884 posts
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Post by lonlad on May 25, 2018 23:38:30 GMT
Saw it Thurs night and liked it a lot though Claudie needs to project and enunciate better. Stephen Campbell Moore painfully intense - laceratingly so - much more than Ben C managed at the Nash. Roger Michell was there taking notes. Quite a few actors in the house including several who would be excellent in this play. Lee Ingleby the only casting misstep but you can't have everything.
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Post by Snciole on May 31, 2018 9:31:29 GMT
So I am late to Consent party so a few rambling thoughs below Staging often felt like it should be in the round but worked well. Good ensemble piece but it has been marketed terribly. If people think they are getting a drama about consent as a concept then they aren't. At best it touches on consent when a relationship breaks down but it really isn't the whole #metoo thinkpiece the posters say it is. I am also not entirely sure the section with a victim of rape (Heather Craney) and her trial entirely works. Craney's performance felt too much like a performance of a "messed up woman" whose lack of understanding of the legal system leads to a lack of conviction, but if she is so unreliable why did it go to trial? Raine seems to ignore the fact that if it got to trial in the first place it must have had compelling evidence?
To have the actual issue of Consent brushed over in favour of middle-class romantic entanglements seems insensitive. It is interesting and provokes moral outrage about victim representation in the court from the audience but the way it serves the story feels a bit contrived. In fact, at times the whole thing feels like a sexy new BBC drama about barristers that was rejected because Silk didn't do very well and because it is a play we just see the edited highlights that catch you up on each episode.
Adam James, Stephen Campbell-Moore and Claudie Blakeley are well cast. James plays the same character he always plays but does it well but Campbell-Moore and Blakely handle the sometimes melodramatic material as well. I thought Clare Foster's gurning Zara was miscast. Foster is a great comic actress (I loved her in Travesties) but this play isn't funny enough to play to her strengths and she is better in her serious scenes but the characters and scenarios often feel underwritten and rushed. Overall it was compelling evening but it was clearly a drama about relationships rather than consent. I think the marketing needs a rethink.
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Post by Deleted on Jun 1, 2018 11:13:41 GMT
Staging often felt like it should be in the round but worked well. It sort of was in the round at The Nash wasn't it? Or at least, in the square.
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923 posts
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Post by Snciole on Jun 1, 2018 11:25:01 GMT
Staging often felt like it should be in the round but worked well. It sort of was in the round at The Nash wasn't it? Or at least, in the square. I would have been happy with a square, I think the throwing of the kettle rules out on stage seating
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Post by catcat100 on Jun 2, 2018 19:26:18 GMT
Saw the matinee today and have to agree with some of the above posts in that I didn't really enjoy it very much.
I really couldn't feel anything for the main characters, rich middle class lawyers who indulge in a bit of adultery for reasons that didn't seem weighty enough. The first scene where they describe their working day as 'a bit of rape' or 'a bit of murder' certainly did nothing to make me feel sorry for what they went through in the rest of the play.
The only character that I felt empathy for was the victim in the court case but that story line was quite bluntly pushed under the carpet. Which is a shame really as this is what the play in being sold on, what the programme goes in to and would really have made this an important play rather than a play about what happens when the characters from 'This Life' get married and have kids.
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4,521 posts
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Post by Mark on Jun 14, 2018 15:17:06 GMT
I actually quite enjoyed this for what it was. Great acting all around, and always great to see Clare Foster on stage. I could kinda see where it was going by the end of act one, but I felt it played out well.
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449 posts
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Post by SageStageMgr on Jul 14, 2018 16:43:26 GMT
This is a very misleading play. I thought it was going to be an in-depth examination at society’s attitudes to rape and, by virtue (forgive the pun) of the title, our understanding of what is a very delicate subject, ripe for for debate in 2018.
Instead, I got that hinted at for the first quarter, before a posh episode of Hollyoaks. Everyone is thoroughly unpleasant, conceited and horribly self serving. It reminded me of Friends or This Life without the charm. A bunch of good looking and morally bankrupt career professionals acting like self-important arseholes for two hours.
The acting is good throughout. Some of the imagery, such as the Act I finale’s sofa hopping shenanigans, were effective. The black box set seems more budget than design focused. Sofas rise out of the floor like an Exorcist themed DFS advert.
It’s just not what I expected and certainly the blurb doesn’t match the play I saw.
I thought I was getting a play examining serious themes, relevant to the current #metoo malarkey. I got a play about how all lawyers are absolute tossers and their wives deeply unpleasant in different ways.
The point the play makes isn’t the one advertised, it does not really hit home on any of the themes. The first act seems extremely long and there isn’t much to look at when the entitled middle aged folk make more passive aggressive banter for the twelfth time in an hour.
2* absolutely would not recommend.
Also, the fly work was embarrassing. Guys, learn how to set a proper out dead please. If you’re using hemp hire someone who can tie a bloody knot. Those in/out cues for the Ikea lampshades are shocking. Plus the ropes are too slack, they spin and wobble distractingly for minutes after being flown in.
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Post by SageStageMgr on Jul 14, 2018 17:02:50 GMT
Additional;
Much like Wiseau’s “The Room”, nothing indicates the passage of time. There’s a scene in the Act I finale at Christmas (there’s a tree), but I didn’t catch any other indications if it was summer earlier, or the last year, or what. Suddenly people just kind of reconciled/cheated/committed alleged sex crimes and stuff happened with no indication why/when. Very weird play.
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Post by Deleted on Jul 14, 2018 17:15:32 GMT
Imagine
Some
Media
Awarded this pile of sh*t 5 stars
Says a lot about our media and our country
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294 posts
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Post by dani on Jul 14, 2018 17:26:59 GMT
The idea that a play called Consent has to be about consent seems a little reductive to me.
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294 posts
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Post by dani on Jul 14, 2018 17:30:24 GMT
This is superior in every possible way to BEGINNING - and the less said about the execrable MOOD MUSIC the better ---- the walkouts at the half said it all. I think you mean the interval! The "half" is thirty minutes before curtain up.
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Post by SageStageMgr on Jul 14, 2018 18:03:32 GMT
The idea that a play called Consent has to be about consent seems a little reductive to me. I was making the point that the promotional material, posters etc to someone coming in blind, combined with the title, implies a very different tone to what is the reality on stage, that’s all. It doesn’t really “cross-examine” the topic, sadly, in the way that I hoped for what is billed as a thinkpiece. The newspaper-style blurb outside the theatre, on a sandwich board, quotes the Independent’s Paul Taylor as saying something along the lines of “this couldn’t have come along at a more appropriate time” implying it was intrinsically or themeatically (although coincidentally) linked to the #metoo movement. It really isn’t. The rape subject is largely irrelevant.
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449 posts
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Post by SageStageMgr on Jul 14, 2018 18:05:33 GMT
I also wouldn’t call it a pile of sh*t. It was well acted and some of the ideas were interesting and well presented given the staging provided. It just wasn’t at all the type of show marketed and left me cold personally as a general “relationships” piece because everyone is so thoroughly despicable.
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449 posts
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Post by SageStageMgr on Jul 14, 2018 18:09:32 GMT
This is superior in every possible way to BEGINNING - and the less said about the execrable MOOD MUSIC the better ---- the walkouts at the half said it all. I think you mean the interval! The "half" is thirty minutes before curtain up. Also, the half is considered usually to be 35 minutes before curtain up... but that’s a DSM’s pedantic nature coming out...
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Post by dani on Jul 14, 2018 18:20:13 GMT
I think you mean the interval! The "half" is thirty minutes before curtain up. Also, the half is considered usually to be 35 minutes before curtain up... but that’s a DSM’s pedantic nature coming out... I am pleased to learn this!
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Post by Baemax on Jul 14, 2018 18:20:16 GMT
Yes, but don't tell that to the actors, you'll never go up on time ever again.
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449 posts
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Post by SageStageMgr on Jul 14, 2018 18:22:57 GMT
Also, the half is considered usually to be 35 minutes before curtain up... but that’s a DSM’s pedantic nature coming out... I am pleased to learn this! And I’m thrilled to actually know something!
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Post by Deleted on Jul 15, 2018 10:30:04 GMT
I am pleased to learn this! And I’m thrilled to actually know something! sagestagemgr I don’t think you post very often, do you? I very much enjoyed your posts to this thread, and hope you will post more often.
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Xanderl
Member
Not always very high value in terms of ticket yield or donations
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Post by Xanderl on Jul 16, 2018 8:16:11 GMT
TodayTix has a 24 hour offer today for £15 tickets (including stalls) for all performances up to 11th August.
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Post by pledge on Jul 31, 2018 8:56:39 GMT
Disappointed by this: as others have said, it's hard to become involved when the main characters just seem so glib and shallow - I knew from the very first scene that I was unlikely to ever care about any of them: the kind of loud and shrill lawyers who'd be laughing uproariously at their own crass jokes on the train back from the rugger at Twickenham! Similarly, a plot that depends on which of a pair of middle-class couples has or hasn't been having an affair seems desperately tired...(As for that ghastly parody of a bimbo actress, I just found it embarrassing.) To be fair I suspect the original cast and venue may have served the text better; as so often with West End transfers, a certain coarsening soon sets in, and a lot of the acting was of the "point and shout" variety. There were some striking and telling lines in the text, certainly towards the end of the (rather overlong) first half, but they were lost among too much shrill and sweary bickering. And it may well be that the plot finally pulled itself together and delivered a real punch in the second half, but if so I wasn't there to see it..
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Post by Rory on Aug 4, 2018 22:27:23 GMT
I saw this tonight, having been really sorry to have missed it at the Dorfman last year, and being slightly wary following some lukewarm reviews on here, and I have to say that I loved it!
Thought it was entertaining and by turns gripping and funny. Most of it rang true (ok had to suspend disbelief once or twice) but the audience lapped it up. Nice to see Claudie Blakley and Stephen Campbell Moore back at the Harold Pinter after the stonkingly stupendous Chimerica which was there a couple of years ago.
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Post by joem on Aug 8, 2018 20:48:20 GMT
I've come to this quite late but I think what some people have commented about the slightly misleading nature of the play is absolutely correct. I was expecting a state-of-the-nation consideration on consent and rape and instead got a clever tale about the trials and tribulations of married life amongst barristers - some of whom defend rape victims and some of whom help to destroy their lives. If the idea is to expose the shallowness of the criminal justice system well yes, we already knew that.
This is not a badly written play. It is not a boring play. But it is not really about "Consent". It is about how difficult it is to pay the mortgage if you do not do your job properly - even if that job happens to involve the character assassination of an innocent victim. It was well acted (not too sure about the stereotypical lower-class Gayle), it was smoothly produced. Are barristers really as nasty as this in their own spare time? Not many, surely. Adam James has almost got a patent on the kind of self-confident, middle-class bonhomie part with an edge which he plays here but the weight of the play is carried by Campbell-Moore's smug and cynical moralising lawyer - he has some of the worst lines - and Claudie Blakley as his wife Kitty (she has some of the best lines).
Have to say Lee Ingleby is an unconvincing Casanova as Tim, not so much through his faults but the way the text sets up him as a weedy, boring, malodorous loser only to then reveal him to be something entirely quite else. Mmm.
We live in the days of the HBO mega-series which cultivates loads of story-lines supporting the main arc. On the boards you are well advised to have one strong narrative and if there are others keep them in support. Otherwise you can fall foul of what has happened with this play, a conflict between aspirations and achievements.
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