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Post by Deleted on Feb 13, 2016 20:10:31 GMT
I must say the new promo for this looks great. The £15 tickets deal appeals greatly, and I've heard wonderful things about Uzo Aduba too.
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Post by Deleted on Feb 13, 2016 20:36:25 GMT
Originally I was only going for Uzo, but the promos do look great!
I love Uzo in OITNB and she was stunning in The Wiz, so I can't wait to see her in a play on the West End, and also to see the show, as it sounds really interesting.
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Post by Deleted on Feb 13, 2016 23:26:17 GMT
If you haven't booked yet, be warned there's a weekend at the end of March when Uzo won't be appearing. I know the other cast members are great, but I've already seen them in plays, I'm looking forward to ticking off someone new who I already know is terrific.
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Post by mrbarnaby on Feb 14, 2016 23:48:04 GMT
What is the £15 deal? The adverts make out like its heavily booked .." Best availability from March"
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Post by mrbarnaby on Feb 14, 2016 23:48:23 GMT
(Not that it's far away mind!)
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Post by Deleted on Feb 15, 2016 7:49:51 GMT
At the beginning of each month, the Mondays go onsale with all tickets available for £15, as per every other Jamie Lloyd Trafalgar Studios production for the last few years.
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Post by couldileaveyou on Feb 20, 2016 16:15:07 GMT
If you haven't booked yet, be warned there's a weekend at the end of March when Uzo won't be appearing. I know the other cast members are great, but I've already seen them in plays, I'm looking forward to ticking off someone new who I already know is terrific. Zawe Ashton will not performr 17th and 18th March; Uzu Aduba will not perform 25th and 26th March. I'm going on Monday, I can't wait! Is anyone going tonight?
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Post by Marwood on Feb 20, 2016 16:23:51 GMT
I'm going on Wednesday.
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Post by theinvisiblegirl on Feb 22, 2016 18:17:00 GMT
Can anyone give me any idea as to what the stage seats are like in this theatre?
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Post by Deleted on Feb 22, 2016 18:23:04 GMT
Awaiting the violence/gore reports on this one, people! (I don't know the play at all, but from what I've read it appears there is potential for it...)
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Post by Deleted on Feb 22, 2016 21:43:11 GMT
Can anyone give me any idea as to what the stage seats are like in this theatre?
I saw a picture of the stage on Instagram... by the looks of it the stage is a somewhat in the round setup, square stage, small, lots of flowers covering the stage floor, no set.
Will try to find the photo...
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Post by Deleted on Feb 22, 2016 21:48:27 GMT
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Post by couldileaveyou on Feb 22, 2016 23:05:55 GMT
I saw it tonight and it was a mixed bag for me. The play is surely clever and interesting, but every now and then is just too verbose. The cast is very good, Uzo is brilliant (her last speech is breath-taking) but occasionally she seems to slip into her "Orange is the New Black" character: very, very good, but nothing new. Lady Edith is good - great American accent! - and I felt like the play didn't really started until she came in (a long way into the play, tbh): her scene is short but crucial. Zawe Ashton steals the show, for me.
The direction is meh, some times it fits the moment perfectly and some times it's just tacky; same about the lights. Beautiful set, full of hidden trapdoor. And boy, Jamie Lloyd really likes his confetti.
It's not really a violent play - it's not Cleansed - it's more psychologically violent. I wish there were more elegant terms to describe it, but for me it's a mixed bag.
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Post by Marwood on Feb 22, 2016 23:12:22 GMT
Thanks for that - what was the running time (roughly)?
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Post by couldileaveyou on Feb 22, 2016 23:28:44 GMT
uhm, they say 1h45m, but it was longer - almost two hours (considering that it started a few minutes late. Oh, and there is no interval).
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Post by Deleted on Feb 22, 2016 23:58:21 GMT
Any opinions on the quality of the on-stage seating?
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Post by couldileaveyou on Feb 23, 2016 0:00:37 GMT
they look great, it's nothing like "Farinelli and the King". They're not even on stage, they basically made the show on the round, putting a few rows of seats behind the performing space... something like "The Crucible" at the Old Vic.
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Post by theinvisiblegirl on Feb 23, 2016 7:24:27 GMT
Thank you. Really tempted to go for the front row of the stage seats.
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Post by Marwood on Feb 24, 2016 13:13:27 GMT
Interview with Jamie Lloyd on The Guardians website (brief mention of Doctor Faustus too): link
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Post by DebbieDoesDouglas(Hodge) on Feb 24, 2016 21:13:23 GMT
It disappoints me that he isn't a homo. Doesn't bother me that he's an AWFUL director.
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Post by Marwood on Feb 25, 2016 12:17:48 GMT
Saw this last night, and like couldileaveyou, I'm in two minds about this - I thought Uzo was great, she tore into her lines with gusto (getting away with some Tod Slaughteresque levels of scenery chewing at points, excused on the part of the playacting involved) while having great fun doing so, Zawe and Laura were pretty good too, but overall I thought it was too long (not helped by the seating, I've been to Trafalgar Studios before and had no problems, but the seat this time was killing my back after half an hour or so, an interval would have been a blessed welcome), it could easily have done with a good 15-20 minutes being chopped out of it and I didn't really understand just WHY Solange and Claire wanted to kill Mistress, OK she was a self centred little madame, but I thought she came across as more of a vacuous Paris Hilton wannabe than a Cruella DeVille who kept them in squalor/chains. I was moved by the final scene between Uzo and Zawe, but came away feeling a fit ambivalent about how things turned out in the end (maybe because the ending was totally what I wasn't expecting after reading the press releases and interviews prior to seeing this).
Staging was minimal, it looked like Jamie Lloyd based the set on A View From The Bridge, basically four posts at the corner of the 'room' and a lot of confetti/'flowers' on the floor, and a roof with some flashing lights in it. I quite liked the sound design, mostly a looped bit of electro that came and went throughout the play without over doing things.
One word of warning if you go for stage seats - A) the majority of the time, you'll be watching the back of the people on stage, and B) don't go for the seats at the extreme ends of the rows, from where I was sat (row B of the front stalls), it looked like the curtains (and the posts) blocked off a fair bit of the stage and the people sitting there didn't get to see much.
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Post by Jonnyboy on Feb 25, 2016 13:45:16 GMT
I bought the extreme end of front row stage seats the other day... I wonder if it's worth exchanging them for more central, further back ones??
Poor of them not to be classed as restricted view if this is the case.
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Post by theinvisiblegirl on Feb 25, 2016 13:50:42 GMT
Thanks Marwood I held off booking stage seats for that reason. I think I'll give them a miss if it's not really played towards those seats at all.
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Post by couldileaveyou on Feb 25, 2016 17:33:14 GMT
The seats at Trafalgar Studios are a true nightmare, I feel pity and horror for those who will sit near Mark Shenton on opening night
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Post by Jonnyboy on Feb 25, 2016 18:40:55 GMT
Those seats are really awful, I feel pity and horror for those who will sit near Mark Shenton on opening night ?? You said the stage seats looked good a few posts back!
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Post by couldileaveyou on Feb 25, 2016 18:51:26 GMT
Those seats are really awful, I feel pity and horror for those who will sit near Mark Shenton on opening night ?? You said the stage seats looked good a few posts back! Sorry for the confusion, I wasn't talking about the stage seats, but about all the seats of the Trafalgar Studios, narrow, hard and uncomfortable as hell.
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Post by Jonnyboy on Feb 25, 2016 19:08:13 GMT
Ah got you!
I've just returned my seats in exchange for centre of third row. Backs I can deal with. Stage being cut off... not so much!
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Post by Steve on Feb 27, 2016 11:39:12 GMT
While this was not what I expected, it is great fun! Genet's play is about identity, who we are at any moment, and how that changes. It is also about how the stories we tell ourselves change who we are. When we roleplay and dress up, do we become more ourselves, or less ourselves, and do we even have a core self? All these concerns are beautifully addressed in Jamie Lloyd's rollicking playful and camp version of Genet's play. What Lloyd does not do is succomb to the starkness of Genet's vision, the horror of not knowing who we are, the despair behind the need to become something else. After all, Genet's plot was inspired by a true story of murderous maids, and though that was just a jumping off point for Genet's wholly original tale, the darkness of that act informed Genet's play. Genet uses sadomasochism as his principal vehicle for exploring identity, the fantasy assumption of powerful and vulnerable roles to get in touch with hidden parts of our ourselves. Genet's play envisions behaviour that is extreme, whips a-go-go, behaviour which would need to be policed by safewords, at the very least. Jamie Lloyd jetisons the whips for a more audience-friendly cosy and camp and hilarious mode of roleplay: less like adults beating each other senseless, more like children cursing each other in the playground. The "c" word is bandied about not with the spite and venom of adults, but with the mischief and glee and playfulness of children. Appropriate to this take on the material, the stage, gilded with sparkling lights around the edges, resembles the interior of a rectangular dolls house full of pretty flowers waiting for little girls to come inside and play dress up. The result is a production full of wonderful, mischievous and relentlessly entertaining playfulness, that allows all three actors to shine. The actors seem to be playing versions of Roald Dahl characters from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory: as the Mistress, Laura Carmichael struts like a grown-up Veruca Salt, spoiled and selfish as ever, telling herself ridiculous stories of her own magnificence and munificence and believing them; Zawe Ashton's Claire is like a grown-up Violet Beauregarde, effervescent with the spirit of her aggressive competitiveness and her own relentless self-regarde; and Uzo Aduba is like Willy Wonka himself, the zany playful magician who's every word cannot be trusted, who appears most in charge when apparently not in charge at all. By sacrificing the absolute sadism and seriousness of Genet's vision, Lloyd denies the ending to this play the sense of inevitability that it could have, but by extending the camp comic reach of the play, he opens up it's considerations about the mysteriousness of identity to the broadest possible audience in the most entertaining and wonderful way. 4 stars.
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Post by lonlad on Feb 27, 2016 13:11:50 GMT
I'd give it 4 stars as well and say only in response that this production is VERY dark indeed as the hushed silences throughout last night's performance (and a packed house) made clear - notwithstanding an errant phone ringing near the end. It's a brilliant touch to have Laura C be as thoroughgoingly vapid and unfeeling as she is made to appear and Uzo Aduba throughout is beyond praise: a smaller-in-stature version of the great Viola Davis onscreen in The Help. But the production is no mere camp-fest (and not in any way shape or form at all reminiscent of Roald Dahl) --- quite the opposite. And also possibly the best MAIDS I have seen.
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Post by charliec on Feb 27, 2016 22:58:03 GMT
Saw the matinee today. Huge fan of both Uzo Aduba and Zawe Ashton already and thought they were both excellent in this, particularly Uzo, I was in the back row and still got so much from her performance. Wasn't sure for the first 30 mins but enjoyed it from Laura Carmichael's appearance onwards. Loved all the little trapdoors in the stage too.
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