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Post by lonlad on Jun 1, 2016 22:41:31 GMT
Very accurate and fair review though I suspect other critics may be kinder. Saw it tonight and my God, what an unholy mess -- Ben Miles does what he can to hold it together but none of the themes cohere and what Chile has to do with anything is anyone's guess - besides setting up one of the funniest onstage puns in some while. Too bad Campbell can't make the Greek characters in any way interesting: he includes them in the action and then makes them pawns within an increasingly preposterous plot.
The two little kids are quite sweet, though. Maybe one day they will be stars.
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Post by lonlad on Apr 26, 2016 21:00:06 GMT
Mr Xavier also has painted on pecs, I am reliably told --- but he looks damn good regardless --
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Post by lonlad on Apr 25, 2016 6:15:14 GMT
If only the production had a scintilla of Bosch's visual richness -- instead, it suggests the grey, affectless world of Sarah Kane, stripped of any wit, intrigue, or imagination ....
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Post by lonlad on Apr 24, 2016 22:32:58 GMT
Full nudity for Ms McGuire but over in a nanosecond.
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Post by lonlad on Apr 24, 2016 22:31:52 GMT
No doubt she's aware how awful the production is .....
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Post by lonlad on Apr 24, 2016 22:28:03 GMT
SUNSET is not entering its final week .... it finishes May 7 so has two weeks to go (supposedly)!
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Post by lonlad on Apr 22, 2016 16:55:57 GMT
Javone was on Wednesday night (the production's first performance since press night) and could barely speak - apparently they were going to pull him at the interval but decided to have him finish the performance (which was stupefyingly awful). No surprise if he has been off since. Maybe he and Glenn Close are tucked up somewhere watching telly? The acting in THE SUICIDE is so poor that it's hard to believe, excepting one or two moments from a wildly game Paul Kaye and the very good woman who plays Javone's wife, who at least retains her dignity while all around her are losing theirs -- and in the case of the gifted if shamefully wasted Ashley McGuire, her clothes, for one brief, toe-curling moment.
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Post by lonlad on Apr 22, 2016 16:03:42 GMT
Cate could certainly act it !! Opposite Zac Efron as Joe (just kidding .... I think)
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Post by lonlad on Apr 22, 2016 15:48:56 GMT
I suspect Close's team are waiting (at this point daily?) to see if she CAN do it and then are deciding at a certain point that she simply can't --- if Glenn misses much of the rest of the run, there goes her shot at doing the film, alas, which in all honesty would in any case be more merciless about the fact that she is two decades too old for the role - something that matters a lot less, of course, on stage. I do feel for ENO since it certainly isn't THEIR fault, and they aren't even producing the damn thing (the whole venture has been outsourced), so they are made to be the fall guy for a pissed-off public.
Maybe frustrated playgoers should go across the road and see Kit Harington naked in FAUSTUS ?
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Post by lonlad on Apr 21, 2016 0:18:37 GMT
The National IS on fire for the most part, but THE SUICIDE and WONDER.LAND - both of which were playing tonight - are as bad as anything they have done in the last 25 years. How either got out of the starting get is beyond me.
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Post by lonlad on Apr 19, 2016 23:15:13 GMT
Is anyone else curious why Julie is being played by a white performer (who is excellent) when the norm now with this part is to have it played by a woman of colour, like the brilliant Lonette McKee, who did it twice on Broadway (i.e. in two separate productions) - this is like the Ava Gardner/Lena Horne film imbroglio revisited .....
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Post by lonlad on Apr 14, 2016 8:16:52 GMT
westlondon is exactly right --- don black must be the luckiest man in showbiz to have ridden so far on such minimal ability. well, at least he's a lovely man (which he is).
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Post by lonlad on Mar 13, 2016 0:18:14 GMT
dreadful play with two hamfisted actors sinking an already unsteady script
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Post by lonlad on Mar 9, 2016 0:42:50 GMT
No surprise there
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Post by lonlad on Mar 9, 2016 0:14:34 GMT
God this was dreadful ! At least in NY it looked reasonably spiffy but the whole production here is so sh*tty-looking and the cast with one or two exceptions wouldn't dignify a bus and truck tour Stateside. But some will surely love it and the woman to my left was bursting with excitement before a single note had been sung. Lucky her.
The Diana Ross is nauseating.
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Post by lonlad on Mar 4, 2016 10:44:49 GMT
he certainly was and outstanding all over again - as was the entire cast - David Morrissey in full, booming voice you could doubtless hear all the way to Oldham - the two women especially great -
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Post by lonlad on Mar 3, 2016 11:24:59 GMT
How kind ! Hard in any case to imagine HANGMEN without him. He seems far and away the least easily replaced of the principals (well, Reece Shearsmith was already replaced - as we know - and that worked fine).
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Post by lonlad on Mar 3, 2016 9:16:55 GMT
hope Johnny is back for the NT Live broadcast tonight !! :-) His performance one of the very best of the season, no matter what the Olivier committee thinks .....
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Post by lonlad on Mar 3, 2016 0:44:23 GMT
Does anyone know if Johnny Flynn was back on tonight (Wednesday)? He was off Tuesday night.
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Post by lonlad on Feb 27, 2016 13:14:25 GMT
Has Penny Downie's wretched American accent improved? God she was dire -- sounded like a Queens truck driver and from a different planet to (excellent) Claire Skinner as her daughter. Georgina Rich pretty ropy on the accent front as well.
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Post by lonlad on Feb 27, 2016 13:11:50 GMT
I'd give it 4 stars as well and say only in response that this production is VERY dark indeed as the hushed silences throughout last night's performance (and a packed house) made clear - notwithstanding an errant phone ringing near the end. It's a brilliant touch to have Laura C be as thoroughgoingly vapid and unfeeling as she is made to appear and Uzo Aduba throughout is beyond praise: a smaller-in-stature version of the great Viola Davis onscreen in The Help. But the production is no mere camp-fest (and not in any way shape or form at all reminiscent of Roald Dahl) --- quite the opposite. And also possibly the best MAIDS I have seen.
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Post by lonlad on Feb 13, 2016 19:44:40 GMT
huh? since when did the Almeida lay claim to being "lavish"?
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Post by lonlad on Feb 13, 2016 1:00:55 GMT
Billington was at VANYA tonight ..... !!!!
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Post by lonlad on Feb 12, 2016 1:37:41 GMT
and from Telegraph and Independent
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Post by lonlad on Feb 12, 2016 1:21:24 GMT
>>But she doesn't, because this powerful play knows that what we say matters so much more than what we sing. And what we don't say matters even more.
Or, to follow on from Steve above, that what these characters speak is their own equivalent to the blues ----- their language, in other words, constitutes its own kind of music, as Cooke's production makes brilliantly clear: the highlight of the theatre year so far.
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Post by lonlad on Feb 11, 2016 23:36:45 GMT
Two stars from Michael Billington
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Post by lonlad on Feb 10, 2016 1:02:42 GMT
judging from the tepid applause tonight - and nowhere near sufficient to merit three bows - seems like the sold-out house isn't very impressed. can't say I blame them.
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Post by lonlad on Feb 5, 2016 0:27:50 GMT
Jonathan Pryce, Mike Leigh, Tim Pigott-Smith (just back from Broadway), Kate Fahy, Jennifer Hall, Anneka Rice, Simon Williams and more at Rabbit Hole tonight
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Post by lonlad on Feb 4, 2016 6:44:59 GMT
In fact, in response to the comment above, the Old Vic receives precisely NO regular public subsidy. The theatre did receive a one-off £5 million grant a few years back to create an endowment but it is not an ACE client in the way that the National and the RSC are, to name just two ACE recipients out of many. Kevin Spacey made this point repeatedly during his tenure, which is why he did the amount of glad-handing that he did, and why they will be hoping GROUNDHOG DAY is a big hit.
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Post by lonlad on Jan 31, 2016 18:03:36 GMT
it's a superlative production - don't miss it
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