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Post by mallardo on Mar 16, 2016 19:09:28 GMT
I'm with you on One Man Two Guv'ners, Emi, as I have a low threshold for silliness. Along the same lines I absolutely hated The 39 Steps - it just seemed so juvenile.
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Post by mallardo on Mar 16, 2016 18:15:11 GMT
Well, talk about second act trouble. The Miss Atomic Bomb beauty pageant, centrepiece of the show, heavily foreshadowed during a long and random first act, HAS TO pull everything together, HAS TO be great, for the show to work. But it's not great, it's cheesy and awful. It's full of bad jokes and silliness and actors applying double doses of schtick in a desperate attempt to bring life to their empty lines; the pageant itself stopping and starting and restopping and restarting so that irrelevant strands of plot can be dealt with and finished off - as if we care!
I know this is harsh and I felt for each and every one of the actors - some of whom (Simon Lipkin) cope better than others - but this is a mishmash of unfunny parody (parody of what?) and grotesque caricatures that has no genuine through line, no point of view, and no heart.
What does it have? A relatively decent score, some amusing choreography and a vocally strong cast willing to go the extra mile, which, indeed, they have to do. But the book, the whole concept... yikes! How did it get past the table read?
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Post by mallardo on Mar 16, 2016 6:16:16 GMT
I just read a review of a production of The Flick in Washington, DC - apparently this little three-hander runs for over 3 hours!
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Post by mallardo on Mar 15, 2016 15:37:21 GMT
I like Playbills not only because they're free but because they're all one size and they stack nicely on the shelf. These London programmes with their many shapes and sizes are a pain.
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Post by mallardo on Mar 15, 2016 15:16:02 GMT
Exactly. I've always had a passion for science. That's why the front row.
Next time Mallardo will actually be on the stage! Everyone's a cynic. What's wrong with a guy trying to broaden his outlook?
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Post by mallardo on Mar 15, 2016 9:09:31 GMT
In that case, apologies!
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Post by mallardo on Mar 15, 2016 6:55:45 GMT
Please translate into English... ) I saw this last night and it's a singular experience. This is a bear pit masquerading as a couture show. The lacerating exchanges between Zawe Ashton and Uzo Aduba have a strikingly baroque quality. Tenderness and acute stabs of pain are undercut by an astonishing level of malevolence. The audience quickly becomes immersed in a pitch black battle of wills. Zawe Ashton gave an incendiary performance. She effortlessly switched from statuesque matriarch elegance to a gawky little sister with astonishing ease. Uzo Aduba's final monologue was equally volcanic. Solange's fractured psyche was revealed in all its glory. Please go and see this if you get the chance, theatre this vital, dangerous and strange doesn't come along too often.
Mr. B, I'm surprised at you. Johnnyutah's review is extremely well written and extremely clear. What's your problem?
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Post by mallardo on Mar 14, 2016 11:16:02 GMT
No, I was in the front row - they were naked.
I'm loving the attention to detail here. For 'science' naturally
Exactly. I've always had a passion for science. That's why the front row.
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Post by mallardo on Mar 14, 2016 9:14:26 GMT
The play itself is in the public domain so it depends upon what translation is used for the legal issue to be relevant. But if there are 16 year old cast members I'm thinking a play that includes a graphic rape scene and a group masturbation scene might have to be trimmed a bit - or very carefully directed.
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Post by mallardo on Mar 14, 2016 7:10:59 GMT
The writer never writes the headline.
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Post by mallardo on Mar 14, 2016 6:07:47 GMT
Looked to me like they were not *naked* and had something transparent on?
No, I was in the front row - they were naked.
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Post by mallardo on Mar 12, 2016 17:33:13 GMT
Possibly an unanswerable question - but can anyone speculate on what the running time is likely to be? Is it a particularly long play? Thanks
I don't know precisely but it may be Pinter's longest play. It certainly felt that way last time I saw it.
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Post by mallardo on Mar 12, 2016 9:47:52 GMT
Nine. Great tunes you can remember. The production at the Donmar about twenty years ago was fatastic. Loved it when the stage filled with water and all the cast donned their wellies! And a vote for Pippin (another great production at the Menier that didn't seem to please everyone.) Eh? Why water and wellies for NINE? What have I forgotten in the plot/concept?
Most of the show is set in Venice. The Broadway revival with Antonio Banderas also featured a shallow pool of water.
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Post by mallardo on Mar 11, 2016 22:50:48 GMT
A strange and unsatisfying piece with some of the actors (Katherine Kingsley and Danny Webb) playing cartoons and others (Rory Keenan and Fenella Woolgar) trying to keep it real. It's a response, I suppose, to a play that is all over the place. My guess is that Jean Anouilh's original was more grounded than what his translator (Anthony Weigh) has perpetrated here. Certainly Weigh's decision to set it in The Hamptons in the 1950's facilitates a lot of the stereotyping and over the top silliness.
There are laughs, yes, but they drift away as the play drifts on and on and on. The central conundrum of the plot has the potential to be interesting but that potential remains unrealized. I just kept wondering why the Donmar was doing this thing.
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Post by mallardo on Mar 11, 2016 11:22:38 GMT
Looking directly at the plot when boiled down like that, sure. Looking at the way the plot was put across, not so much. I'd also argue that while South Pacific is at its core a damning indictment of racism, I could also spend a happy half hour explaining the aspects of the show itself that come over as racist. And I wouldn't say Puccini was a racist, or Boublil and Schoenberg are racists, or Rodgers and Hammerstein are racists, but I would go on record any day saying that these shows they have created are, at the very least, extremely problematic.
I'm sure I can guess what parts of South Pacific you consider problematic. So how do you feel about The King And I?
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Post by mallardo on Mar 11, 2016 11:08:36 GMT
Come on, it's not like it's just a handful of people on this board going "haha, won't we sound EDGY if we accuse Miss Saigon of being racist?", people have been protesting the show since the get-go: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miss_Saigon#Controversies You really want to be the one to accuse people of not being aware of history?
Miss Saigon is based pretty directly (and pretty badly) on Madama Butterfly, an opera in which a white American sailor marries a Japanese girl with no intention of taking the marriage seriously - indeed at one point he says he can't wait to get back to America and get married for real (or words to that effect). Was Puccini a racist for writing this? No. He was not condoning the inherent racism in the story, he was exposing it. The opera is in fact a powerful condemnation of racist attitudes. Does not Miss Saigon, a much inferior work to be sure, do pretty much the same thing?
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Post by mallardo on Mar 11, 2016 9:50:29 GMT
A play with a great concept - Alzheimers as a mystery, not a whodunit but a what's happening, with the audience trying to work it out along with the play's dementia ridden protagonist. A series of vignettes, not strictly chronological, in which the information keeps changing along with the characters delivering that information. Never has loss of memory - and the concomitant loss of identity - been so vividly portrayed.
If it sounds depressing it's not - until its inevitable conclusion. It's often very funny and always dramatically engaging, as good mysteries are. Two great performances, from Kenneth Cranham and Amanda Drew, and an excellent production from director James Macdonald.
The playwright, Frenchman Florian Zeller, is a genuine phenom, author of five novels and nine plays and he's only 35. As of today he has three plays currently on in London: The Father at the Duke of Yorks; The Mother, just closing at the Tricycle; and The Truth, just opening at the Chocolate Factory. When was the last time that happened? There must be a reason and there is - he's that good.
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Post by mallardo on Mar 11, 2016 9:28:24 GMT
Not every unsuccessful musical is underrated. Sondheim has never really had a commercial hit but nobody (except a few on this board) underrates his shows.
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Post by mallardo on Mar 11, 2016 9:23:40 GMT
Yesterday both the upper circle and balcony were closed.
And tonight again it seems, judging by the theatre website when I was booking tickets for someone.
Is there a certain irony in the fact that Mrs Henderson herself only became successful when the girls got their kit off, and this production appears to be less than sold out even when the girls DO get their kit off? (or maybe it's a paradox?)
Like everything else, nudity ain't what it used to be.
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Post by mallardo on Mar 10, 2016 11:35:16 GMT
Is this the actor Ken Campbell who was in that Fawlty Towers episode about the anniversary party?
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Post by mallardo on Mar 10, 2016 11:33:02 GMT
I was just waiting.
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Post by mallardo on Mar 10, 2016 9:30:06 GMT
That it is agenda driven is also my opinion.
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Post by mallardo on Mar 10, 2016 8:59:16 GMT
I do not get the hate for Wicked - it has to be directed toward the show's mega success rather than the show itself which is highly original in its score - Stephen Schwartz's best by far - and has one of the best books ever in a musical.
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Post by mallardo on Mar 10, 2016 7:14:45 GMT
I wish you hadn't done that Wendy, I'm now going to have that song stuck in my head all day. I know because I've just watched three versions on YouTube.
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Post by mallardo on Mar 9, 2016 15:50:21 GMT
few 'has anyone seen my pussy''s would have livened up this show no end. Try the Noel Coward Theatre round the corner, dear...
TM, you really should have resisted. Although given that setup...
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Post by mallardo on Mar 8, 2016 9:45:42 GMT
Just so's you know, TM, that my remark was perfectly innocent and connotation-free.
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Post by mallardo on Mar 8, 2016 7:19:19 GMT
I usually pick out one chorus girl per show and watch her in the dance routines. For Mrs. Henderson I was watching Katie Bernstein who is actually a principal but fits in with the chorus. I have a thing for Jewish women.
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Post by mallardo on Mar 6, 2016 11:23:59 GMT
I think it's a great piece and it will never be better played than by this wonderful cast. I would urge anyone who is on the fence about it - because of some of the ridiculous wrong-headed reviews - to go. It's a unique theatrical experience, to say the least. Out of interest where were you sitting? I felt it was a show that couldn't play to the back of the stalls but I could have had a very different experience had I been upfront. Someone else upthread made the same suggestion (although that doesn't explain the reviewers given they'll all have had good seats)
I was in a day seat, front row, and yes, I'm sure that did make a difference. The hand puppet had a certain reality up close that probably would not be the case further back.
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Post by mallardo on Mar 6, 2016 10:31:33 GMT
The only theatrical memento I have - and not exactly prized - is a role of toilet paper autographed by the New York cast of Urinetown. It was sold to me in the theatre lobby - a charity thing - by the delicious Amy Spanger who was then playing Hope Cladwell and who gave me a smile that warmed many a cold night thereafter.
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Post by mallardo on Mar 6, 2016 8:34:04 GMT
A pretty full house (stalls and circle) yesterday afternoon and a VERY responsive crowd. And no wonder. This is the funniest play I've seen since... well, I can't recall anything funnier. The puppet sex scene was hysterical, especially as played by Harry Melling and Jemima Rooper with deadpan faces, carrying on a benign conversation, while their hand puppets were going at it furiously in every possible position in what must be the greatest example of surrogate sex ever.
Melling is astonishing, essentially playing two roles constantly in conflict with each other. It's an amazing tour de force. But everyone is great. Janie Dee's meltdown from repressed widow to raging sexual predator in her scene with Kevin Mains was priceless - and utterly convincing, and Neil Pearson was perfect as the unctuous minister on the make. I thought the play itself was far from trivial, as some have portrayed it. Tyrone's (the puppet's) tirades contained much truth amidst the profanity and blasphemy and the play's portrait of five troubled souls searching for meaning, somewhere, in their tedious and tragic lives seemed very real and, at times, quite moving, to me.
I think it's a great piece and it will never be better played than by this wonderful cast. I would urge anyone who is on the fence about it - because of some of the ridiculous wrong-headed reviews - to go. It's a unique theatrical experience, to say the least.
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