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Post by jek on Oct 18, 2018 18:20:49 GMT
You are of course right Jan. But what I mean is that the fact that they are putting something on like this makes me more inclined to want to support them, just as some of their past productions, and also their educational activities (which my teenage daughter has directly benefited from) have in the past. Thank goodness you don't have to be a member to be able to book - that would be grossly unfair!
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Post by jek on Oct 18, 2018 10:44:17 GMT
Just got the Nov-April brochure through the post. Have been wondering about not bothering to renew my membership next year as I have seen so many things I haven't rated at the National recently. But there, in the upcoming productions bit in the back of the publication, comes the knowledge that they are putting on something that I didn't know - at least until I read this - was a big hole in my life that I needed to fill. Yes! In the Dorfman they are putting on Andy Stanton's Mr Gum and the Dancing Bear - The Musical. If you have offspring of a certain age (or are keen on Danny Baker's recommendations) then you will know that the Mr Gum books (published from 2006 onwards) are fantastic. The opportunity to visit the town of Lamonic Bibber and its residents is worth the price of National membership.
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Post by jek on Oct 13, 2018 17:23:42 GMT
Despite the terrible reviews of this we decided not to return our tickets but to go to this afternoon's performance as planned. I remember loving The Secret Rapture back in the 1980s and Plenty and thought that there must be something in any David Hare play which would redeem it. I was wrong. This was just awful. Quite a lot of empty seats towards the rear of the stalls but also quite a lot of people seemingly finding the play hilarious (my partner and I didn't laugh once). I do feel sorry for the actors who face a long run of this - although I see that there is a big break in November when they could, at least, cut it down a bit. At this rate I don't think I'll be renewing my National Membership next year - I've seen too many duds there recently.
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Post by jek on Oct 11, 2018 13:29:49 GMT
I find having a Barbican membership to be well worth it @happysooz. The films on a Sunday morning for £6, free entry to exhibitions (including special members' evenings where you can bring someone with you for free), invitations to rehearsals, as well as the early booking and discounts. I reckon my membership pays for itself several times over. And yes I will be poised at my laptop when the tickets for this go on sale tomorrow week!
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Post by jek on Oct 2, 2018 7:58:07 GMT
Went to a part of the Open Rehearsal for this last night (a perk of Barbican membership). It is a semi staged production by the Academy of Ancient Music, is directed by Thomas Guthrie, and features puppets - operated by the singers. From what I saw and heard last night anyone who has a ticket for tonight's performance will see/hear something of beauty. Would have booked myself on the basis of the rehearsal but I have tickets for something else tonight.
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Post by jek on Sept 29, 2018 12:12:56 GMT
Going to see the Guildhall version of the Last Days of Judas Iscariot next month. I've seen another student production of Stephen Adly Guirgis (Our Lady of 121st Street done by Rose Bruford). Is he a favourite with drama schools?
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Post by jek on Sept 25, 2018 21:10:34 GMT
Well I live in Stratford and have brought up three (now young adult) children here. And I like it!
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Post by jek on Sept 19, 2018 20:54:20 GMT
We went to see this last weekend (me, my partner and our teenage daughter) and I'm afraid none of us enjoyed it. It felt like a student production (young and very variable performances) and as if the actors were getting a lot more out of it than we were as audience members. And it felt very long. But a lot of people around us seemed to be having a great time so maybe it was just us.
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Post by jek on Sept 19, 2018 19:20:28 GMT
I really enjoyed this but then I have a special interest (both academic and personal) in depictions of Catholic family life. In fact I wouldn't have known anything about it except for an interview with its author Stephen Karam in the American Catholic magazine (Commonweal) a couple of years back. It was much funnier than I was expecting and the audience seemed to lap it up. I did like the fact that it was on at a theatre so close to the - excellent and relevant - Freud museum at the address where Freud lived in his London years.
It was my first visit to the Hampstead theatre and I would certainly go there again. I had no idea it was so easy to get there on the overground (Finchley Road and Frognal station). I very much liked the toilets (although not the queue to reach them). Each cubicle has a blown up photo of an actor from one of their productions on the door - I got Tamsin Greig from Longing. All of those featured are female except for Simon Russell Beale who is depicted in his role in Mr Foote's Other Leg.
Pleased for the theatre and the cast that this is sold out - but disappointed that this means some people I know would have really enjoyed this won't get the chance to see it.
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Post by jek on Sept 18, 2018 11:15:26 GMT
We saw this at the Cottesloe with our kids when they were quite small (I remember worrying that some of the seats - including ours - had envelopes on them and had feared some kind of audience participation. Fortunately they contained a puzzle and were on - I think - numerically appropriate seats relating to prime numbers.) My daughter then saw the stripped down version with her school at Stratford Town Hall after the ceiling collapse halted the West End run. I wouldn't mind seeing it again now, over six years on, although I will always have special memories of Nicola Walker as the mum and Una Stubbs as the neighbour. Of course the real reason to be pleased to see it back is because it is on the GCSE syllabus. Teachers often have a hard time making a case for taking classes to the theatre but having that direct link to the syllabus makes it easier to justify. And it is still the case, of course, that for many kids the only way they will get to go to the theatre is on a school trip.
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Post by jek on Sept 8, 2018 21:29:57 GMT
Anybody else see this Landmark Productions/Irish National Opera production at the Barbican? Saw it tonight and partner and I and our 17 year old daughter spent the journey home debating what was going on in its 75 minutes. Really very confused by it. Liked much of the score and the performances but I'm not sure that it added up to much. And after Landmark Productions excellent Woyzeck in Winter (also at the Barbican) that made it a disappointment.
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Post by jek on Sept 8, 2018 7:44:11 GMT
Sorry you missed it Someone in a tree but holidays should always take precedence. Hopefully, given the reception, they will revive it. Incidentally I tweeted about it being like the Muppets Most Wanted film (the lumberjacks provide the same sort of humour as the gulag chain gang in the film). The conductor replied saying that he had said in rehearsals that it had a muppet feel to it. Frank Skinner was in the audience and - in important news - the balcony at Wilton's now sports individual padded cinema style seats rather than the bare benches that were there last time I sat in the balcony. I'm hoping that some of my money from being a friend of the music hall went towards such a worthy enterprise!
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Post by jek on Sept 7, 2018 22:11:19 GMT
Went to this ENO production tonight of Britten's little known piece (not quite an opera, not a musical - described as an operetta). It was fantastic fun and a real treat to be in the balcony with the ENO chorus singing right behind us. I don't think I've ever been at Wilton's for something with such a large cast.
As an added bonus bowls of Percy Pigs are handed round the audience during the Christmas feast. And for those who have seen Simon Russell Beale in the Lehman Trilogy he is the (pre-recorded) voice of Paul Bunyan in this with pretty much the same accent.
Tomorrow night is the final night of the production and while they are saying sold out they were also saying that about tonight, but there were some empty seats in the auditorium - well worth a punt.
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Post by jek on Sept 6, 2018 6:00:20 GMT
Having just spent two nights there I can second what mistressjojo says about Edinburgh Central YHA. It was fine but we were in a room facing the busy main road in to Edinburgh (Leith Walk) and had a window that couldn't be shut. It was quite nostalgic for me though as we lived in Edinburgh for four years and I remember being in a car in the middle of the night racing down that section of Leith Walk as I was in labour with my second child. My daughter and I had a twin room that was £68 per night and the continental breakfast (a bit of bun fight as the hostel was packed with hungry teenagers) was £5.50.
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Post by jek on Aug 27, 2018 14:30:39 GMT
Now having seen this on TV I can see more why people are so positive about it. It was certainly more entertaining than it was from the Rausing Circle on Saturday night.
Am just back from the lunchtime prom at Cadogan Hall (the only prom day seating I do as at Cadogan Hall you get an actual seat for £6 rather than having to stand). The Canadian mezzo soprano Wallis Giunta was singing songs by Bernstein and friends (including Blizstein, Copeland and Sondheim). A really enjoyable way to spend an hour.
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Post by jek on Aug 27, 2018 6:36:15 GMT
Thanks @robadog. We have tickets for tomorrow and seeing this and the buzz on twitter I am really looking forward to it.
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Post by jek on Aug 26, 2018 10:06:25 GMT
I didn't enjoy this as much as I was expecting. It may have been just that up in the front of the Rausing Circle (our regular proms seats) we were too far away from the action but I found some of the diction poor and just felt a bit unengaged with proceedings. It was as if the performances were being directed to the TV audience rather than to the wider hall - understandable but not ideal if you were sitting where we were. It wasn't a patch on the experience of seeing the LSO do Wonderful Town at the Barbican last year. But I will watch the TV version and see what I make of that.
My favourite moment of the evening came before we'd even got into the hall. Just as we were circumnavigating the hall to get to the appropriate door a lady passed us going in the opposite direction. It was - unmistakably - Leslie Caron who must have all sorts of memories of working with Gene Kelly when watching a performance like that.
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Post by jek on Aug 23, 2018 21:05:26 GMT
I enjoyed this. I have very few memories of the National Theatre 2005 production even though I know I saw it (my youngest was four then and while a theatre trip was a rare treat I suspect I was too tired to fully enjoy it). But watching today I could imagine what Andrew Scott, Gina McKee and Dervla Kirwan brought to the roles. I thought the performances at the Donmar were very good and I can't say that I found the set problematic. I also wonder if my enjoyment of it was just a stage of life thing - as someone in middle age looking back on family relationships it was a good fit for me (and most of the audience was my sort of age). But certainly one of those pleasant experiences when I went in not expecting much on the basis of some reviews I'd read but in fact really got a lot from it. And tonight I am listening to recordings of Count John McCormack, mentioned in the play and a great favourite of my Irish born and raised dad.
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Post by jek on Aug 17, 2018 9:14:41 GMT
For those who haven't had enough of a proms West Side Story fix we were at the late night National Youth Jazz Orchestra prom last night which was advertised at the time of booking as being Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue and also 'showcases the popular side of Bernstein'. The latter turned out to be a 40 minute energy filled performance of the Stan Kenton take on West Side Story. Well worth a listen to on the iplayer: www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0bf47fn
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Post by jek on Aug 16, 2018 9:09:35 GMT
Saw the Guildhall School of Music version of this, performed by their graduating students, last month. It was enjoyable - especially as the granny of the lad playing Motel the tailor was sitting behind us and, understandably, was completely thrilled at everything, but I can't imagine wanting to see it again so soon unless the cast or production promises something extra special.
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Post by jek on Aug 3, 2018 15:12:59 GMT
I didn't enjoy this much at all. Having given up paid employment (as a postdoctoral research fellow) when I had my eldest child twenty years ago I am keenly aware of the issues around financial dependency, isolation, finding meaning through the domestic etc. but I just didn't think this play addressed them in an interesting, novel or entertaining way. Interestingly (and not for the first time at the National) I thought the programme notes - specifically the essay by Victoria Smith - were much more insightful and better written than the play. It wasn't terrible - and clearly there were some good performances but I could have spent my Thursday evening more productively and enjoyably.
Funnily enough when I came home I checked my bookshelves and found that I have a copy of Kay Smallshaw's 'How To Run Your Home Without Help' (the 2005 Persephone edition, not the 1949 original). It is clear from both the flawless state of the book and the less than flawless state of my home that I have never read it!
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Post by jek on Jul 21, 2018 17:19:19 GMT
I'm afraid I am with Mr Snow on this. Really disappointed. Maybe I love the film too much. There was just something wrong about the tone for me. It's interesting because in her programme notes Emma Rice is really insightful about the film, the desperate longing at its heart, but this didn't seem to translate to the actual piece. But while my party (of three) didn't enjoy it there was certainly a lot of love for it in the theatre today.
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Post by jek on Jul 20, 2018 8:12:23 GMT
Thank you @baemax . That's really helpful. This is one of those reasons why this board is so great.
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Post by jek on Jul 20, 2018 7:58:57 GMT
Having missed this first time round (my kids were then of an age then when going out meant complex babysitting arrangements) I have been prompted by the closure notices to book tomorrow's matinee. Have seen mention on here about the advisability of getting to the theatre early for the pre show entertainment. Any suggestions as to how early this starts? Many thanks.
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Post by jek on Jul 14, 2018 16:44:21 GMT
I went this afternoon too and noted the absence of billiard balls - that must have been cut. Really enjoyed this and it zipped along. Wonderful movement (choreography) and Es Devlin set. And appropriately beautiful tailoring. My only problem with it was that I thought the final act was a bit rushed and whereas the rest had been easy to follow I got lost in the 21st century stuff. Well deserved good reviews.
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