got to review the Dublin cast. He regarded the Dublin production as a tryout so he could see how it worked before casting himself as Herod as he did in his NT restaging.
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Post by hal9000 on May 12, 2017 2:55:34 GMT
The only time I have come across SALOME is in Merchant Ivory's A SOLDIER'S DAUGHTER NEVER CRIES. The tween heroine goes to the opera with her gender-non-conforming boyfriend and his mother, played by Jane Birkin. The production is an avant-garde production of SALOME, complete with a heroin-injecting climax. It is roundly booed apart from Birkin and son who leap to their feet in earnest applause.
The girl dumps him soon after.
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