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Post by peelee on Feb 7, 2018 23:57:08 GMT
They're also the two that caught my eye.
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Post by peelee on Feb 7, 2018 13:33:16 GMT
In its quiet unassuming way, a great film. It deserves any awards coming its way.
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Post by peelee on Feb 7, 2018 13:27:00 GMT
It seems to have something going for it; this could be good. I like the kind of scheduling that broadcasts an interesting series over consecutive nights, and in this case three nights suggests there won't be much padding-out involved. We'll soon see.
Just a thought, though: doesn't this series deserve its own thread?
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Post by peelee on Jan 1, 2018 13:02:48 GMT
I suspect that quite a few readers hate and avoid the kind of posts or threads that you dislike, so scroll past what often read like grudges and vendettas being obsessed about. Some may just be agents for others who wanted the job, the playhouse, or the funds that were going. As they say, "Whatevah". There are surely enough posts and threads for you to continue to read, theatremad, as no board should lose your sort of participant.
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Post by peelee on Jan 1, 2018 12:53:41 GMT
I'd pay a 20p booking fee, though I never knowingly pay anything. I buy tickets online that are priced as stated, and am happy to pay something of my choice as a donation to running of the theatre or contributing to a theatre project that money is being collected for.
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Post by peelee on Jan 1, 2018 12:41:41 GMT
To catch up with what I'd seen positive reviews about, I watched season one on Netflix a couple of months ago by way of intending to work my way through the following seasons in time for the latest, recently broadcast series on BBC. Arresting theme music, and what was an interesting idea for a drama series, and though I realised from episodes 1 and 2 that this was irritating me I did press on through the series in case I was mistaken. I left it at that though.
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Post by peelee on Nov 28, 2017 17:31:23 GMT
All About All About Eve is a paperback from some years back that intending readers here might find of interest.
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Post by peelee on Nov 23, 2017 12:13:43 GMT
Travelex must have gained quite a lot out of its long term sponsorship at the National Theatre, whether productions were great hits at the time or didn't make much of a splash. For many people and far more than have used Travelex services, that name is synonymous with 'good deal' or 'fair deal' simply on the strength of the cheaper tickets theatregoers have been able to buy over the years. Also, one of the National's theatres has been named after Travelex founder Lloyd Dorfman in the recent past, so it seems reasonable to assume everyone concerned is happy.
As for writers recovering from productions that didn't succeed, Harold Pinter famously achieved that despite an early play and how it was received at, I think, the Lyric Hammersmith. Before that in the mid-1940s, Arthur Miller got over his play The Man Who Had All the Luck closing after four performances in New York, and made something of himself. There must be many others who've taken such setbacks as temporary and have ploughed on. For others, perhaps less resilient or prepared to face up to the realisation that they're not quite up to it, a setback did them a favour.
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Post by peelee on Nov 23, 2017 10:34:53 GMT
The (probably more interesting) book has been around for years. I liked Gloria Grahame in what have turned out to be some classic US films films as well as some others. So when this film was trailed I was intrigued and earlier this week went to see it. Money wasted. I'll leave it at that.
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Post by peelee on Nov 6, 2017 16:35:52 GMT
I don't think I've seen anything at the Ambassadors, but with seating for 444, according to Wikipedia, it seems like an intimate-enough theatre to stage Beginning successfully. I enthused here after seeing it on press night and am glad that its run at the Dorfman and presumably level of ticket-demand there has encouraged this proposed move after its National run to the just as accessible West End. Well done to everyone involved.
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Post by peelee on Nov 1, 2017 17:35:44 GMT
Speaking of JK Rowling, I am two-thirds of the way through The Cuckoo's Calling, the first book by Robert Galbraith, which I was given as a birthday present in 2013. It's been an enjoyable bedtime-reading experience so far.
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Post by peelee on Nov 1, 2017 16:54:58 GMT
1) "..you have called Michaela Strachan a “bitch” and Chris Packham a “tosser”."" There is a fascinating programme on Chris Packham available on BBC iPlayer: www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b09b1zbb/chris-packham-aspergers-and-me?suggid=b09b1zbb2) Over the years I've used theatres, I've found box office staff, ticket-checkers, programme sellers, bookshop staff and bar staff to be welcoming and helpful. It's been as positive an experience as dealing with cinema staff and people keeping us safe and well served at football stadiums like Wembley. Starting by being positive helps greatly.
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Post by peelee on Nov 1, 2017 16:16:48 GMT
Attending the Wooster Group/RSC production of 'Troilus and Cressida' a few years ago at Riverside Studios, Hammersmith, two of us longed for the interval to come. I think it must be the worst thing I've ever seen; a disgrace to everyone involved in it.
The thought of a wonderful documentary like 'Town Bloody Hall' — see excerpts on YouTube — getting the theatrical treatment is questionable, but the possibility of it being staged by the Wooster Group doesn't bear thinking about.
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Post by peelee on Oct 15, 2017 17:31:38 GMT
'The Times' did give it four stars and the reviewer was clearly smitten by the play. For all the arts, culture, what's-on type of supplements that come as part of a Saturday edition of the paper, the review of this play was printed in the newspaper itself.
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Post by peelee on Oct 15, 2017 17:22:16 GMT
I haven't seen this play, but I do like the venue. It's basic and friendly, has staged some very worthwhile things, like The Cutting of the Cloth and the play about Orson Welles and Vivien Leigh. And it's just so good to have a theatre like that so close to Elephant & Castle tube and bus routes, close enough for London-vicinity theatregoers to keep an eye on.
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Post by peelee on Oct 13, 2017 15:02:09 GMT
'Do you prefer seeing new plays or established works?' What difference does it make? They are not opposites. There have been good new works in recent years and also bad ones. There have been welcome revivals of plays with reputations, and new productions of old plays that would have been better left sleeping. I avoid a lot of plays and they're being old or new doesn't come into it. There are also plays new and old that I'd like to have seen but could not afford to buy tickets for. Surely theatre-going is an experience that can leave you pleasantly surprised that you've seen something you only saw because you couldn't get tickets for what you had wanted.
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Post by peelee on Oct 13, 2017 14:40:04 GMT
Wonderful theatre: spellbinding, serious enough to have the audience hushed when it wasn't laughing at things said, or awkwardness, or recognition of what life can be like when people yearn for something but fear that for them it might not prove possible. Really good writing, good stage and sound design, direction intelligent and presented by two actors who were so good. With a bit of luck it'll get one, two or three stars, making it easier for you to buy tickets. 1 hour and 40 minutes and no interval, not that I noticed or cared much while being absorbed by this tale of our time. And don't read all about it before you go, because you'll spoil your experience of this, when after all it's the experience you're going for.
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Post by peelee on Oct 11, 2017 17:16:39 GMT
Years ago, possibly in 2007 or 2008, we came out of the theatre after a good Saturday matinee and were delighted to see fireworks starting to go off upriver. It was the Lord Mayor's fireworks display, and hundreds of theatregoers had that bonus to enjoy. It wasn't often we'd go to a Saturday matinee at the National, and I thought perhaps it was Howard Davies's-directed Philistines by Maxim Gorky on the evening of those fireworks except I don't think the dates tally. This year's similar event is approaching: lordmayorsshow.london/fireworks/
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Post by peelee on Oct 10, 2017 22:34:25 GMT
“You used to have to pay to see a fat tattooed lady at the funfair ... now they’re everywhere”.
Haha, a great line, and what an apt observation by Jimmy Carr.
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Post by peelee on Oct 10, 2017 18:30:08 GMT
Apart from Follies the 'Curse of the Olivier' continues; three duff productions now, this, Salome and Consent. I didn't know that Consent ever went to the Olivier. I saw it in the Dorfman earlier this year. It was the very model of a well-written, well-structured play. A fine cast (scroll down here and you can see for yourself: www.nationaltheatre.org.uk/shows/consent ) directed by Roger Michell. What first attracted me to it wasn't the fine cast—though that settled it— it was that it had been written by Nina Raine, author of the brilliant, and I believe eventually prize-winning, Tribes that I'd seen staged at the Royal Court back in 2010 www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/theatre/theatre-reviews/8078475/Tribes-Royal-Court-review.html Rather than be slagged off as a failure, just another stick to beat the National Theatre with, as if from that bitchfest of a thread campaigning against Rufus Norris, it deserves recognition for the fine piece of work that it was.
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Post by peelee on Oct 10, 2017 15:55:56 GMT
Dial N for Murder
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Post by peelee on Oct 10, 2017 15:53:16 GMT
I looked at my emails too late yesterday to take advantage of a nice ticket offer for a couple of dates. I hope any others here who had the offer too had better luck. That said, and though I've enjoyed a few Richard Bean-penned plays, he can be a bit slapdash so I'd not exactly rushed to buy tickets for this in the first place.
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Post by peelee on Oct 10, 2017 15:13:45 GMT
I was delighted to get tickets and am seeing the play this week. I'll report back on it.
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Post by peelee on Oct 1, 2017 14:35:55 GMT
I don't recall swearing, wiggymess. There were some muttered phrases that could have been swearing but their having been in Urdu or in Latin or Greek meant they'd have passed over our heads. The characters in the play aren't the sweary types. The language used is lively enough and measured. Now I think of it, one of the pleasures of the play was there wasn't a totally, absolutely, massively massively huge, completely and utterly outrageous, empty phrase to be heard from curtain up to closing remarks. The play moving back and forth between 1992 and 1968, and with characters wanting to say something that mattered to them, nothing was put in the way of understanding.
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Post by peelee on Sept 29, 2017 19:42:14 GMT
Without exception every black cab driver I've ridden with in London has been white and English.
A few years ago, several years before Uber came on the scene, I read that ten per cent of London cabbies were female. I'd been driven here and there by a few and found them pretty much as clued up with 'The Knowledge' and affable as the many more male black-cab drivers I'd hired. Over years of travelling around London I've still found plenty of jewish cabbies working behind the wheel, the occasional one flying an Israeli pennant, otherwise flags of St George, Arsenal, Chelsea or Spurs and drivers with a range of interests and sometimes studying for A levels, a degree or looking forward to moving out to Australia or Spain when retired to be near grown up kids and grandchildren. Never talking Sat-navs! I've had black or Asian-family background black-cab drivers on a couple of dozen occasions at least.
I sympathise with the case made by black-cab drivers in this campaign, and find them a godsend in London. It's also difficult to avoid noting who those prominent in organising for Uber in government, Commons, and mass media tend to be, and why they tend that way.
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Post by peelee on Sept 29, 2017 19:28:57 GMT
When I saw it at the National Theatre, London, a couple of years ago I thought it a wonderful staging that must have benefited from its original four hours in two parts being reduced to just over three hours. Remembered with affection.
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Post by peelee on Sept 29, 2017 18:40:44 GMT
A nice ensemble production which I saw last week and thought I'd recommended already. This is worth seeing.
50 yards from Notting Hill Gate station (District, Circle, and Central lines) and buses stopping by the theatre door.
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Post by peelee on Sept 29, 2017 18:33:03 GMT
Thank you for the link, bordeaux. It looks like fascinating theatre to come.
In their respective days, Serious Money, then The Power of Yes, and Enron in London, packed them in. Plays about financial skullduggery do seem to make a splash.
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Post by peelee on Sept 29, 2017 18:27:30 GMT
The Dorfman?
Typical that even that Dorfman was named after a man.
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Post by peelee on Sept 29, 2017 17:16:00 GMT
This is a fascinating play, holding the attention from its opening scene between two women: an academic retired prematurely and against her will from the profession, and a younger academic who led protests against her questioning of shibboleths about 'race' and identity. They are invented characters, designed to justify the book that one wants them jointly to research and write on the controversies with which this play is concerned: 'identity' and the historical role of Enoch Powell and his attention-grabbing speech of 1968 that led to his sacking from the cabinet by Tory prime minister Edward Heath.
Thus do Joanne Pearce and Amelia Donkor whet the appetite for an unfolding story that moves back and forth between different points in years 1992 and 1968. Waled Akthar and Ameet Chana play several types of Pakistani immigrant and established characters between them, making serious points in the process while also providing some ironic, comic relief to indicate their changed circumstances over the years. All the aforementioned play several roles, as does Paula Wilcox, and play them well, leaving two actors to play a role each: Iain McDiarmid as Enoch Powell, and Nicholas Le Prevost as liberal Clem Jones his local acquaintance and newspaper editor friend.
So the cast comprises several actors whose qualities are long established and can be depended upon, and whatever the character they play they prove a delight to watch and listen to. Outstanding among them is Iain McDiarmid. Between all in the cast is presented a story that, while about way-back-then, proves so contemporary. The play structure is fairly conventional, and sound and stage design are quietly effective, while it is what characters say and do that grips the audience. I'd booked tickets some time ago once I saw that Iain McDiarmid was to play the brilliant, provocative, controversial, poetry-loving classicist Powell, and that trust proved justified. He is shown both at his strongest and when ailing physically — and we are reminded by the playwright that Powell had various unexpected views on issues other than that for which he is most remembered — McDiarmid revealing the whimsical and magnetic through to the waspish and marginalised Powell. A complex character to present, a type that some would have been tempted to pass off as a pantomime-villain, yet the performance is a tour de force by McDiarmid.
The play presents arguments and the dialogue certainly does crackle. It is going to be up to whoever is in the audience at any given performance to think about what they have seen and heard, when making up the minds which will be turning over with all sorts of thoughts about the play on their way home. Well done to everyone concerned in writing, acting, designing and producing this play.
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