110 posts
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Post by Sotongal on Sept 16, 2016 20:00:15 GMT
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2,389 posts
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Post by peggs on Sept 18, 2016 11:38:54 GMT
Still on sale yesterday, we tested one out and can confirm the sparkliness of the snow and accordingly to Latecomer substantial weight of the whole globe, i did not try in case i dropped it. Not quite sure what i thought about this production as my head's been taken over by my evening experience. Realised the only comic thing I've ever seen Branagh do is probably the film Much Ado, it's usually more serious Shakespeare, Wallander type stuff so it was a really odd (not necessarily bad) experience seeing him do the on stage stuff, he reminded me of a ventriloquist's dummy, really rather creepy. Lovely set and yes some nice silhouette work and could imagine how Robert Lindsay would have suited this part but not sure what i think of the play overall. I was happiest when it was all gloom at home, made my family encounters look quite chirpy! Whilst Archie's character is not really likeable I'd have had to slap the daughter who once she'd got on a soap box was rather irritating, (is that the actress or the part?). At Latecomer noted there were shades of Chekhov in the whole 'dead behind the eyes' bit. Think i'm always glad to see Branagh on stage but not convinced perhaps by the role but yes what good legs!
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Post by kathryn on Sept 19, 2016 12:20:29 GMT
I've just returned 2 £15 tickets for this saturday evening (stupidly double-booked myself) if anyone wants to go in and nab them.
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Post by Nicholas on Oct 1, 2016 22:04:38 GMT
This production is slick in the theatre and amateurish offstage: it’s the perfect The Entertainer, in an ugly photo-negative.
If Osborne’s play has any depth – and I’m not wholly convinced it is that deep – it’s in depicting how difficult it is to accept the end of an era. It’s a paradoxically timeless theme. For Archie Rice, that should be performing capable if hackneyed routines in dilapidated old halls; for Billie Rice, that should be having attitudes he abhors brought in his own home by his own flesh and blood. With a director who can physically articulate the tackiness of the former whilst domesticating the diatribes of the latter, it would be a surprisingly deep consideration of life under Eden, which would be all too pertinent today – after all, not only is the subject of generational differences about politics and protest and particularly immigration one of incredible topicality, but so is talentless performers clinging onto their desperate dreams of glory and need to perform (Sarah Harding). It doesn’t need updating to make modern: it needs clarity.
Rob Ashford is a choreographer. He treats this play like his choreographer namesake Marshall treated Chicago and (shudder) Nine; when inner angst grows too great, we cut to the stage so the emotion can be literalised through dance. It’s the Fosse line of thinking taken to its extreme. It would be a good idea had Kander & Ebb written The Entertainer, but John Osborne did, and the play isn’t written like those musicals are. The dance sequences only work at articulating the drama if the relationship between theatre and reality is airtight, and the drama has depth, and depth comes from reality. Actually, Peggs, I kind of think that this should be more Ivanov than Much Ado, given that although Branagh’s playing a comedian he’s not playing a good one, so that lack of comedy should seem tragic. But Ashford seems to miss that, and stages it like a competent musical with an incompetent book, like Much Ado with xenophobic asides. The home scenes make for dull drama: keeping them ‘onstage’ gives them an artifice which only makes sense because of Archie, and then to have characters literally come upstage to deliver points to us seems artificial, clunky, almost amateurish, not gelling with the script. On the other hand, to back up Branagh with the sexiest, sleekest dancers in fabulous costumes suggests he’s good, they’re good and this is a good dance, and that’s just not what this play is about. Rather than naff up the dancing but respect the domestic, Ashford respects the dancing and naffs up the domestic.
Actually, making the dance sequences hokey would actually do wonders at representing Billy Rice’s line of thought, and make this Fosse-style make sense, but it doesn’t. For this to work you want a director who can cut between song and spoken, ‘reality’ and ‘the theatrical’, all the while appreciating the relationship between the two, the phoniness of the former and the intrinsic truth of the latter, all the while able to stage it with vim and pace. You want a Susan Stroman, who understands how to toe the line between pageantry and unpleasantness simultaneously, using the former to literalise the latter and render its ugliness palpable. You want an actual Bob Fosse, who subverts, not enhances, reality through song, directs character first and choreography second, and in All That Jazz had an Archie-ish figure similarly trying to escape reality, not enhance it, through his art – think of the final scene of that movie, the superficial sleekness but evident emptiness of Bye Bye Life. You want a Carrie Cracknell, who can articulate fraught family relationships like no other, whilst incorporating a certain musicality a la Blurred Lines or Macbeth.
Or, dare I say, you want Sir Chuckles Branagh. A marriage of the phony sleekness of Michael Caine’s house in Sleuth and the musical numbers of his Love’s Labour’s Lost would make this work. Branagh actually aped Fosse’s flashiness in one sequences in Love’s Labour’s Lost, but I think Branagh understands Fosse’s subtleness: the character of Lenny or the self deprecating laceration of All That Jazz (indeed, I wouldn’t be surprised if a bit of Roy Scheider informed Branagh’s performance). Most tellingly, his performances hits all the bum notes this bad performer should, with a sadness behind his eyes showing Branagh understands the script; Joel Grey always says that his Emcee is an amalgamation of the worst, most desperate performers he ever saw; Branagh’s Archie Rice so richly steals from this line of thought too. For his Garrick swansong, it’s a bold decision to make Archie so very untalented let alone ugly, but Branagh clearly understands the power that comes from bad performing. The constant awkwardness, line-flubbing and bad-name-dropping from his desperate untalented hulk is unpleasant to watch in all the right ways. He’s a man only ever able to engage with others when on stage, thus bringing faux-staginess to his real life, semi-aware that his stage skills are less than stellar; Branagh’s Archie is clearly keeping self-realisation at arm’s length, and that’s very sad to watch. Less full-bodied than in The Winter’s Tale and less damn fun than Harlequinade*, maybe, but still a stellar piece of acting (I missed The Painkiller and wonder now if, in retrospect, that might have been the highlight of this season). And for any fans of Branagh’s musical Love’s Labour’s Lost (I think there are six of us), it’s a real treat to see the man dance in person.
Other performances variable – Gawn Grainger was good but no John Hurt and I think I’d be saying John Hurt was good but no Ron Cook; Greta Saachi does the best of a bad job; daughter fairly mediocre but that’s mostly being swamped by this building and direction.
So, in a nutshell, a great actor wastes some of his best work in probably the worst directorial effort of his Garrick tenure. The real issue is that, without a proper drama around him, the star turn here is wholly diminished, with Archie a dancer first and foremost rather than a bad father first and foremost. Branagh still shines through, but it’s a battle. A dated play and a too-superficial interpretation, but to watch Branagh bring the sad self-hatred of his Ivanov back, then bury it under the bad Gene Kelly he danced in Love’s Labour’s Lost, makes for powerful, dislikeable, substantial viewing.
Just stay home, turn on the TV, watch a double bill of Wallander and Love’s Labour’s Lost instead.
*Weirdly, now the dust has settled, Harlequinade comes across as a richer study of life on the stage than The Entertainer does – and Harlequinade is so flimsy that they didn’t bother reviving it alongside The Browning Version at Chichester. There’s a perverse posthumous irony or victory in the fact that even lesser Rattigan is proving so deep and so successful, whereas Osborne very, very much looks like a period piece.
P.S. As much as anything, this theatre was just too big for this play – the Garrick’s quite glamorous, this shouldn’t be. I want a chamber version of this in Wilton’s Music Hall now it’s back in business, or possibly somewhere genuinely grotty like the Arcola – Greg Hicks was there not long ago and I bet he’d eat this part up with aplomb, particularly if he could get so up-close to his audience that it would be scary.
P.P.S. It’s also a shame that this comes so shortly after such a strong revival of Long Day’s Journey Into Night, another show about a lesser theatrical talent peddling his wares whilst his family circles around him with their own problems. Really, the main difference is that Osborne writes quite unpleasant characters with unwieldy and didactic monologues, where O’Neill is a poet so the genius of that play is, quite simply, how well it is written. It’s a tenuous comparison, but there were a fair few moments watching Branagh criticise his own career where all I could hear was Irons barking the same self-criticisms but with so much more substance in his speeches, or watching Branagh’s patriarch be taken down a few pegs by his children where all I could think was that these monologues were blunt and obvious compared to the desperation of the Tyrone children. It’s a superficial comparison, but one which damages this production quite a bit, if you saw Irons and Manville work their magic. Simply put, The Entertainer is a fairly good (not great) leading man’s role, but honestly it’s not that good a play, is it?
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1,119 posts
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Post by martin1965 on Oct 2, 2016 7:25:04 GMT
Great dissertation!!
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Post by Deleted on Oct 2, 2016 15:23:12 GMT
I downloaded a free audio book of this recently, starring Bill Nighy, David Bradley and Bertie Carvel.
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2,389 posts
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Post by peggs on Oct 2, 2016 15:38:01 GMT
Actually, Peggs, I kind of think that this should be more Ivanov than Much Ado, given that although Branagh’s playing a comedian he’s not playing a good one, so that lack of comedy should seem tragic. But Ashford seems to miss that, and stages it like a competent musical with an incompetent book, like Much Ado with xenophobic asides. The home scenes make for dull drama: keeping them ‘onstage’ gives them an artifice which only makes sense because of Archie, and then to have characters literally come upstage to deliver points to us seems artificial, clunky, almost amateurish, not gelling with the script. On the other hand, to back up Branagh with the sexiest, sleekest dancers in fabulous costumes suggests he’s good, they’re good and this is a good dance, and that’s just not what this play is about. Rather than naff up the dancing but respect the domestic, Ashford respects the dancing and naffs up the domestic.
Nicholas your impressive analysis seems to be too much for my simple brain to get round but from what I understand I rather like your suggestion of what it could have been under a different director. I will try and find a copy of Branagh's Love's Labours' Lost though, a double bill of that and Wallander , what a thought.
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1,103 posts
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Post by mallardo on Oct 2, 2016 16:13:28 GMT
I'm not sure why Archie Rice has to be a bad comedian. He has to be corny and old fashioned, a dinosaur, but he has had a long career so he must have been doing something right. I keep coming back to the Old Vic production with Robert Lindsay because he was everything one could want in an Archie Rice - he made the point that the character was way past his sell by date but he was, at the same time, legitimately entertaining in his music hall numbers. That's the way it has to go. I think the idea that Archie has to be bad stems from the movie. Laurence Olivier played him as a bad comedian because he himself was a bad comedian - he could do no better. And, for me, that's the wrong way to go.
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Post by Honoured Guest on Oct 3, 2016 12:23:57 GMT
I agree mallardo. Rice is burned out, knows it, but still doing what he has to do either for cash or just habit. The "dead behind the eyes" line tells us everything about the fact he knows he can still do the show and do it well, but isn't "feeling" it now. But Archie has the last laugh when his daughter Emma goes on to entertain the world at Shakespeare's Globe.
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Post by Jan on Oct 3, 2016 14:09:22 GMT
The suggestion from Nicholas that Greg Hicks could play Archie Rice is one of the most mind-boggling I have ever heard.
I saw Peter Bowles in this play and he was wrong in a different way.
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Post by Jan on Oct 3, 2016 17:34:13 GMT
I saw Peter Bowles in this play and he was wrong in a different way. I only saw a clip of that on TV, in what way, Jan? He was just a bit too good on stage as Archie doing his act, weak on the desperation. Partly I think it was audience expectations of him, smooth upper-middle-class sophisticated sitcom star, audience automatically liked him. On Greg Hicks, I am a big fan of his. He is a very austere and uncompromising actor. He is very unusual in that he can play entirely unsympathetic characters without wanting the audience to like him at all - some actors like Simon Russell-Beale can play unsympathetic characters but unconsciously are a bit twinkly and get the audience on their side, some actors like Jack Lemon actively want to be liked by the audience. Not Hicks. Coriolanus is his perfect part and his best parts are variations on that. He also, probably related, has no gift at all for comedy based on the very few occasions he has tried it. The thought that he could play Archie Rice who at one point in the past was at least a moderately successful light entertainer is startling.
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Post by couldileaveyou on Oct 3, 2016 18:54:37 GMT
I saw the matinee on Saturday and it felt somehow like a poor man's death of salesman
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Post by zak97 on Oct 8, 2016 17:45:54 GMT
Saw this afternoon and really enjoyed it. From the creative side, really liked the set and lighting. And for the play, I wasn't familiar with it and found it engaging and enjoyable, very thought provoking. For the acting, the girl who played Jean I think has bundles of talent, and Mr Branagh was on form. For me though Greeta and Gawn were the stars this afternoon. I thought Gawn was charming and the audience really liked his humour. I saw Greeta in The Glass Menagerie last year and enjoyed it, but I feel she excelled here. She captured the emotional essence of what I thought her character should be. Not the best play I've seen all year, No Man's Land and Nell Gwynn top that, but very close - 4.75 stars.
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Post by bee on Oct 8, 2016 19:44:12 GMT
Slightly off-topic but who is the sexy voiced man who does the turn of your mobile announcement at Garrick and used to do NT Live trailers... It sounded to me like John Shrapnel, a familiar actor from TV and movies (I had to look his name up though). I also saw this this afternoon and thoroughly enjoyed it. The play itself hasn't aged well but I thought Branagh was just brilliant. The rest of the cast were good as well, but it's a real shame that John Hurt couldn't do the Billy Rice role. Gawn Grainger was fine but it was hard to stop thinking about how Hurt would have handled the part.
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Post by Jan on Oct 9, 2016 9:34:36 GMT
Slightly off-topic but who is the sexy voiced man who does the turn of your mobile announcement at Garrick and used to do NT Live trailers... It sounded to me like John Shrapnel, a familiar actor from TV and movies (I had to look his name up though). I also saw this this afternoon and thoroughly enjoyed it. The play itself hasn't aged well but I thought Branagh was just brilliant. The rest of the cast were good as well, but it's a real shame that John Hurt couldn't do the Billy Rice role. Gawn Grainger was fine but it was hard to stop thinking about how Hurt would have handled the part. John Shrapnel is also a considerable stage actor who has worked extensively with the NT and RSC and elsewhere. I last saw him in "A Number" @ Young Vic with his son Lex.
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Post by bordeaux on Oct 9, 2016 10:12:53 GMT
It sounded to me like John Shrapnel, a familiar actor from TV and movies (I had to look his name up though). I also saw this this afternoon and thoroughly enjoyed it. The play itself hasn't aged well but I thought Branagh was just brilliant. The rest of the cast were good as well, but it's a real shame that John Hurt couldn't do the Billy Rice role. Gawn Grainger was fine but it was hard to stop thinking about how Hurt would have handled the part. John Shrapnel is also a considerable stage actor who has worked extensively with the NT and RSC and elsewhere. I last saw him in "A Number" @ Young Vic with his son Lex. One of his earliest roles was as the academic who gets into an argument with the footballers in the Czech hotel and is duped by Peter Barkworth in Stoppard's wonderful late 70s TV play 'Professional Foul', which has bizarrely never been released on DVD.
I also remember him as a wonderful Angelo at the Barbican in Nick Hytner's Measure for Measure (1989?), Julius Caesar in Deborah Warner's production (with SRB as Cassio and Anton Lesser as Brutus - three amazing voices there) and a very good Lear at the Tobacco Factory in Bristol a few years ago. And, if you're a real fan, he played a chilling Soviet cultural commissar Zhdanov in Tony Palmer's superb film of the life of Shostakovich, Testimony, with Ben Kingsley playing Shostakovich and Bradford playing Moscow. Thoroughly recommended.
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Post by martin1965 on Oct 9, 2016 10:53:46 GMT
It sounded to me like John Shrapnel, a familiar actor from TV and movies (I had to look his name up though). I also saw this this afternoon and thoroughly enjoyed it. The play itself hasn't aged well but I thought Branagh was just brilliant. The rest of the cast were good as well, but it's a real shame that John Hurt couldn't do the Billy Rice role. Gawn Grainger was fine but it was hard to stop thinking about how Hurt would have handled the part. John Shrapnel is also a considerable stage actor who has worked extensively with the NT and RSC and elsewhere. I last saw him in "A Number" @ Young Vic with his son Lex. I saw that too. He has an amazing voice, sadly i didnt catch his Lear at Bristol😕
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Post by David J on Oct 9, 2016 11:13:52 GMT
He and Lex were also part of Michael Boyds Histories ensemble.
I never forget Johns rugged John Talbot and Lex's fiery Hotspur
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Post by Snciole on Oct 9, 2016 16:33:47 GMT
I had no idea it was John Shrapnel! I would have gone to his play at the Young Vic if had!
When I win the lottery I will employ him to read me bedtime stories. Many thanks for confirming!
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Post by Jan on Oct 9, 2016 16:43:02 GMT
John Shrapnel is also a considerable stage actor who has worked extensively with the NT and RSC and elsewhere. I last saw him in "A Number" @ Young Vic with his son Lex. Julius Caesar in Deborah Warner's production (with SRB as Cassio and Anton Lesser as Brutus - three amazing voices there)
I also saw him with Anton Lesser in the latter's Hamlet directed by Jonathan Miller in 1982.
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Post by bee on Oct 9, 2016 17:43:48 GMT
I've actually just looked at my programme from yesterday again and it turns out he was in Winters Tale and Harlequinade earlier in the season, neither of which I saw sadly.
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Post by Deleted on Oct 9, 2016 19:04:11 GMT
He and Lex were also part of Michael Boyds Histories ensemble. I never forget Johns rugged John Talbot and Lex's fiery Hotspur Except Keith Bartlett was Talbot.
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816 posts
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Post by stefy69 on Oct 13, 2016 6:46:30 GMT
Was very amused at "The Dresser" on Saturday afternoon. Watching the audience come in before the show, one person entered clutching a very familiar oblong box. Obviously popped into the Garrick en-route to buy a now (in)famous snowglobe. They aren't even seeing a KB show before buying one, now, I guess. I suspect the Garrick snowglobe is going to be this Christmas' must have present !!!
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Post by ctas on Oct 27, 2016 22:41:43 GMT
Got two mid stalls tickets for £15 each thanks to todaytix's random offer earlier this week and saw this tonight at the filmed performance. I found it interesting but didn't think it quite hit all the marks. Lots to think about though and I'll be intrigued to see another production.
Bought a snow globe too. At £20 that's a stupid buy but at £5 it's a fun novelty. Just wish it didn't have the Branagh logo on!
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Post by Deleted on Oct 27, 2016 23:44:25 GMT
Saw the broadcast tonight and really enjoyed it. It was all very interesting and enjoyable. The cast were all good but I esspecilay liked Greta Scacchi. The thing that struck me the most was the way it was filmed as it was just from one camera and showed the whole stage mainly with a bit of zooming in and out. No close ups as the closest the camera went was still showing their full bodies.It was a bit like watching it in the theatre and is a nice change from what they normally do. It was also visually very appealing. The thing I enjoyed the most were all the songs probably because I like the vaudeville music hall style and themes and musicals in general.Over all it was good and one of the ones I have enjoyed more in the season.
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Post by theatremadness on Oct 27, 2016 23:55:28 GMT
Well this was not for me. Deadly boring from start to finish, pretty dull, bland and uninspiring performances from the entire cast, even dear Kenneth who tried so hard. Oh how hard he tried to wring every bit of comedy out of his performance, even when there was none to be wrung. Don't know if it was the play, as I've not seen it before, or if it was the production. Although I did feel the play itself had absolutely nothing very important to say, or at least it certainly wasn't said in a very interesting way in the production, maybe that was a problem. Having said that, I was sat there wishing that I could've been watching Robert Lindsay instead.
If I was the type of person who could leave at the interval without any guilt, I'd have left without any hesitation. As a matter of fact, one couple did. And another left halfway through Act 1.
Was filmed tonight for cinema broadcast, too. One camera, suspended above the front stalls so the entire thing was filmed in one continuous shot; the first time this has been done, we were told. And probably the last.
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Post by londonmzfitz on Nov 13, 2016 0:09:23 GMT
The Entertainer?
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