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Post by orchidman on Jan 19, 2022 2:06:22 GMT
The BBC has a big problem that it has lost its historical advantage of being able to underpay British talent because of a lack of competition. Once they led the world in TV drama. Succession with its British head writer would have been theirs in days gone by but they can't compete for talent with HBO. Instead they have to pretend that Peaky Blinders or Line of Duty represents prestige drama whilst the Americans look on with pity.
When was the last good sitcom on the BBC? What's changed is that today top British stand-up comics can make £20m a tour and the talent follows the money. Over many years sitcoms were just about the most popular thing they did creating characters and memories that became part of the national fabric. Apart from Bob Mortimer's appearances on Would I Lie to You what have they done in the past 10 years? And that's a cheap panel show that would exist without them.
I am old enough to have a lot of affection for what the BBC used to be but they may have signed their own death warrant when they abandoned Reithian high-minded principles of trying to put out work of genuine cultural merit and instead attempted to justify their existence by chasing ratings. Apart from the BBC website for basic news I don't regularly consume any of their content. Most of the stuff they do could easily exist on ITV or Channel 4 so what exactly is the point of BBC1 or BBC2? And how do you justify a regressive and antiquated tax to fund them? The cost doesn't bother me personally and I am happy to support a great British institution. But I'm not actually sure it is that any longer. And teenagers today have more emotional attachment to YouTube as a brand than the BBC. A change is inevitable, we just have to hope it will come from a more thoughtful government than we have currently.
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Post by orchidman on Jan 19, 2022 0:43:26 GMT
Maybe the day will come when critics and audiences grasp that writing about intellectual topics and intelligent people does not automatically make you an intelligent writer. That day was not today.
James Graham reclaims his crown as the king of middlebrow obviousness with a play that is thematically a complete retread of Ink, his earlier piece that dramatised a story that was by comparison both less well known and more interesting.
A great example of the playwriting technique of throwing enough at the audience that they don't realise you have absolutely nothing of value to say, when a playwright who knew what they were saying could have let the audience out an hour earlier and largely delivered the same story.
BUT GUYS, HAS ANYONE EVER NOTICED THAT DONALD TRUMP IS A GOOD TELEVISION PERSONALITY BUT A BAD POLITICIAN? GUYS!
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Post by orchidman on Dec 16, 2021 16:41:08 GMT
Very weak year, I've seen 24 plays without seeing a 5/5 or even a 9/10. The best were The Invisible Hand, Relatively Speaking, Oleanna, Shining City and Grenfell:Value Engineering.
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Post by orchidman on Dec 16, 2021 16:36:38 GMT
Except West Side Story is a long way from being a highbrow adult film!
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Post by orchidman on Nov 29, 2021 18:42:30 GMT
Decent seats for £15 on Today Tix Cyber Monday offer, big savings on face value
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Post by orchidman on Nov 25, 2021 1:56:38 GMT
Is Rufus the Ole Gunnar Solskjaer of new writing? To be fair Solskjaer started with 14 wins from his first 17 games, if Norris was a Premier League manager he wouldn't have lasted a season
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Post by orchidman on Nov 20, 2021 0:42:10 GMT
This should become a first class show when they get rid of Eddie Redmayne who is predictably miscast, a la Follies and Imelda Staunton. He gives a performance that is all surface, neither dangerous nor damaged, a good looking square pretending to be weird.
Jessie Buckley gives an interesting and powerful interpretation as Sally Bowles and makes the show worth seeing at these prices.
Not convinced Omari Douglas is good enough to justify creating the obvious problem of turning Ernst Ludwig into a very confused National Socialist.
Impressive staging and decor, it's a 4/5 show that can become a 5/5 if they don't sacrifice sensible casting at the altar of name value next time around.
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Post by orchidman on Nov 12, 2021 0:27:24 GMT
The Criterion Theatre is yet again the place to be for fans of basic comedy.
If you find women swearing and Scottish and Northern Irish accents inherently hilarious then let me tell you it's your lucky day.
It's introduced as though they are going to retell Pride and Prejudice from the servants perspective but evidently that would be a lot more work than just playing the 2005 film for cheap laughs. Albeit this means it ends up way too long for a comedy play.
The cast are likeable and talented but don't go expecting anything sophisticated.
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Post by orchidman on Nov 7, 2021 1:24:57 GMT
Always impressive to issue an apology that makes things worse
"For clarification, the character is not Jewish"
Just one of the many gentiles called Hershel Fink then
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Post by orchidman on Oct 19, 2021 1:12:35 GMT
Not a good play.
Like Camp Siegfried felt like an idea a playwright thought they could pitch successfully to a theatre (and they were right), rather than an idea they had to write because they actually had something to say.
I might just be tired of unprofound plays affecting importance by covering this ground. Both those two, Leopoldstadt and the utterly gratuitous scenes in Indecent ('let's invent a character and add them to this historical story to give it an unearned tragic coda') were not on the same level as films like The Pianist or The Counterfeiters and if you are going to write these stories please please please bring something to the table. Something new, something true.
Spent a lot of time thinking, 'is she really going out with him?' (Camp Siegfried was 'is he really going out with her?') It is almost never a good idea to write a character as irritating as the main guy in this and make your audience live with him for most of the evening.
Didn't believe the central relationship, didn't believe the dystopia, didn't believe the 1918 scenes. First class acting and effects can't salvage that.
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Post by orchidman on Sept 24, 2021 15:18:40 GMT
The market will decide and I wouldn't be surprised if it decides this is over-priced, unless Taron Egerton is a bigger draw than I realise. Tickets for Amy Adams in one of the plays of the 20th century by one of the playwrights of the 20th century are hardly flying out the doors; this is Taron Egerton in a Mike Bartlett play at a similar pricing.
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Post by orchidman on Aug 16, 2021 23:43:03 GMT
Very average play. There is a surprising lack of artistry on show, in particular the 1938 section is something we have seen done so many times before, you could have cut it completely and the audience would have filled the gap themselves easily, it's boilerplate stuff.
Didn't really get to know a single character well, and worse, didn't particularly care to because they weren't that interesting.
Feels like this could have been written by almost anyone, save the autobiographical character tacked on at the end which doesn't really cohere with what has gone before.
Good play for Stoppard to bow out on given it was always going to get respectful notices given the subject matter and the personal element. But really not a major play and anyone wondering if they absolutely have to go and see this story told again can relax that they wouldn't be missing anything profound.
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Post by orchidman on Jun 14, 2021 15:55:41 GMT
Probably the worst play I've seen since that Cate Blanchett mess at the Dorfman.
Third rate Pinter directed by someone using Robert Icke techniques without a clear understanding of them or the text.
Just wildly incompetent all round, couldn't begin to list the inadequacies and things that didn't work. People weren't leaving because they were uncomfortable, they were leaving because they were bored.
On this evidence the work of Alfred Fagon has not, as in the narrative that is being pushed, been unfairly overlooked but deservedly forgotten.
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Post by orchidman on Jul 3, 2020 15:26:33 GMT
I would think London theatre is safe. The situation will return to normal eventually, consumer demand will return. If theatres go out of business they will be bought out of receivership and relaunched when the time is right. All it needs is the government to not allow theatres to be repurposed for offices or flats or anything else in the interim. Regional theatre I would think is much more vulnerable and if the government was going to intervene, that's what I would target.
As Dr. Jan has said, it's not surprising if the government doesn't look too kindly on a sector whose groupthink has been far to the left of every government of the past 40 years. We had people like Mark Rylance merrily going round cocking a snook at corporate sponsorship only last year. Now it's the begging bowl and a classic tragic narrative, you make a virtue of your unworldliness and otherworldliness and then are outraged when the real world happens to you.
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Post by orchidman on Feb 20, 2020 1:34:55 GMT
First third - very very promising, middle third - okay, final third - not great, Bob!
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Post by orchidman on Feb 18, 2020 23:52:36 GMT
Yes, but it is strange to book something you don't know anything about if you aren't particularly open-minded and have certain sorts of shows that you definitely don't like.
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Post by orchidman on Jan 29, 2020 17:48:48 GMT
I'd be surprised if they don't lop at least half an hour off that once they get into the swing of things. Virtually nobody wants a show that long.
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Post by orchidman on Jan 13, 2020 0:31:45 GMT
A play about a chess match that doesn't think its audience will have any actual interest in the chess, but also a play about the Cold War that thinks the audience will be more interested in a symbolic chess match than any other aspect of the Cold War you could write a play about. So it's a misfire.
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Post by orchidman on Jan 12, 2020 13:55:33 GMT
Votes by Labour Leaders: Jeremy Corbyn 2019: 10,295,607 Jeremy Corbyn 2017: 12,878,460 Ed Miliband 2015: 9,347,273 Gordon Brown 2010: 8,609,527 Tony Blair 2005: 9,552,436 Tony Blair 2001: 10,724,953 Tony Blair 1996: 13,518,167 If you want to know how meaningful those numbers are, that electoral phenomenon John Major holds the all-time record with 14,093,007 in 1992.
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Post by orchidman on Jan 7, 2020 0:32:32 GMT
Didn't think it worked beyond a great central performance.
Either the concept itself is unsound or the playwright wasn't really up to delivering it. First 20 minutes were quite promising but the analogies between the Wars of the Roses and an American high school election are not sufficient or coherent enough to sustain it.
Richard's scheming makes virtually zero sense if we are supposed to believe this is actually happening in a real school somewhere. His plan is extremely convoluted and even if successful doesn't guarantee victory by any means. He got one candidate nixed from the ballot and it's down to a two horse race, just do the same to the other candidate and it's a one horse race. Please don't invoke Machiavelli and realpolitik and then have characters act nonsensically, were we supposed to take any of this seriously?
The romance angle was not believable not least due to the lack of chemistry between the pair.
Tone is all over the place, wasn't sure what point it was actually trying to make, and it goes totally off the rails in the last half an hour because the playwright doesn't know what his play is about either.
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Post by orchidman on Dec 20, 2019 13:00:48 GMT
It's absolutely insane that they made a trilogy of films without one person being in control of the over-arching plot, instead with a guy allowed to do whatever he wanted with the middle film, seemingly regardless of what was going to happen in the final film.
And I haven't seen this one but it sounds like they basically invalidate the ending of the original trilogy i.e. the only trilogy that actually works. Wow. Mind-boggling incompetence with billions of dollars in play.
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Post by orchidman on Dec 6, 2019 10:28:39 GMT
1. Cabaret (Michelle Williams) 2. Hamilton 3. Follies (NT) 4. 42nd Street 5. She Loves Me (Broadway) 6. Sunny Afternoon 7. Groundhog Day 8. Shuffle Along 9. Dear Evan Hansen 10. The Scottsboro Boys
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Post by orchidman on Dec 6, 2019 10:25:05 GMT
Downstate Admissions The Price Appropriate Follies
Worst two by a large margin were When We Have Sufficiently Tortured Each Other and The Man in the White Suit
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Post by orchidman on Nov 29, 2019 19:51:42 GMT
The Ferryman The Nether Admissions Good People One Man Two Guvnors Consent Yerma Downstate Clybourne Park Fish in the Dark
To Kill a Mockingbird, Beginning and People, Places & Things bubbling under.
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Post by orchidman on Nov 23, 2019 0:15:12 GMT
the story can be extrapolated from the historical and biographical details on Wikipedia with very little artistic license. What? The historical record is patchy but I think it's safe to say this play was at least 90% stuff that never happened. Think this would have made a good play 90 minutes straight through, how it got puffed out to 2 hours 30 with an interval I don't know.
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Post by orchidman on Oct 22, 2019 15:09:25 GMT
Best show on TV at the moment.
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Post by orchidman on Sept 30, 2019 21:35:47 GMT
This was better than I expected, well acted, 4/5. I didn't know much of the details from that time which may have helped but definitely recommended.
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Post by orchidman on Sept 25, 2019 22:01:14 GMT
Those prices look insane.
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Post by orchidman on Sept 4, 2019 16:21:24 GMT
If this was a writing exercise to see if you could hold an audience's attention with a two-hander in continuous time where the only forward plot action is the question of whether or not the couple will be able to serve lunch, then it would be a 5/5.
With those limitations as an actual play it's a 3/5 thanks to some snappy dialogue and very good performances.
I think Tory cabinet ministers and their wives would know who Norma Major is in 1988, but there was definitely some anachronistic dialogue.
Playing to the sort of audience who know who Noam Chomsky, Nancy Mitford and Ian McEwan are and are happy to laugh at non-jokes to let everyone know they do.
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Post by orchidman on Aug 7, 2019 23:05:40 GMT
First half very slow, I think you could cut it from 90 minutes to 30 minutes without losing anything of importance. Second half much stronger but still too inconsequential, with Lia Williams the stand-out performer.
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