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Post by mallardo on Nov 3, 2019 16:08:12 GMT
Don't disagree, though I liked the set: so ugly. Didn't see the Lyumibovs. I love a bit of expressionism. I thought the thing at the National with Adam Godley and a big clock and bicycles, which many people hated - German I think (of course) - was fantastic.
I think you're referring to the Georg Kaiser play, From Morning To Midnight, which the NT did a few years go. And, yes, it was fantastic!
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Post by mallardo on Oct 17, 2019 13:41:55 GMT
For whatever it's worth (which may be nothing), I have a slew of friends who went a few nights ago and ALL hated it, some with a real passion. We shall see ..... I agree with your friends. It was among the worst things I have ever seen on a London stage - utterly dreadful and singularly inept.
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Post by mallardo on Sept 9, 2019 12:03:04 GMT
I thought this production was pretty appalling - a great serious musical turned into a cheesy dance spectacle. It's hard to know if the cast were any good as, given the over-the-top staging, they had no chance to create characters or engage meaningfully in any of the drama of the piece. I suppose Jamie Lloyd figured the story was so well known that he didn't have to bother telling it. But not so - the lady sitting next to me didn't have clue as to what was going on. First there was the dismantling of Sweet Charity at the Donmar and now this. What's next?
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Post by mallardo on Aug 15, 2019 14:49:49 GMT
It's a great movie - do not miss it. As to the "liberties" taken with history, they're what makes it work. It's called Once Upon a Time in Hollywood for a reason.
PS: Of special interest to this board, Sam Wanamaker is a (briefly seen) character in it.
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Post by mallardo on Jul 31, 2019 19:08:04 GMT
He needs a theatre to be renamed after him. The Majestic Theatre which has been housing Phantom all these years would be the perfect choice.
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Post by mallardo on Jun 23, 2019 8:32:35 GMT
It’s no coincidence — as in none whatsoever — that the critical reception of David Mamet’s plays and movies took a spectacular and irreversible nosedive following his double heresy of 1) ridiculing “method acting” and the cult behind it, and 2) coming out fiercely — as he does everything — as a Republican and conservative. Since Mamet has to have known that near-universal Broadway/Hollywood reprobation would be the inevitable outcome, his actions constitute a true profile in courage in today’s cultural and political climate. Even were he to write the next “Hamlet,” he’d be trashed for it. You'd have a point if Mamet had written anything at all of value in the last ten years or so. Sadly, and as objectively as possible, all of his recent work is crap.
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Post by mallardo on Jun 23, 2019 8:21:54 GMT
After a hiatus the Terence Rattigan revival returns with a production of this farcical comedy that was a big hit for Rattigan back in 1943 - it was one of three plays he had running simultaneously in the West End, the other two being Flare Path and Love in Idleness. As it's Rattigan one can be sure it's a well made play and it is, every little fragment of information planted in the first act bearing fruit in the second and third, but it's pretty lightweight stuff and, over all, strains to justify its two and a half hour length.
The farcical element is, naturally enough, the plot, featuring three military men - Englishman, Frenchman and American: it's wartime, after all - proclaiming their love for the same guileless young woman while the bride-to-be's conniving father and an older, wiser lady of questionable virtue stand by to collect what they can and generally add to the complications. It's often very funny with some brilliant Rattigan-esque set pieces, especially in the latter two acts. But, it must be said, the first act with its exposition and its setup scenes is a bit of a chore.
Still, the usual fine cast - with one exception - from the Orange Tree and an absolute star turn from the always wonderful Dorothea Meyer-Bennett as Mabel, the "other" woman, stealing every scene she's in. You have to wait for her - she doesn't appear until act two, which may be the real problem with act one.
With a qualm or two, recommended.
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Post by mallardo on Jun 16, 2019 6:32:33 GMT
I'm hard pressed to think of a better, more powerful production of any Ibsen play I've seen. As of this morning this ranks at number one for me.
BTW we watched it from a Circle box. Price £30, just £10 more than a day seat. It's a side angle view, of course, but we didn't miss much and one can lean out without blocking any one else. Plus, at the Duke of York's, they throw in a goody basket - sparkling wine, chocolates, crisps, etc. I'd sit there again in a heartbeat.
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Post by mallardo on Jun 14, 2019 5:40:42 GMT
It's a show within a show concept - a street theatre group put on a musical which turns out to have intimate resonances for all of them. It's very lively and inventive with a loud hard rock score. It played Broadway briefly - led by Eden Espinoza and Kevin Anderson - and got savaged by the critics but I enjoyed it a lot and play the cast recording often.
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Post by mallardo on Jun 14, 2019 5:35:13 GMT
The play is called Orpheus Descending for a reason - the parallels to the Orpheus/Eurydice story are there front and centre, including the setting which surely is, metaphorically, at least, Hell on earth. I don't this production downplayed that. It's as explicit as it can be.
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Post by mallardo on May 30, 2019 10:01:40 GMT
do we have any idea yet as to who will be playing Robert? apparently they were looking for some one in Jenna's age range. I cant bring any actor to mind in his late 40's early 50's who can sing this score?... any thoughts? Alex Hanson, Damian Humbley? Hanson could never sing it. But Humbley certainly could.
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Post by mallardo on May 30, 2019 9:39:44 GMT
full thoughts later but a quick one, much like City of Angels (although it was minor) upon researching, the finale was different for this version. The girls and Charity sang a little reprise of Something Better Than This, which I quite liked, a shame there's no recording of this version of the ending but it was nice! (one of the few nice things about this production, what a shame I really wanted to love it)
For me the best ending - and the one used in the last Broadway production (2005) - is Charity herself reprising, in a teary but determined voice, I'm The Bravest Individual.
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Post by mallardo on May 23, 2019 10:23:29 GMT
Jillian Mueller has been the understudy Vivian. She's getting a promotion.
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Post by mallardo on May 22, 2019 8:09:27 GMT
Saw this on Press Night and - I was going to say "enjoyed it" but that's not right - was riveted by the play, which I did not know, and by the brilliant performances of Louise Jameson and Thomas Mahy as the two shattered protagonists. This was the 4th Philip Ridley play I've seen and the earliest (2000) so, unsurprisingly, it's much more a traditional drama than some of his later works which, for me at least, require some effort at deciphering (thinking especially of Tender Napalm). What is not traditional is the poetry and power of the dialogue, unrelentingly graphic in a way that goes well beyond any other playwright I can think of.
The piece is beautifully structured - the truth of the situation emerging bit by bit with subtlety and finesse - and is full of blazing speeches, wonderfully handled by Ms Jameson and Mr. Mahy. Mahy, in particular, has an amazing monologue to deliver in which he verbally recreates the crime at the heart of the play and, for a young actor with little experience, he nails it quite magnificently.
An intense and gratifying evening then, well worth your time.
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Post by mallardo on May 17, 2019 10:21:08 GMT
At the interval of The Three Sisters last night a man seated next to us who knew nothing of the play asked my wife and I to give him a clue as to what he had just seen. He was baffled. Why? I think because the resetting of the piece into an anonymous no-time with updated and heavily rearranged dialogue had robbed it of its context. All this strange talk of work as the way forward to a shining future makes little sense unless one sees the whole thing as a portrait of intense social change. 1850, when it's set, is only two years on from the Europe-wide upheavals of 1848. Things would never be the same. The sisters, landed gentry, understand that they can no longer be bystanders but must actively participate in the society to come - yet they still yearn nostalgically for an idle past in Moscow. They are not the future. That distinction belongs to the representative of the class below them, the odious Natasha.
The deep longing that suffuses the play is about the very real clash of values these people are trying to come to terms with. But Rebecca Frecknall's production - in the name of relevance, presumably - muddies the waters to the extent that, like the man next to us, those who do not already know the play are left behind.
Fortunately, The Three Sisters is strong enough to overcome the improvements imposed upon it. It maintains its power no matter what, especially with a cast as superb as this one is, right down the line. Still, as one sat there admiring the actors, it felt more like watching a master class in how to penetrate to the heart of ones character than a coherently realized take on the play.
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Post by mallardo on May 16, 2019 10:13:38 GMT
Do they need a big name for Eliza? If not, Anna O'Byrne (currently in Amour) could certainly sing it. She played the role in Australia in a production directed by Julie Andrews!
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Post by mallardo on May 15, 2019 6:37:42 GMT
Tennessee Williams wrote some dark plays but none darker than this one. As befits an Orpheus play, it is set in Hell, the rural deep south where mob violence seethes just under the surface and where years before an Italian immigrant (known locally as The Wop) was burned out and murdered for selling liquor to African Americans (not the term they use, of course). The Wop's daughter, Lady, is our Eurydice, still trapped in the town that destroyed her life and awaiting rescue from an Orpheus, in this case Val Xavier, an itinerant guitar strummer with a way with the ladies. Val, just turned 30 and looking for a restart in his wasted life, has his own issues. And then there's Carol, wild daughter of local gentry, whose role seems to be to force the past into the present for both Lady and Val. It's a potent trio, both literally and symbolically.
And then there's the townspeople who provide the menacing milieu; gossiping, back-stabbing women and brutal, xenophobic men - a cross section of southern "society" that could not be any more damning. And which, needless to say, still resonates today.
It all plays out with a kind of horrible inevitability that works well, the tension being continually ratcheted up, in Tamara Harvey's spare but effective production. The three leads are all excellent, especially Seth Numrich's Val - not just convincing but virtually ideal. Hattie Morahan, although not very Italian, matches him with her intensity and her rage and her desperate neediness and Jemima Rooper is equally fine as the frantic Carol.
It's not an easy play to love - the darkness can be overpowering - but it's gripping theatre, an experience only Tennessee Williams can provide.
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Post by mallardo on May 13, 2019 12:48:19 GMT
Goodness. They're going to have to Madonna the score a bit for Jenna aren't they? Indeed. Both Kelli O'Hara and Elizabeth Stanley, who played the role on tour (and who was wonderful) have quasi-operatic soprano voices, which is what is required.
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Post by mallardo on May 12, 2019 16:59:41 GMT
I was at the final Arcola matinee of this - wonderful to see the place so packed - and wanted to love it but... no. James Lapine has a note in the programme re not all movies are suitable for being turned into musicals. Alas, his own show is one of those. To me it never made the case for adding songs.
The cast is good but, frustratingly, the show doesn't allow anyone to really shine except little ten year old Olive, Lily Mae Denman at this performance. The highlight, easily, is the pageant itself, played to the hilt by Ms Denman and by two of the supporting players, the hilarious Ian Carlyle and Imelda Warren-Green. The fact that the pageant is at the end means the show goes out on a high - always good - and might account for the wildly enthusiastic audience response at the curtain. Or maybe everyone - but me - genuinely loved it.
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Post by mallardo on May 9, 2019 17:37:37 GMT
Saw it at press night yesterday. It's, well, unique and inexplicable and has a lot of bicycles. My honest guess was a Vieux-Colombier and Copeau tribute in the staging. The music is lush, the lyrics veer from trite to filthy, and the performances are uniformly terrific. 4 stars from me. More ranting on my site if anyone cares.
I was there as well, TM - I liked Jeremy Sams' flashy lyrics. They do call attention to themselves but anyone who can rhyme Frank Sinatra with Montmartre gets a thumbs up from me. And only the Whore (a wonderful Claire Machin) gets risqué, never filthy. The lyrics need to be pointed and strong - in a sung through musical they're all the text we've got. Michel Legrande's music with his usual sinuous cascading melodies is gorgeous, of course, and very well sung by a talented cast led by the excellent Gary Tushaw and the radiant voiced Anna O'Byrne.
This is a show I've been listening to for years and always wondered how it might actually play on a stage. Turns out it plays very well in Hannah Chissick's inventive, atmospheric production. It's a slight story, diffuse in its telling, as the plot keeps drifting away in order to give everyone - literally everyone - a moment of personal reflection and a song. But when the songs are so strong and the characterizations so cleverly drawn that's a good thing. It's all very French in its sound and in its mood of longing and distant hope. I found it quite irresistible.
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Post by mallardo on May 3, 2019 6:03:52 GMT
Sadly, Anne-Marie Duff cannot play Charity Hope Valentine. She can't sing and, more crucially for this show, she can't dance. The talent deficiency at the heart of this production is there for all to see and it cannot be overcome.
I felt sorry for choreographer Wayne McGregor - not only does he have to replace the genius work of Bob Fosse, he has to do so lumbered with a leading lady incapable of the most basic routines. The result is dumbed down choreography that saps the life from the show's biggest numbers. "If My Friends Could See Me Now", "There's Got To Be Something Better Than This" and, especially, "I'm A Brass Band", all went for nothing - the last named was downright excruciating.
Josie Rourke's "concept" production provides little help for Ms Duff - the irrelevant Warholishness is barely a concept at all, just a pointlessly ugly setting quite at odds with Neil Simon's witty book and Cy Coleman's bright brash score. The production looks nothing like it sounds.
On the plus side Arthur Darvill is a terrific Oscar, perfect in every way, and Lizzy Connolly and Debbie Kurup stir things up to the extent that they can as Nikki and Helene. Either one of these ladies, cast as Charity, might have turned things around. And the orchestra sounds wonderful playing the brilliantly reduced orchestrations of Larry Blank.
But Sweet Charity is about Charity Hope Valentine and she's what's missing.
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Post by mallardo on Apr 30, 2019 12:01:17 GMT
I have seen three LSMT productions at the Bridewell - they have all been excellent.
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Post by mallardo on Apr 26, 2019 16:43:17 GMT
Every other character reacts to seeing the scar. It's real. If it were not then the whole thing is Violet's fantasy which would make the piece pointless.
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Post by mallardo on Apr 1, 2019 23:27:46 GMT
Discovered The Marvelous Mrs Maisel, Rachel Brosnahan is most definitely marvelous. Indeed she is. The most difficult acting assignment I can think of is for an actor to play a stand-up comic and be credible on stage. Many fine actors have failed at this including Tom Hanks and Dustin Hoffman. Rachel Brosnahan totally succeeds. I completely bought her performance on all levels. A great actress in a great show.
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Post by mallardo on Mar 29, 2019 18:23:24 GMT
It's a dreadful play, I don't know why it's regarded as a classic. It might have had something to say in the 80s but it's just a bad period piece now. Churchill leaves me cold. Was never going to see this. She is one of those playwrights whose work i avoid. Life is too short. This sounds like another winner from Norris.
Cloud 9 is a terrific play (IMO) which makes its points and is quite funny in doing so. But then I also enjoyed Top Girls when I saw it in a very good production at the Trafalgar Studios a few years ago.
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Post by mallardo on Mar 21, 2019 16:03:44 GMT
So Danny Mac and Dan Burton are coming back to the production but Emma Williams and Monique Young are not. Any speculation on this?
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Post by mallardo on Mar 21, 2019 14:13:18 GMT
Finally caught up with this and I'm glad I did. I thought the music and dancing integrated well into the piece, the first act, which had most of it, played better because of it. Where I thought director Rachel Chavkin overthought things and let us down was in the three way casting of the members of the Baum family, the centrepiece characters of the story.
I get what she was after - the play is, in part, a mosaic of America in the Depression so why not have that fact underlined and reflected in the family itself? But that point doesn't need to be made. And using multiple actors for the same roles diffuses our involvement with the people they're playing. The Baums are archetypal Arthur Miller creations, versions of his own family, under economic stress and splintering as a result. In a Big Picture play like this - something new for Miller - they are the heart and soul of the thing, the foundation upon which the whole epic is grounded. Ms Chavkin's concept severely undercuts that.
Still, there is much to enjoy and the cast are first rate. There is a great deal of passion, raw seething anger, in this play - Miller doesn't pull any punches - and that comes through loud and clear. And I suppose, ultimately, that is the real message of The American Clock.
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Post by mallardo on Mar 21, 2019 9:27:23 GMT
A "Newfie" accent is difficult and unique, nothing like the accents in the other maritime provinces of Canada. When I was a kid in Toronto we used to try to do it - not for the best of motives, alas - because it seemed so extreme to us.
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Post by mallardo on Mar 19, 2019 17:23:44 GMT
He did an excellent job last time he hosted the Tonys - in very difficult circumstances. That has not been forgotten.
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Post by mallardo on Mar 19, 2019 10:12:15 GMT
Seeing Downstate virtually back to back with Jesus Hopped the A Train has been an instructive and unsettling experience. Both plays challenge the easy categorization of good and evil, the dismissive reduction of complex human actions into simple rights and wrongs.
None of the four inmates of Downstate's heavily supervised communal house can match the ghastly CV of Lucius, the charismatic serial killer of Jesus Hopped the A Train. He is deeply violent and they are not. They are tarnished with a different and, in some ways, more egregious stain - they are paedophiles. They have preyed on children.
As Steve has noted in his eloquent and persuasive review above, Bruce Norris has somewhat stacked the deck here. None of the four could be seen as truly dangerous - although the criminal justice system maintains otherwise. Their victims were all known to them, either students or family members or young colleagues, objects of affection, shall we say. I don't mean to suggest that these are not serious crimes - they are and these men have paid the price by having their freedom confined for so long and to such an extent that their lives have been destroyed.
Is it fair for Norris to choose these relatively benign paedophiles for his characters? I think it is. His interest, it seems to me, is at least as much in the punishment as in the crimes. If these men were serious threats to society they would never have been placed in such a house in the first place. And we would have no play. The point is the branding of these men, situating them in one all-purpose category, Paedophiles, when in fact there are degrees of predatory behaviour - as there are in everything else - and these guys are by no means the worst. If Norris wanted to have a discussion of the subject this was the only way he could go.
The other issue of the piece as, again, Steve has noted above, is the treatment of the victim of one these offenders. It is an unsympathetic portrait, hinting at other motives. "All victims tell the truth", the man shouts at one point but, clearly, for Norris, that belief is open to question. Given what's going on in society right now it's a pretty brave take on the subject and Norris does not shy away from the consequences of it. This aspect of the play, I'm sure, will be the most controversial one.
In any case, it's a great play (IMO) and a brilliant production, brought over intact from Steppenwolf in Chicago with at least four members of the original cast. They and their English colleagues are all superb. This is powerful theatre, deeply provocative and disturbing theatre. And isn't that what we want?
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