4,038 posts
|
Post by kathryn on Oct 29, 2016 22:21:02 GMT
I saw it tonight, glad I didn't pay more than a tenner!
It was terrible! First Lear I've seen where Gloucester's blinding made the audience laugh. I may be in the minority - the audience applause was enthusiastic and a few people even stood at the end - but I didn't even think Jackson was good. Incredibly one-note performance from here. They seem to have dealt with audibility issues by having everyone shout most of the time.
Why on earth did Kent snog Cordelia? And then just get up and march off at the end?
|
|
185 posts
|
Post by harry on Oct 29, 2016 23:36:25 GMT
Ran about 3hr 35min tonight, 2hr to the interval.
It's a bizarre evening. I mean it's so incoherent. Where are we? Who are these people? It really feels like each part was cast in isolation with no consideration of any of the other cast. For example, if we're being asked to believe that Glenda Jackson is a man and that Celia Imrie, Jane Horrocks and Morfydd Clark are sisters - despite a 35-40year age gap between the eldest and the youngest (while the gap between father and eldest daughter must be only about 15 years) - that needs grounding in some sort of reality. And the characters have to feel like they are all in that shared reality and understand their relationships to each other. Instead everyone just gives their own performance, and the production does absolutely nothing to bring them together. With the (lack of) set and the scene number projections it fees almost like a performed reading that's been thrown together without the cast rehearsing with one another at all.
Nobody gives a definitive reading of any of the characters, although I equally wouldn't say anyone stood out to me as really terrible. Jackson gives a rather mannered Lear, neither Imrie nor Horrocks has the fire for the elder sisters. Simon Manyonda gives an extraordinary Edmund almost as if he thinks he's in a Frantic Assembly production. Harry Melling just hasn't got the acting chops for Edgar, but he does get his willy out so I suppose at least he's committed to it! Rhys Ifans was better than I thought he'd be, definitely more than just a weird Welshman who does movies. Morfydd Clark started out well but then Cordelia is such a nothing part that it's hard for her to re-register in the second half. Karl Johnson brings a bit of class as Gloucester, and Sargon Yelda gives a clear and interesting reading of Kent (although the seed needs sowing much earlier if the kiss with Cordelia is going to work). But as a whole it is so disjointed, visually dull and ends up a very long and unsatisfactory evening.
|
|
1,936 posts
|
Post by wickedgrin on Oct 30, 2016 0:54:07 GMT
Reading the above it's bound to get 4 and 5 star reviews then!
|
|
515 posts
|
Post by callum on Oct 30, 2016 15:20:59 GMT
Eesh - seeing this front row next Wednesday. Would it be best for me to suddenly realise that I can't make the 7pm start because of work and seek a refund?
|
|
|
Post by profquatermass on Oct 30, 2016 15:43:40 GMT
So is this even worse than Much Ado with Vanessa?
|
|
|
Post by Deleted on Oct 30, 2016 16:21:34 GMT
Nah, the cast have all managed to learn their lines at least.
|
|
5,593 posts
|
Post by lynette on Oct 30, 2016 20:34:47 GMT
Ran about 3hr 35min tonight, 2hr to the interval. It's a bizarre evening. I mean it's so incoherent. Where are we? Who are these people? It really feels like each part was cast in isolation with no consideration of any of the other cast. For example, if we're being asked to believe that Glenda Jackson is a man and that Celia Imrie, Jane Horrocks and Morfydd Clark are sisters - despite a 35-40year age gap between the eldest and the youngest (while the gap between father and eldest daughter must be only about 15 years) - that needs grounding in some sort of reality. And the characters have to feel like they are all in that shared reality and understand their relationships to each other. Instead everyone just gives their own performance, and the production does absolutely nothing to bring them together. With the (lack of) set and the scene number projections it fees almost like a performed reading that's been thrown together without the cast rehearsing with one another at all. Nobody gives a definitive reading of any of the characters, although I equally wouldn't say anyone stood out to me as really terrible. Jackson gives a rather mannered Lear, neither Imrie nor Horrocks has the fire for the elder sisters. Simon Manyonda gives an extraordinary Edmund almost as if he thinks he's in a Frantic Assembly production. Harry Melling just hasn't got the acting chops for Edgar, but he does get his willy out so I suppose at least he's committed to it! Rhys Ifans was better than I thought he'd be, definitely more than just a weird Welshman who does movies. Morfydd Clark started out well but then Cordelia is such a nothing part that it's hard for her to re-register in the second half. Karl Johnson brings a bit of class as Gloucester, and Sargon Yelda gives a clear and interesting reading of Kent (although the seed needs sowing much earlier if the kiss with Cordelia is going to work). But as a whole it is so disjointed, visually dull and ends up a very long and unsatisfactory evening. Anyone know how they rehearsed? Together? Sounds like they did it a la Shakespeare i.e. Given their 'parts'....
|
|
225 posts
|
Post by madsonmelo on Oct 31, 2016 3:34:59 GMT
I won't be in London as I've planned, so I have a ticket for November 30 at Stalls L31. I first bought at £65, but depending on how much can you pay for it, we can talk. I just don't wanna lose, entirely, this ticket.
Or is there a place in this forum where I can post this announcement?
|
|
|
Post by d'James on Oct 31, 2016 3:39:36 GMT
I think the Noticeboard is the place to 'advertise' it, as long as you don't want more than you paid (*cough* a certain DM I had from a different poster asking for double face value *cough*).
Hope you find someone soon.
|
|
Xanderl
Member
Not always very high value in terms of ticket yield or donations
|
Post by Xanderl on Oct 31, 2016 5:57:13 GMT
If you booked before 13 Oct when they announced the change to the start time and long running time, you could try contacting them to see what the options are
"If this change causes a problem with your booking please do not hesitate to contact us on 0844 871 7629 or email box.office@oldvictheatre.com. Otherwise, you are not required to take any further action and we look forward to seeing you at The Old Vic very soon."
|
|
1,119 posts
|
Post by martin1965 on Oct 31, 2016 6:34:43 GMT
Eesh - seeing this front row next Wednesday. Would it be best for me to suddenly realise that I can't make the 7pm start because of work and seek a refund? No! Make your own mind up.
|
|
|
Post by crabtree on Oct 31, 2016 8:24:28 GMT
see it for the great cast, and it is still a mighty play. It's good to have Glenda back....I wonder if the play was her choice.
|
|
923 posts
|
Post by Snciole on Oct 31, 2016 8:50:48 GMT
I didn't hate this. I felt like the long running time flowed and Jackson got the right note of vulnerable masculinity. I think the more I see Lear the more I like it. My first was Simon Russell Beale's and it was absolutely baffling. Visually this isn't as nice as the Royal & Derngate I saw earlier this year in Brighton (except for the storm scene which looks incredible) but as a result it all feels very stripped back and clearer without any distractions.
I think for me the supporting roles aren't rewarding, people seem to come and go without much of an introduction, so maybe I wasn't expecting too much from them. This was the first Lear Ihave seen where I felt the Edmund and Edgar casting was appropriate and Simon Manyonda's bottom was magnificent.
|
|
Xanderl
Member
Not always very high value in terms of ticket yield or donations
|
Post by Xanderl on Oct 31, 2016 9:10:38 GMT
They should use this quote on the poster
|
|
|
Post by Deleted on Oct 31, 2016 9:11:10 GMT
I basically agree with everything Scniole has written. It was super-long, but I didn't spend twenty minute periods wishing it would just hurry up or anything, and the storm was GREAT (although woe betide you if you don't already know the play going in, 'cos you're probably not going to hear any dialogue during that bit).
|
|
923 posts
|
Post by Snciole on Oct 31, 2016 9:17:01 GMT
They should use this quote on the poster Ha! It is this sort of brutally honest review that makes me Britain's Worst Theatre Blogger
|
|
4,038 posts
|
Post by kathryn on Oct 31, 2016 9:33:27 GMT
This was the first Lear Ihave seen where I felt the Edmund and Edgar casting was appropriate and Simon Manyonda's bottom was magnificent. We felt Edmund didn't come across manipulative and scheming enough, and Edgar too ripe and over-done as Poor Tom. We really missed the pathos. A lot of moments got laughs that don't, usually. Maybe it was the Brechtian approach? Although that was a bit half-arsed.... But then, we have been rather spoilt for Lear by the excellent Jacobi/Donmar production. I wasn't that keen on SRB at the NT, but it felt far more coherent than this production. Decisions had obviously been made about Lear's reign, personality, and relationship with his daughters, and those decisions were clearly expressed. The Old Vic production didn't seem to have made any decisions about those things at all - it was as though the action of the play existed in a void. Apart from the rather odd decision about Kent and Cordelia - though that came so out of the blue, it jarred. Maybe that is the concept behind the production and we just didn't find it satisfying...
|
|
100 posts
|
Post by youngoffender on Oct 31, 2016 9:44:17 GMT
Count me in the 'didn't hate' category, but I think there's a strong case for surtitles instead of the scene numbering - if the ENO do it for works sung in English, why not do it for a 400-year-old play with difficult language where about 1 in 5 words are getting lost by mumbling and/or storm effects? The production left me totally unmoved, but Warner's distancing approach seemed determined to achieve just that - with every aspect of the staging shouting 'it's just actors doing King Lear', it would almost be perverse to feel anything.
Still waiting for Daniel Day-Lewis to come back to the stage in a decade or so and give his definitive Lear. I don't need to see another in the interim.
|
|
515 posts
|
Post by callum on Oct 31, 2016 11:05:32 GMT
see it for the great cast, and it is still a mighty play. It's good to have Glenda back....I wonder if the play was her choice. She wanted to do Cinderella in the Palladium but she lost fairy godmother to Amanda Holden.
|
|
2,302 posts
|
Post by Tibidabo on Oct 31, 2016 17:57:54 GMT
see it for the great cast, and it is still a mighty play. It's good to have Glenda back....I wonder if the play was her choice. She wanted to do Cinderella in the Palladium but she lost fairy godmother to Amanda Holden. I can't stop giggling at the thought of what those impish irreverents Sir Julian of Clary and Lord Paul Of Grady would do with her wand each night....
|
|
225 posts
|
Post by madsonmelo on Oct 31, 2016 18:26:33 GMT
I think the Noticeboard is the place to 'advertise' it, as long as you don't want more than you paid (*cough* a certain DM I had from a different poster asking for double face value *cough*). Hope you find someone soon. oh, thanks! no problem, I just don't wanna lose the ticket, if the person can pay the entire price, I can do a sale hahaha
|
|
|
Post by Deleted on Nov 2, 2016 18:56:26 GMT
Very excited! I'm at the Old Vic now. I've done my altitude training to prepare me for the night ahead. Should be out a week on Thursday according to the running time.
Only trouble is, I think they're still tidying up the set. Very shoddy. Elaine Paige wouldn't have put up with that nonsense!
Give it some welly Glenda in the play what Will wrote!
|
|
1,214 posts
|
Post by Steve on Nov 3, 2016 0:18:47 GMT
Saw this tonight, and was left cold by some of it, but loved most of it. There is a villain-shaped hole in the production, partly due to the Brechtian staging, which unbalances the play. For me, Brechtian distancing techniques, designed to reduce audience emotion in favour of promoting an activist political response, work best if the production is actually saying something specific and topical. For example, the Jonathan Church/Henry Goodman production of Brecht's own Arturo Ui brilliantly skewered the pathetic powermongering pettiness of our politics, and with the dawn of Trump, Goodman's clown of a fascist would be even more chilling and funny today. By contrast, this production offers no singular vision of Lear, no topical commentary, no reason for deliberately distancing the audience from our natural emotional response. Some spoilers follow. . . The bright white boards, the generic bright lights that defocused the action, the surtitles delineating the Act and the Scene, the modern costumes, the words on costumes, the chairs, the modern masks, the use of multiple accents, the use of spectacles as a prop, all this served to reduce the impact of the acting for no discernible reason. There were no placards directing our thoughts, no costumes that pointed to specific topical concerns, no ideas directed at our defocused and distanced minds to make the Brechtian approach worthwhile. I have never felt so little in some of the most horrific scenes in this play, and bar having a laugh at an eyeball tossed into the audience, I couldn't find much profit in the reduction of the impact of important moments. The villains suffered most (with the exception of Danny Webb's Cornwall), and of the villains, Simon Manyonda's Edmond, typically a key character, felt trivial. His characterisation was neither emotive nor sociopathically cold, but occupied a strange, tepid and silly middle ground, involving some unenthusiastic masturbation. The principal protagonists, Lear, Gloucester, Kent, Edgar, Cordelia and Albany were all wonderful. Terrific acting overcame Brechtian obstacles, and when Deborah Warner chose, she removed those obstacles, covering the white boards to create a spectacular storm amidst a scary and sudden darkness, which multiplied the effect of the great performances to a gripping degree. As a rule, I found the show dramatically effective in direct proportion to the degree the white boards were hidden away. Glenda Jackson's Lear was exceptional, reminding me of McKellen's Lear, though less noble and more anguished. Like McKellen, Jackson's face has an lightning rubbery responsiveness to whatever she is thinking. Like McKellen, her eyes are hugely expressive moment to moment. Also great were Sargon Yelda's Kent's beautiful diction, Harry Melling's Edgar's off-the-wall expressiveness, Karl Johnson's impassioned and vulnerable Gloucester and William Chubb's sensitive Albany. I really enjoyed this, but it would have been emotionally devastating if the sets and costumes and direction had been in sync with the performances. Perhaps I should be grateful it wasn't, but I have no idea what it was about Lear that Deborah Warner wanted me to learn, that merited her distancing me from her production. 3 and a half stars
|
|
|
Post by Deleted on Nov 3, 2016 9:28:21 GMT
Well. They didn't spend the money on the set I must say. Clever use of a few old black bin liners in a wonderful storm scene though.
I have to admit, I'm not the biggest fan of 'King Lear'. I always feel it's a bit rambly and could use a bit of tightening up and that's the same here although I didn't necessarily feel that it dragged on for 3 hours 45 mins. I'm not saying it zipped by either but all the same.
I liked the cast, thought they all pretty much did well with Celia Imrie reliably bringing out a touch of Miss Babs to the proceedings which was nice. Didn't think Edgar was particularly villainous - he could have been a bit more devious I thought - delightful bottom aside.
My favourite though was Harry Melling. I thought he was absolutely smashing. He has a wonderful voice actually and with just a phrasing of a single word or line can portray heartstopping sadness. His scenes with Karl Johnson were the highlight of the production for me. I think he was unfairly overlooked at awards season with 'Hand To God', let's hope he's rightly recognised for this.
And Glenda. I actually got a little shiver of excitement when she first appeared and she was glorious. Very theatrical at times and there's an odd thing where her voice sometimes goes really high and she sounds like she's auditioning for The Wicked Witch of the West in a production of 'The Wizard of Oz' but she has a wondrous voice and a magnetic stage presence. She looked so thrilled with the reaction at the end too. I hope we see some more of her acting again. What a lady!
|
|
4,038 posts
|
Post by kathryn on Nov 3, 2016 10:54:11 GMT
Hmm. I think whether you enjoy this production really depends on whether you like Glenda Jackson. I've never been a fan, and she left me absolutely cold.
|
|
Xanderl
Member
Not always very high value in terms of ticket yield or donations
|
Post by Xanderl on Nov 3, 2016 12:48:02 GMT
From the Old Vic twitter feed - Tickets for tomorrow's press night (starts at 6:30) available for £5 with promotion code SOCIAL - currently 40 or so seats in the upper circle.
|
|
368 posts
|
Post by MrBunbury on Nov 3, 2016 13:00:42 GMT
From the Old Vic twitter feed - Tickets for tomorrow's press night (starts at 6:30) available for £5 with promotion code SOCIAL - currently 40 or so seats in the upper circle. Where should one write SOCIAL?
|
|
368 posts
|
Post by MrBunbury on Nov 3, 2016 13:02:06 GMT
From the Old Vic twitter feed - Tickets for tomorrow's press night (starts at 6:30) available for £5 with promotion code SOCIAL - currently 40 or so seats in the upper circle. Where should one write SOCIAL? Sorry, I actually opened my eyes and saw the answer )
|
|
2,813 posts
|
Post by couldileaveyou on Nov 3, 2016 21:28:38 GMT
|
|
617 posts
|
Post by loureviews on Nov 3, 2016 23:12:04 GMT
My verdict: not without problems, this is carried by Glenda who is magnificent. Almost a twig thin twin of Ian McKellen she gives the essence of majesty and the fragility of old age. A definite standing ovation from me, close enough to get eye contact with the lady herself The rest of the cast. Rhys Ifans, Harry Melling, Karl Johnson good. Celia and Jane OK here and there, total toxic bitches. Audience laughter at inappropriate points though, especially in the Lear/Cordelia reunion scene. I'd say go if you can. 3 out of 5. 4.5 for Glenda.
|
|