Confidence (Southwark Playhouse)

She has been taking private acting lessons for the past couple of years. I have no idea whether that means she can act - but it is something she has been working towards for some time.

Yes, it looks like stunt casting to bring in someone with millions of YouTube followers - but at least she has been wanting to become an actor and has taken tuition.

I had heard of her before (I confess there is no limit to the sh*t I will watch on youtube to avoid doing anything useful) but didn't really know anything about her.

It apparently crashed the website, and the company (it's not a SP production) are dedicated to bringing in young audiences. So fair play on that count they've certainly succeeded. Let's just hope she's good enough to mean they come back for more.

The problem is, if the producers are targetting the YouTube generation, won't the audience be looking at their screens, rather than the stage?

As someone who was in Tanya’s demographic (I’m definitely out of it now!) I know bits about her. She is originally a makeup artist,that’s how her YouTube fame started, but she rarely does that now and has books out about baking and mainly does lifestyle vlogs. She has no drama school training but she has been having private acting lessons for the past couple of years.

Psst... if you read the whole thread, you'll find 1) the answer to your question and 2) that your joke has already been done. Honestly now, it's not like it's an 80-page behemoth of a thread...

Has anybody heard much about Tanya’s performance? I’ve seen things about the production itself but nothing about her other than her fans insisting that she was amazing

Timeout (as above) seems fair if unimpressed: www.timeout.com/london/theatre/confidence-review

BWW thinks she is miscast (based on performance reasons, not her youtube background) www.broadwayworld.com/westend/article/BWW-Review-Boundless-Theatres-CONFIDENCE-Southwark-Playhouse-20180525

Whatsonstage also not impressed (but not unkind) www.whatsonstage.com/london-theatre/reviews/confidence-southwark-playhouse-tanya-burr_46680.html

The Stage gave it 3* but I can't read it as I've hit my cheapskate quota for the month www.thestage.co.uk/reviews/2018/confidence-review-southwark-playhouse/

We saw the second preview last week, didn't realise there was a thread.

There isn't a lot more to say about Tanya Burr other than her performance in this show is an absolute disgrace, it's appallingly amateurish and belongs nowhere near a fringe theatre as reputable as the Southwark Playhouse, and her being cast in a professional production simply due to her fame and profile in the absence of any kind of charisma or talent on stage is a huge insult to the hard work and graft of professional performers everywhere. Her line delivery sounded like the table read at an amdram production, and her characterisation is almost completely non-existent - Not even a token attempt at an accent, and just dumbly staring at her co-stars waiting for her next line to come along rather than attempting to engage with the scene and react in character. That this is happening because she decided one day that she wanted to give acting a go spits in the faces of all the trained, genuinely talented performers out there who work their arses off for a break that never comes. The more I think about it, the angrier I get, so it's probably best that I stop talking about it.

The play itself is... Okay. Not really my cup of tea but I love Brighton and spend a lot of time there, so welcomed the storyline of working class Brighton kids dreaming of better and getting in over their heads with the darkness that surrounds them. The rest of the cast work very hard in the sweltering venue to keep the audience engaged, with particular props to the very convincing and terrifying Rhys Yates. Otherwise it's kind of dreary and the pace slows down to a crawl on several occasions.

The theatre was completely packed with Burr fans, so no doubt this will be good for the SP... But at what cost?

Tanya Burr isn't a disgrace. She just has no nuance.

Some spoilers follow. . .

She fires off her lines like bursts of machine gun fire, which works, at first, to convey something of the selfish single-mindedness and determination of a callous callow self-promoter, adept at conning everybody around her, but the performance stops right there and goes no further. There is nothing beneath the surface.

I was reminded of one of the lines from "Red" about how great art should "pulsate" with an inner life. Well, no pulse.

Still, reflecting on ENO's "Carousel," to aid an understanding of where Burr's acting sits in the scheme of things, Burr is much closer to finding her character than Alfie Boe's strident clumsy attempt, and is about on a par with Katherine Jenkins, who also managed to find a single characteristic of her character (a sappy sweetness) but could go no further in bringing her character to full vibrant life.

For a first time actor, I think Burr's performance ok, and far from a disgrace.

That gurugossiper website, referred to above, however, is a total disgrace, seemingly existing to send it's users down a rabbit hole of schadenfreude that cannot possibly do anything but mire those users in a relentless negativity, that ultimately will make them all unhappy.

The reviews are right about this play. It's a shallow affair about the conman in everyone. I did enjoy the meta element of a determined amateur conning people into casting her in a role in a shallow professional play, in which a shallow determined woman cons just about everybody around her into giving her a new role in life.

2 stars for the play, 3 stars for the meta-chuckle.

I was very confused that actual young people were into her, she is not a good advert for her make up tips.