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Post by david on Feb 9, 2019 23:25:44 GMT
I popped into the theatre this morning to enquire about day seats and the box office manager did say day seats are being offered at £25 each. Same! Although they were all gone by 12:15 unfortunately. Planning on watching this in April so I’ll get there early doors. I really want to see David Suchet on stage.
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The Price
Feb 16, 2019 17:30:13 GMT
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Post by learfan on Feb 16, 2019 17:30:13 GMT
Saw the matinee today. Third production ive seen. Really good. Suchet steals it of course but then it is that kind of part. Great set too. Recommended.
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Post by lynette on Feb 22, 2019 2:24:55 GMT
This is very good. All the cast outstanding. Suchet turns in a blinder which pulls you in and keeps you there. But what a play? Such twists and turns and wonderful writing. Nice set though personally I didn’t like the fantasy piles of stuff, I would have liked to keep it real. Just me.
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Post by mallardo on Feb 22, 2019 9:40:56 GMT
A strange play. Two brothers, Vic and Walter, meet again after 16 years in the shambles of their late father's home and explosively confront the issues that have kept them apart for so long - and yet the focus of the piece is grabbed, from his first entrance, by the quirky old furniture dealer, Solomon, who has come to appraise the stock, so to speak. What was Arthur Miller's reasoning?
It's a play clearly based on Miller's own family, a play with deep personal resonances for him, yet he deliberately leavens the intensity of the drama with an outsider, an essentially comic character, so wonderfully wrought that he was bound to steal the show. It reminds me of another work from the same period - the 60s - also dredged from Miller's own life, After The Fall, a play about Marilyn Monroe which never quite comes to grip with its subject, as if it is too painful to deal with head on.
But having noted that, The Price, for all its structural unorthodoxy, is a much better play than After the Fall and, in fact, works. The clash of brothers, confined to the second act, is brilliantly handled and fiercely written while the long first act setup, the Solomon show, is entertaining and ultimately meaningful - the appraiser's bargaining for his price metaphorically reflective of the brothers' situation.
Solomon is, of course, played here by David Suchet and he takes every advantage of the gift of a role he has been given - a consummate performance. But kudos too to Brendan Coyle as Vic, the unsuccessful brother, who never leaves the stage and is, in fact, the lead in the play. Coyle is strong and characterful throughout in both the light and heavy moments and deserves much of the credit for the show's success.
And this production is a success, without a doubt. Under Jonathan Church's solid direction Miller's structural instincts for the piece are proven to be correct. Well done to all.
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Post by NeilVHughes on Feb 22, 2019 9:43:39 GMT
lynette , pleased you enjoyed it after our chat the other week.
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Post by Someone in a tree on Feb 22, 2019 14:39:13 GMT
A strange play. Two brothers, Vic and Walter, meet again after 16 years in the shambles of their late father's home and explosively confront the issues that have kept them apart for so long - and yet the focus of the piece is grabbed, from his first entrance, by the quirky old furniture dealer, Solomon, who has come to appraise the stock, so to speak. What was Arthur Miller's reasoning? It's a play clearly based on Miller's own family, a play with deep personal resonances for him, yet he deliberately leavens the intensity of the drama with an outsider, an essentially comic character, so wonderfully wrought that he was bound to steal the show. It reminds me of another work from the same period - the 60s - also dredged from Miller's own life, After The Fall, a play about Marilyn Monroe which never quite comes to grip with its subject, as if it is too painful to deal with head on. But having noted that, The Price, for all its structural unorthodoxy, is a much better play than After the Fall and, in fact, works. The clash of brothers, confined to the second act, is brilliantly handled and fiercely written while the long first act setup, the Solomon show, is entertaining and ultimately meaningful - the appraiser's bargaining for his price metaphorically reflective of the brothers' situation. Solomon is, of course, played here by David Suchet and he takes every advantage of the gift of a role he has been given - a consummate performance. But kudos too to Brendan Coyle as Vic, the unsuccessful brother, who never leaves the stage and is, in fact, the lead in the play. Coyle is strong and characterful throughout in both the light and heavy moments and deserves much of the credit for the show's success. And this production is a success, without a doubt. Under Jonathan Church's solid direction Miller's structural instincts for the piece are proven to be correct. Well done to all. Welcome back, good to see you again :-)
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1,103 posts
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Post by mallardo on Feb 22, 2019 15:10:02 GMT
Welcome back, good to see you again :-)
Thanks. Been in the US for a while soaking up the toxic atmosphere. Glad to be back.
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Post by Deleted on Feb 22, 2019 16:41:50 GMT
I popped into the theatre this morning to enquire about day seats and the box office manager did say day seats are being offered at £25 each. Thanks for sharing. After seeing Suchet prowling the stage in that Pinter play last year, I had I wanted to see this, and now I have data to make that happen!
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Post by joem on Mar 9, 2019 23:43:21 GMT
Not Miller at his best. The first half has a fair amount of laughs, unusually for old Stoneface, most of them coming from a typically ebullient performance by David Suchet.
But the second half drags on and on and on, despite the cast's best efforts, with another of those plays where characters pick at the entrails of things they did or didn't do thirty years ago which, frankly, seem to have acquired a resonance which is hardly justified by their import. It is possible to lend fate a hand every so often, some Miller characters are too weighed down by karma to rage against the dying of the light.
Attractive set (somewhat reminiscent of the Ink set last year?) but there isn't enough Suchet in the second half of the play which is mostly devoted to an interminable argument between the two brothers with occasional despairing interjections from the wife/sister-in-law.
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Post by zephyrus on Mar 10, 2019 0:00:47 GMT
Having missed previous productions of this Miller play, I was curious to see The Price earlier this week. I thought it was well-acted, but a bit over-long (the second act is very talky) and, without wanting to sound uncharitable, I am slightly baffled by Adrian Lukis's Olivier nomination...
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Post by orchidman on Mar 27, 2019 23:56:14 GMT
Appears that Brendan Coyle has been off for about a week. Saw his understudy Sion Lloyd tonight and he was very good, although hadn't realised he'd had a little time to bed in. Coyle is probably a little old for the part but haven't seen his performance, certainly would be a different feel to Mark Ruffalo who was the right age (and a very well preserved example of it) in terms of the character talking about changing careers and a new vocation.
Think this is one of Miller's best plays and the recent Broadway success and now this production will elevate its reputation.
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The Price
Mar 28, 2019 10:57:24 GMT
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Post by wannabedirector on Mar 28, 2019 10:57:24 GMT
Saw this on Monday evening, Brendan Coyle was also off then but as above I thought the understudy was very good. Overall, although I’m usually a fan of Arthur Miller’s work, I don’t think this is anywhere near his strongest play, it did begin to drag a bit, especially after the interval. There are some good performance, especially from David Suchet, and I was a fan of the set design, but I feel this might have been a little bit overrated by critics.
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Post by jgblunners on Apr 1, 2019 22:51:16 GMT
I'm afraid this didn't really click for me. Suchet is brilliant, and Lukis and Stewart were pretty darn good too, but Coyle was just OK. I struggled to remain interested in Act Two - after such an unpredictable and mysterious Act One with Suchet's character, the descent into family squabbles fell a bit flat. On its own, the confrontation of the two brothers would make a brilliant and intense play, but with the humorous prelude of the first act it just feels like a drag. The set design was fabulous though - at first I thought the wall of furniture was just an artistic way of representing the clutter of the loft, but as the themes of the play emerged it struck me as a rather clever way of having the family legacy constantly looming over the brothers, precariously balanced and threatening to slip and cause disaster at any point.
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Post by david on Apr 13, 2019 17:54:36 GMT
After watching the matinee performance this afternoon, Brendan Coyle was absent (much to the annoyance of the lady I was talking to during the interval, though she was happy that David Suchet was on stage). I have mixed feelings about this production. Firstly, I absolutely loved the attic set so 4* for that and as others have posted, how it can be used to represent the family legacy. Acting wise, (and I’ll confess here that I was here to see David Suchet) I thought he was absolutely brilliant in the role of Solomon. As soon as he first appeared on stage he had won the audience over in his first few minutes on stage. His performance was top class and he had great comic timing and even making Adrian Lukis corpse during one scene. Adrian Lukis and Sion Lloyd really came into their own in Act 2 as the recriminations of their earlier life where argued out.
On the downside, I felt that with this production, it didn’t really get going until Suchet made his first appearance, and following on from that, you could see the audience become more engaged with the production as Suchet gave an acting masterclass. When he was off stage, it was almost like there was a loss of energy from the production that Suchet brings to it and when he is absent, it was definitely missed.
Act 2 I thought really did drag a bit, though the recriminations between the 2 brothers was great to watch, though as others have mentioned, the ending did fall a little flat, particularly after the intense argument scenes earlier on.
As an aside, we had a guide dog in the auditorium today who was impeccably behaved throughout the production.
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The Price
Apr 13, 2019 18:04:54 GMT
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Post by Rory on Apr 13, 2019 18:04:54 GMT
Has Brendan Coyle been off for a while now?
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Post by Deleted on Apr 13, 2019 18:49:46 GMT
Perhaps the guide dog could have taught the audience some manners. I’ve never heard so many whistles and bleeps from mobiles as I did today, occasionally enlivened by a chap who seemed to have an AD contraption that you could hear all the way across the other side of the auditorium, one level up...
What with all that going on, I thought the cast did a brilliant job - though for me the play itself was a bit ‘meh’. So often with Miller, I find myself thinking, “If you folks had only had a frank conversation some years ago, we wouldn’t all have to be sitting here listening to you whinge/rage.”
The set may look fab but who decided to play so much of the action on the far left of the stage? I was in an aisle seat Grand Circle on the left, and about 50% of it was basically a radio play for me.
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Post by Rory on Apr 13, 2019 19:20:32 GMT
As per my separate thread on Beginning, I was at the Gate Theatre Dublin last night. They always have a man (dressed in full black-tie no less) who really lectures the audience on their phones, tells them to switch them right off and actually points to people who are lit up and shames them to switch them off. It's a bit irritating and OTT but it worked anyway!
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Post by harrietcraig on Apr 13, 2019 21:05:14 GMT
Completely irrelevant to this thread, but the mention of the guide dog reminds me of the time I was sitting in the next-to-last row of the Dress Circle at Carnegie Hall, and there was a guide dog in the space behind me. The dog was so well behaved I wasn’t aware he was there until the applause began at the end of the first half of the concert, when something whacked me hard in the back of the head. I turned around to glare at the person who had hit me, and discovered that it was a dog who was enthusiastically wagging his tail (which was what had hit me in the head). Apparently the dog liked the concert too, and tail-wagging was his way of showing his approval.
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Post by Deleted on Apr 13, 2019 21:11:31 GMT
Completely irrelevant to this thread, but the mention of the guide dog reminds me of the time I was sitting in the next-to-last row of the Dress Circle at Carnegie Hall, and there was a guide dog in the space behind me. The dog was so well behaved I wasn’t aware he was there until the applause began at the end of the first half of the concert, when something whacked me hard in the back of the head. I turned around to glare at the person who had hit me, and discovered that it was a dog who was enthusiastically wagging his tail (which was what had hit me in the head). Apparently the dog liked the concert too, and tail-wagging was his way of showing his approval. That has to be the most adorable example of ‘bad behaviour in the theatre’ ever!
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Post by lonlad on Apr 13, 2019 23:44:24 GMT
Word is that Coyle is trying his damnedest to return to the production but may not be able (for health reasons) to do so .....
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The Price
Apr 14, 2019 6:26:31 GMT
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Post by Rory on Apr 14, 2019 6:26:31 GMT
Word is that Coyle is trying his damnedest to return to the production but may not be able (for health reasons) to do so ..... I hope he makes a good recovery soon.
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Post by theatreliker on Apr 14, 2019 16:36:34 GMT
Does anyone know if this has been filmed by the Digtial Theatre crew? They've done a couple of Miller plays now (All My Sons and The Crucible) and LDJIN with Suchet.
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The Price
Apr 23, 2019 21:42:05 GMT
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Post by Mark on Apr 23, 2019 21:42:05 GMT
Word is that Coyle is trying his damnedest to return to the production but may not be able (for health reasons) to do so ..... He was still off tonight but understudy Sion Lloyd very good! I’ll agree with what others have said, it’s a bit slow to start but as soon as David Suchet enters he lights up the stage and the audience seem to wake up. Act two didn’t half go round in circles a bit. Loved the set!! Very impressive. ETA: can’t believe that was the same Sion Lloyd who was in the original London cast of Avenue Q as Brian!
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