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Post by Deleted on Aug 10, 2016 19:12:20 GMT
Sort of puts pay to the "reviews don't matter" theory
It sold out within one week of the reviews coming out and had excellent availability until then
Just proves what sheep most people are Relying on others to tell them what to see Than use their own judgment
Not knowledgable like the sisters of the board
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Post by Deleted on Aug 10, 2016 20:04:57 GMT
Reviews can help or hinder a show dramatically, as we've seem
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Post by djp on Aug 11, 2016 17:00:16 GMT
wow, sensational reviews. I had no idea she could actually act.. She's been bad in every show I've seen her in. Maybe I'll have to see this! If you didn't move quick, then you've missed out - I saw on Twitter today that the Young Vic is saying the run is sold out, but there is a list or something for returns (plus they are pushing the rest of their season.) But I have never seen Billie Piper be bad (adored her in The Effect and even Dr. Who) so..... Booked 2 seats last week and it was 40% empty. NHS finally produced an appointment 2 months late on one of those dates - tried to find a replacement date and its now sold out , including another 1000 released today..... 350 in the queue for tickets that are not there currently.
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Post by foxa on Aug 11, 2016 17:47:54 GMT
If you didn't move quick, then you've missed out - I saw on Twitter today that the Young Vic is saying the run is sold out, but there is a list or something for returns (plus they are pushing the rest of their season.) But I have never seen Billie Piper be bad (adored her in The Effect and even Dr. Who) so..... Booked 2 seats last week and it was 40% empty. NHS finally produced an appointment 2 months late on one of those dates - tried to find a replacement date and its now sold out , including another 1000 released today..... 350 in the queue for tickets that are not there currently. What a pain. If you don't follow the Young Vic on Twitter, then I would recommend that you do as they are pretty good at flagging up box office things - something may well turn up (those 1000 extra tickets turned up after they said they were sold out!)
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Post by Honoured Guest on Aug 11, 2016 17:53:06 GMT
those 1000 extra tickets turned up after they said they were sold out! They added three performances; they didn't release any more tickets for the sold out performances.
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Post by theatre-turtle on Aug 12, 2016 11:20:57 GMT
I'm going tonight!
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Post by theatre-turtle on Aug 12, 2016 20:45:19 GMT
I loved it. Not quite on par with People places and things but not far off it either. Billie Piper really exceeded my expectations, she's a truly excellent actor and isn't off stage for the whole 1h50.
Very glad I booked before the reviews came out. There was a returns queue snaking round the corner when I turned up at 7
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Post by mikey on Aug 13, 2016 16:14:34 GMT
Saw this on Thursday. I loved it. Billie Piper is an incredible force. Cried at about three different moments. The whole cast was terrific. Really loved the mother. The set was very cool as well, was really impressed.
Desperate to see this again! If anyone has a ticket going spare to buy, I will be forever grateful!
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Post by showgirl on Aug 13, 2016 22:49:55 GMT
Called in about 6.30 pm this evening to collect my ticket for a later date and there was already quite a queue for returns - the longest I've seen anywhere.
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Post by Deleted on Aug 14, 2016 8:22:28 GMT
It could possibly transfer to the Trafalgar Studios maybe? Sound like a show which could move there
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Post by mikey on Aug 14, 2016 8:25:38 GMT
If could possibly transfer to the Trafalgar Studios maybe? Sound like a show which could move there I think that's a good idea. They would be able to replicate the Young Vic's stage design a la The Maids. Would be great.
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Post by kathryn on Aug 19, 2016 22:40:39 GMT
Billie Piper is going to win all the awards for this. What a performance!
I was fascinated by the set changes, too - at one point the floor was still moving as the lights came up.
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Post by caa on Aug 26, 2016 13:15:34 GMT
I wonder if Billie Piper would be keen to transfer this, as previously she has been less keen to do a run in the West End
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Post by showgirl on Aug 27, 2016 22:21:04 GMT
Saw the play this evening and was more impressed than I expected, though initially I was quite deterred by the ridiculous amount of effing and the rather smutty dialogue between the two leads. The only negative was that it went on far too long - not in terms of time but in showing the decline of Billie Piper's character and the disintegration of the couple's relationship; it was obvious much earlier which way things were going and imo there was no need not only to lay it on with a trowel but also to keep showing it in different ways without advancing the plot. All the cast of 6 were great and I liked the staging and incidental music.
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Post by peggs on Sept 18, 2016 11:07:11 GMT
Had avoided reading about this, just knew it was Billie Piper so booked on past experiences so wasn't prepared for the emotional onslaught that hit, by the end I was some sort of shocked wide eyed wreck, goodness knows how the cast copes with this. For me this is why I love theatre, had spent the afternoon in the rather mellowness of the entertainer and then had to pick jaw and self off floor after this in the evening. Billie Piper is phenomenally good, there is something reassuringly everyday i find about her (visually and the way she acts, I don't have any insider info) which makes her performances very immediate and she has the capacity to break hearts which i'm always a sucker for. She's on fire in this, not exactly likeable as a character but compelling. It has the feel of a greek tragedy, the sort of relentless drive towards disaster. She's ably matched by the rest of the cast especially . Rather liked the box type set and the disorientation of the plunges into darkness and back into bright light. After a few 'meh' productions there for me this had rocked the young vic back onto my worth taking a punt on things.
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Post by peggs on Sept 18, 2016 11:09:11 GMT
opps, meant to go and look up the actors name but forgot and posted, this line should have said She's ably matched by the rest of the cast especially Brendan Cowell
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Post by AddisonMizner on Sept 20, 2016 5:41:35 GMT
Any chance this might transfer?
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Post by DuchessConstance on Sept 20, 2016 15:46:51 GMT
I think it depends on Billie's schedule, so probably not. I'd love to see it transfer.
Though I was looking at the YV programme for next year and it's wildly exciting. The YV is really killing it lately.
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Post by Deleted on Sept 20, 2016 15:58:05 GMT
I think it depends on Billie's schedule, so probably not. I'd love to see it transfer. Though I was looking at the YV programme for next year and it's wildly exciting. The YV is really killing it lately. Any clues/teases?!?
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Post by DuchessConstance on Sept 20, 2016 16:10:08 GMT
Simon Godwin doing another Shakespeare.
Obviously that should read Joe Hill-Gibbins! No idea how I did that!
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Post by Honoured Guest on Sept 20, 2016 17:43:30 GMT
And any clues/teases about the wildly exciting?!?
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Post by vdcni on Sept 22, 2016 7:18:50 GMT
Hmmm not sure about this one.
I'd agree, fantastic central performance by Piper with Brendan Cowell giving fine support but I couldn't say I really care for the play itself. It starts well and ends very well but there's a good 20 or so minutes before that where it drags, it just kept on the look how bad their life is now theme when that was already quite clear. Though maybe as a happily childless person it didn't take much for me to think her obsession was extreme. I wasn't completely sold on the rest of the cast but then they didn't have a huge amount to work with other than the mother.
Still glad I saw it and nice to see Cowell being so solicitous to Piper at the curtain call and leading the appluase for her solo bow, I remember her looking shell shocked at the end of The Effect and she did here as well - understandably after that final scene.
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Post by showgirl on Sept 22, 2016 8:00:34 GMT
Very much in line with my thoughts above. Glad I'm not the only partial dissenter.
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Post by Honoured Guest on Sept 23, 2016 2:36:42 GMT
Simon Godwin doing another Shakespeare. Did you mean to say Joe Hill-Gibbins?
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Post by DuchessConstance on Sept 23, 2016 7:31:49 GMT
Oh gosh I genuinely had no idea I'd written that! How weird. Probably because I had both their names in front of me.
The new verbatim play about sex workers is extraordinary btw.
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Post by popcultureboy on Sept 23, 2016 8:24:00 GMT
Regarding the transfer, it would need to be 100% restaged for it, whether Piper is available or not. I don't know of any West End house that would have the wing space for sets, for starters. I would love to see Yerma come in, but it's likelier it will do a Happy Days and they'll bring it back for an encore run at the Young Vic rather than try and squeeze it in to a traditional house, I think slash hope.
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Post by Nicholas on Sept 25, 2016 20:16:26 GMT
To continue the People, Places and Things comparisons from earlier – watching Yerma, I think I felt how the people who (wrongly) dismissed Macmillan’s script felt about that – bravura performance, but what’s the point?
That’s a bit mean on this. This was a game of two halves, and I was rather sucker-punched (if not devastated) by the final three chapters. But there was a major issue of slightness and factual errors that made the first two thirds unbearably so-so (an issue which Parsley gets right to the heart of – we mock him, but when he’s right he’s right), and ultimately brought a slightness to an ending that should have been devastating. And before I begin, I ought to say that I don’t know this Lorca at all, so I’m attributing all its faults to Stone – that said, this is clearly his baby and he’s clearly rewritten heaps, so I think that’s fair, esp. the ending.
Part One: Let’s Get Pregnant with Paige Britain! Yerma, our protagonist, is a bizarrely written character. As a blogger, there’s a Katie Hopkins shock-jock meanness to her (which I felt came across as over-forced and artificial) that makes her rather grating; as a person, Stone (or Lorca?) doesn’t give her depth, and this undermines her theatrical existence. Because the play only really shows us the side of her which is wanting a baby, she becomes one-dimensional when that’s all we get for 1hr45 – for once, a show could be longer: expand Yerma’s life outside this one aspect, show the whole woman not merely the prospective mother. Other than that it’s a tedious Generation Game conveyer belt of Buzzwords (Whatsapp me, Sadiq’s mayor now, avocado – buzzwords incorporated a posteriori, not from inside the box), stringing together “I want a baby I want a baby I want a baby” – the modernity feels phoney and the baby-craving flimsy. Aspects – the family relationship, the job itself – hint at the depth this could have had, and that would have been rather wonderful, but instead it’s over-simple and over-repetitive and needs some more. I mean, we never even know why Yerma wants a baby; the only reason Stone or Piper gives us is “because she wants to, because she wants to”.
And on the subject of blogs – WHERE IS THEIR MONEY COMING FROM? Buying London houses is no issue to a blogger; blogging apparently makes you Midas. Oh, and also, I know that him not getting his sperm tested is for dramatic/character purposes – about pride and masculinity and all that – but practically, Brendan Cowell stringing loved ones on for years out of stubbornness just makes him a dislikeable arse, end of; dramatically it takes the edge off as he becomes one-dimensional too and quite unpleasant, and this makes it somewhat unbelievable at times.
Part Two: a very Danish Dogme downfall. And blimey does the tone rise. Stone has taken influence from the Dogme school of filmmaking before (most specifically (he mentioned this himself) The Daughter), and with how he updates and depicts Yerma’s depression, he takes the largest leaf out of the book of Lars von Trier – a great feminist at best, a great misogynist at worst, often somehow the same thing at the same time, one of the most problematic but fascinating writers of woman characters working today. Having simplified Yerma down to nothing but a mother, to take the potentiality of motherhood away from her empties her out, leaves a void, leaves a woman bereft of identity and purpose and connections; in how explicit, full-on and devastating this self-imposed emptiness was, I was very much reminded of Bjork belting her sorrows away in Dancer in the Dark, of Nicole Kidman’s treatment in Dogville, and particularly (not least due to how, and where, Yerma inflicts violence upon herself in its final moments) of Charlotte Gainsborough dismantling herself first mentally and then physically in Antichrist. As I saw the ending’s reading of women as mothers, Antichrist does rather seem a reference point (not least that that film, too, has a terribly boring first half). And whilst (as with von Trier) there are histrionics and contrivances, I think the strength of Piper’s performance makes her desperate descent into profound loneliness utterly heartbreaking. And, crucially, ‘baby talk’ is relatively relegated – the end is simply a heartbroken woman lacking what she wants, the baby a mere macguffin, and if her heartbreak doesn’t break your heart, you must be made of Stone stone.
Billie Piper seems to be doing a Mark Gatiss – not letting her populism get in the way of becoming a stunning stage actor. The Effect was a layered piece of underplaying as required, her Paige Britain was infinitely better than the play she was in, and now this! Were she not a Doctor Who alumnus, we’d be praising her as a unique talent of the stage, so let’s. It’s nice that she’s part of this brigade shattering high/low, populist/niche culture distinctions, simply by being very very very good at her job (James Mcavoy’s another example). Even at the play’s most annoying (Stone’s writing), she’s convincing to a fault, and as the play drags Yerma down to self-inflicted humiliation, self-doubt and that act of violence, Piper just stuns (to flog my dead horse, look at the performances von Trier gets from great actress in passionate/humiliating roles). She’s been very good before, but this brings out unlikeable, naked layers which are quite painful to watch in ways few actresses are, it’s really something.
So when the script gives her meat, Piper is brilliant, and when the script doesn’t, she’s still brilliant. It’s a shame the script is only half-brilliant. In The Wild Duck, Stone’s detached observation worked because his script had heart, his empathy for Hedvig and Gregers was palpable and we were on their side from step one; that he turned Ibsen’s Sophoclean intellectual decline into a modern kitchen-sink drama heightened the impact of the downfall because Stone had brought Ibsen down to earth. Here, I don’t think Stone sets up the Sophoclean decline well or believes in the issues affecting the character that much (which may be Lorca’s fault?). The Wild Duck was observational where this was clinical; we’re outside Yerma’s head, outside her heart, never able to explore what’s driving her all this time, and that means motivation is replaced by that pat modernity, where in The Wild Duck motivation was enhanced by organic modernity. The ending is amazing, the live Dogme drama something to behold, and the acting is top notch. The beginning just sags, which brings the ending down. If Stone had given Yerma a rounder, richer life from the beginning, this would be a two-hour-plus drama of profound humanity with an utterly devastating ending, but as it is it’s a slight 1hr45 study of an over-simplified protagonist given far more depth than she deserves by a wonderful, wonderful central knock-out performance.
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Post by popcultureboy on Sept 25, 2016 20:49:46 GMT
And on the subject of blogs – WHERE IS THEIR MONEY COMING FROM? Buying London houses is no issue to a blogger; blogging apparently makes you Midas. Oh, and also, I know that him not getting his sperm tested is for dramatic/character purposes – about pride and masculinity and all that – but practically, Brendan Cowell stringing loved ones on for years out of stubbornness just makes him a dislikeable arse, end of; dramatically it takes the edge off as he becomes one-dimensional too and quite unpleasant, and this makes it somewhat unbelievable at times. She's not a self employed blogger, she's employed by some nameless faceless publication to write a column/blog for them. The money is coming from that and mostly from her husband's job, which is why he's never there when she wants him, because he's always working. I don't agree with your sperm testing point either. It wasn't solely for dramatic or character purposes. Some of my friends have had to undertake the beginning of Yerma's journey towards pregnancy and this was essentially true to life.
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Post by Deleted on Sept 25, 2016 21:16:15 GMT
And on the subject of blogs – WHERE IS THEIR MONEY COMING FROM? Buying London houses is no issue to a blogger; blogging apparently makes you Midas. Oh, and also, I know that him not getting his sperm tested is for dramatic/character purposes – about pride and masculinity and all that – but practically, Brendan Cowell stringing loved ones on for years out of stubbornness just makes him a dislikeable arse, end of; dramatically it takes the edge off as he becomes one-dimensional too and quite unpleasant, and this makes it somewhat unbelievable at times. She's not a self employed blogger, she's employed by some nameless faceless publication to write a column/blog for them. The money is coming from that and mostly from her husband's job, which is why he's never there when she wants him, because he's always working. I don't agree with your sperm testing point either. It wasn't solely for dramatic or character purposes. Some of my friends have had to undertake the beginning of Yerma's journey towards pregnancy and this was essentially true to life. You CANNOT be referred for fertility treatment without the male partner having a sperm count See the NICE guidelines and fertility protocol for any major CCG The male character continually stalling was unbelievable and if not that then simply stupid They will be rationing IVF even further in the NHS shortly making the referral criteria more stringent
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Post by popcultureboy on Sept 28, 2016 7:40:47 GMT
You CANNOT be referred for fertility treatment without the male partner having a sperm count See the NICE guidelines and fertility protocol for any major CCG The male character continually stalling was unbelievable and if not that then simply stupid They will be rationing IVF even further in the NHS shortly making the referral criteria more stringent Where did I say anything about referral for anything, Parsley? Moreover, where did Yerma? What I did say was I've known friends go through EXACTLY the kind of macho alpha male stalling of testing sperm counts when they're failing to conceive. So therefore, I don't agree with you that this plot point was unbelievable or stupid.
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