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Post by sayers500 on Sept 5, 2016 15:23:52 GMT
Here We Go Evening at the Talk House
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43 posts
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Post by sayers500 on Aug 10, 2016 16:19:17 GMT
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Post by sayers500 on Jun 23, 2016 20:56:29 GMT
I don't think the Sam Wannamaker is an eligible theatre as Farinelli was only nominated for the Duke of York's stint. Also, the An Inspector Calls production has been on the west end before so I'm not sure it would be eligible for best revival.
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43 posts
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Post by sayers500 on Jun 21, 2016 0:12:13 GMT
This may have been discussed but in what time is this production set in? Bosworth Field clearly alludes to a period setting, which makes sense due to the flashback nature of the production, but the awful and blatant 'look how relevant Shakespeare is' approach by giving Hastings a mobile phone disrupts the whole concept of the piece. Also, the lighting design is incredibly ill-conceived for people in the circle. The glass paneled floor reflected the light directly up to the circle in a very inconvenient way. I've never seen Fiennes ever give a different performance but he does ruthless very well. However, overall it was a rather pleasant evening out.
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43 posts
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Post by sayers500 on Jun 14, 2016 14:43:20 GMT
I think new plays have a chance of succeeding in the West End on it's own merit without a star cast (curious incident or the 39 Steps) but new musicals or revivals without a star (like Bend It or Showboat) will always struggle when they are trying to reach the same tourists who want to see Les Mis or Phantom. Therefore I don't think we will see many successful new musicals from the commercial sector unless they are jukebox musicals, which can attract wider audiences. That's why I think the West End should cull Les Mis, Phantom, Lion King etc. to force audiences to see new work.
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43 posts
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Post by sayers500 on Jun 13, 2016 15:15:38 GMT
I found the first two acts dreary and depressing. I came out of Cleansed somewhat uplifted. The violence there felt real but was there to show hope and the power of love whereas in Dea it is used as a damnation of society and has no effect on the audience. The fact that one of the first things Dea does is strangle her children with no development of character whatsoever and there seems no force or pain attached so the artifice makes it quite easy to watch as an audience member. Throughout the first act the acting is atrocious, with any good will I had for the theatre and actors gone by the first interval. The second act was slightly more convincing but for me, it was just soldiers being awful. The third act could have been developed into a rather interesting play in it's own right,exploring madness with some rather wonderfully written dialogue. However, the pretentious nods to Shakespeare coupled with Bond's childish programme notes left me rather sick of the whole thing. A dramaturg and a different director could have done something interesting with this but instead it's a nasty evening.
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43 posts
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Post by sayers500 on Jun 13, 2016 15:02:52 GMT
EDIT: another one I forgot, Grease is the worst musical to put on with or for young people. Yes!! I saw a schools production of Grease last year and was horrified. Loads of 12 year olds using over-sexualised and mysoginistic language with nothing telling them that the terms they were using wereunacceptable!!! Also, whilst Phantom and Les Mis are reasonable musicals, the productions need a serious overhawl and need a few years out of the West End to free up the market so that shows like Showboat can succeed. Wicked has a good score but such a convoluted plot with so many threads which are tied up in the last 5 minutes in the worst piece of storytelling I have seen in a theatre. Once was a pile of rubbish and Ronan Keating undermined the whole point of the show, that the boy and girl could be anyone. Stephen Sondheim is the Shakespeare of musical theatre whilst Andrew Lloyd Webber is the most boring and dreary composer I have ever heard and he also is not prepared to standby any of his work that isn't a commercial success. But hey, I think Mozart is overrated so what do I know!! I have never got Beckett and think that if you need a degree to see a piece of theatre, it isn't really worth seeing. Thank God for this thread, this is so cathartic!
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Post by sayers500 on May 22, 2016 18:44:30 GMT
A new Edward Bond play at The Seacombe 24th may-11th June "In his new play Edward Bond takes from the Greek and Jacobean drama the fundamental classical problems of the family and war, to vividly picture our collapsing society.
The war is raging, Dea, a heroine, has committed a terrible act and has been exiled. When she meets someone from her past she is forcefully confronted by the broken society that drove her to commit her crimes"
Noticed this after a rather objectionable interview with Bond in the Guardian ( www.theguardian.com/stage/2016/may/22/edward-bond-medea-war-dea-play-sutton-interview) but thought I might give it a go. Does anyone have any idea of what the running time is for it?
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43 posts
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Post by sayers500 on May 14, 2016 23:28:44 GMT
Ivo Van Hove. A View from the Bridge demonstrated his capabilities with a thrust staging and his epic Shakespeare marathons are better than any contemporary British director can offer.
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Post by sayers500 on May 1, 2016 21:25:28 GMT
I certainly think that Agamemnon is the weak link, with nothing particularly interesting to say. However, Agamemnon is the hardest character to have his view portrayed sympathetically and the final moments are rather well executed. Clytemnestra was well thought out but the constant cutting between narratives meant that I lost key information whilst working out which narrative to follow. Also, Raczka is unforgiving on those who haven't brushed up on their classics, constantly referencing other Greek works and mythology. Iphigenia was my favourite. Perhaps it's a shame that the only play to have Iphigenia as a character should give her so few lines yet Shannon Tarbet says so much more through her silence in a part that shows the princess to be far more than an innocent and passive girl. It's a far more thought through interpretation of a text than she has made of The Suicide, with more nuanced and complex characterisation. Thorpe's Chorus is impressive in the way that, with four actors standing in circle and throwing wrappers on the floor, it could keep me captivated on an interpretation which is the most agenda-laden of the quartet. It did frustrate me that Thorpe obsession with the message obstructed his job of showing the chorus' role in Iphigenia at Aulis. None of the plays particularly go together very well and the design is compromised by the expenses towards having two casts on a night, as well as four different playwrights and four different directors, serving none of the plays particularly well. However, the sheer ambition of Christopher Haydon has to be commended.
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Post by sayers500 on Apr 6, 2016 22:41:00 GMT
Will Kaufmann and Kunde be blacking up to play Otello?
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Post by sayers500 on Feb 3, 2016 16:37:56 GMT
His forced and obvious rhymes are key-stage-one standard (I’ve got a notion for eyes like the ocean) I preferred 'Now I'm not alone, like a toenail all ingrown'!
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