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Post by lynette on Jun 16, 2016 11:07:05 GMT
all those texts that say 'beat'....frankly I never understood that. Either a point to breathe or to strike something? I dunno but in a lot of modern texts. I think maybe the actors should sort out this kind of thing. Whereas Pinter's pauses are monumental. Or a pain ...... |
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Post by mallardo on Jun 16, 2016 11:11:24 GMT
I would think that the common view is that a text (or more than one) is one element in the creation of a piece of theatre. To me, any talk of a text as "the play" is assigning to it a primacy which it should not have because it makes it sound as if the text is the real thing and the production is a manifestation of it. I would say that it is the piece of theatre that is being created, not that the text is being interpreted. There may be a pre-existing text or the text may be written or revised in the course of creating the production but the text should not dictate anything. However, it will still exist afterwards, to be read and perhaps used in future theatre productions.
But the text is not just another element - it IS the "real thing" and any production IS a manifestation of it. If we're talking about a living author willing to collaborate with a director, actors, etc. then, of course, revisions occur but, at the end of the day, the author must have final say. It is his/her play and no one else's. To say that the text should not dictate anything is going way too far.
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Post by Deleted on Jun 16, 2016 11:24:56 GMT
We disagree!
It's not quite on the topic, but I'm reminded of Max Stafford Clark, in the late 80s, telling how Arnold Wesker had then reached the point where his new work could only get a public performance by Arnold Wesker himself performing his own One Woman Plays.
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Post by horton on Jun 16, 2016 14:06:20 GMT
This thread has become very intellectual! I'm so proud how it turned out.
btw I really object to the Cottesloe being re-named (I don't know if that's unpopular, actually)
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Post by Deleted on Jun 16, 2016 14:21:03 GMT
If renaming the Cottesloe turns out to be the popular opinion, then I'll stand up and represent the "happy for it to be called the Dorfman actually" unpopular opinion. Lloyd Dorfman has given a helluva lot to the National, he's had a direct financial impact on my ability (and everyone else's!) to attend shows easily, and at the end of the day it's the plays that truly matter, not the name of the box you sit in while you watch.  |
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Post by Jon on Jun 16, 2016 14:25:30 GMT
This thread has become very intellectual! I'm so proud how it turned out. btw I really object to the Cottesloe being re-named (I don't know if that's unpopular, actually) I'm fine with the Dorfman given how much Lloyd Dorfman have done for the National with the Travelex scheme and given £7m of his own money to NT Futures and TBH Cottesloe isn't exactly a sacrilege like renaming the Olivier |
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Post by Deleted on Jun 16, 2016 14:39:11 GMT
This thread has become very intellectual! I'm so proud how it turned out. btw I really object to the Cottesloe being re-named (I don't know if that's unpopular, actually) I'm fine with the Dorfman given how much Lloyd Dorfman have done for the National with the Travelex scheme and given £7m of his own money to NT Futures and TBH Cottesloe isn't exactly a sacrilege like renaming the Olivier I know what horton means... To some of us, it will always be the Cottesloe, just as the Harold Pinter will always be the Comedy and the Noel Coward will always be the Albery etc etc... It's hard to get names out of an older brain! Try calling your kids by a different name; you'll understand what I mean. |
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Post by Deleted on Jun 16, 2016 14:51:14 GMT
Thing is, it's not the Cottesloe. The overall structure is incredibly similar, but it doesn't feel the same, and I'm still really annoyed that they took away "restricted view" row T, because that was one of the best bargains in town. The Cottesloe had its issues, but I really loved it, and I don't feel anything really about the Dorfman. (Yes, I can claim there's a difference between the Cottesloe and the Dorfman and proclaim to love the former better while simultaneously saying it's cool that they renamed it actually. The renaming is the bit I *don't* have the problem with.  ) |
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Post by Deleted on Jun 16, 2016 15:15:01 GMT
The fact that it's in the existing shell which is the National, is in the same space, and looks no different at all makes it the Cottesloe to me... But you are allowed to disagree. (You often do! ) |
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Post by Jon on Jun 16, 2016 15:31:37 GMT
I never feel that bothered when a theatre's name is changed. To me, The Harold Pinter is a fitting tribute to him since many of his plays debuted or played there.
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Post by Deleted on Jun 16, 2016 16:07:36 GMT
I never feel that bothered when a theatre's name is changed. To me, The Harold Pinter is a fitting tribute to him since many of his plays debuted or played there. So can you understand how some people will feel when the name is next changed, say to the Sonia Friedman Theatre in fifteen years' time? |
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Post by Deleted on Jun 16, 2016 16:13:28 GMT
A little clarification of my comment on authorial staging suggestions. When playwrights write sonething it's then down to others to interpret it, if a playwright demands a singular interpretation then they do their work a disservice. Beckett, for example, whose estate hates even a breath out of place. The dull retread of the same staging as well, showing that directors also fall prey to this sort of thing, such as Jerome Robbins famously demanding his dances be always done in musicals he staged.
On 'beat', I've always described it as the time it takes for one heartbeat.
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Post by horton on Jun 16, 2016 16:16:55 GMT
Completely agree about the re-naming: they will always be the Strand, Albery and Comedy to me. (even though I know the Albery was the New Theatre before).
I appreciate the £7m donation and all, but not sure it has to be recognized with a re-naming- it makes it seem vainglorious even if he didn't ask for it.
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Post by Deleted on Jun 16, 2016 16:23:01 GMT
Cardiff's oldest working theatre is the New Theatre ...
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Post by Jon on Jun 16, 2016 16:27:08 GMT
A little clarification of my comment on authorial staging suggestions. When playwrights write sonething it's then down to others to interpret it, if a playwright demands a singular interpretation then they do their work a disservice. Beckett, for example, whose estate hates even a breath out of place. The dull retread of the same staging as well, showing that directors also fall prey to this sort of thing, such as Jerome Robbins famously demanding his dances be always done in musicals he staged. On 'beat', I've always described it as the time it takes for one heartbeat. I think some shows like West Side Story and A Chorus Line are at risk of becoming museum pieces if they're not allowed to evolve, |
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Post by Deleted on Jun 16, 2016 16:30:04 GMT
I think some shows like West Side Story and A Chorus Line are at risk of becoming museum pieces ( Beat) if they're not allowed to evolve, |
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Post by horton on Jun 16, 2016 17:00:04 GMT
That lighting design...
And the choreography looked so tame by modern standards.
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Post by Jon on Jun 16, 2016 17:13:32 GMT
That's what killed ACL at the Palladium, I think. Had they been allowed to "reconceive it" like Sheffield, making use of the amazing cast rather than have that trio of original cast members who can't get another job so hang around and pretend to protect but actually strangle it make sure the original is preserved, I think it would have been far more exciting and run longer. I think putting into the Palladium is what killed it as well but apparently there are restrictions what theatre it can go into because it needs a wide stage but I agree that reimagining a production can do it wonders, look at Cabaret for example which Sam Mendes managed to break the mould from the 1972 production. |
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Post by Deleted on Jun 16, 2016 17:43:03 GMT
I saw a "reimagined" production of A Chorus Line at Sheffield Crucible once... ugh!
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Post by Deleted on Jun 16, 2016 19:37:44 GMT
Young people shouldn't get ultra cheap or free theatre tickets
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Post by Jon on Jun 16, 2016 19:43:33 GMT
Young people shouldn't get ultra cheap or free theatre tickets I do think access scheme are useful for getting young people into the theatre and I think having affordable tickets means they can risk seeing a new play or classic rather than opt for a long runner. I know when I did Entry Pass, I saw a lot of plays which I might not have done at full price. I do think day seats and lottery tickets shouldn't be seen as a right but a nice perk by producers who really don't have to offer it if they didn't want to. |
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Post by Nicholas on Jun 17, 2016 2:35:35 GMT
Young people shouldn't get ultra cheap or free theatre tickets
Completely agree, but I love the idea of free tickets for some people: I think, instead, underprivileged people of all ages – certain schools or districts or jobseekers – should get any free tickets if theatres can offer them, absolutely not freeloading millennial bastards like myself. Giving the freebies to someone like me (young enough for most yoof schemes, hardly rich but fine, financially, already a regular theatregoer) only shuns the underfunded who might genuinely need such subsidies. I don’t know who they’d go to, or how to suggest it without sounding utterly patronising and blindsiding the more pressing financial problems of the country, but I don’t need free tickets, much as I want them; far rather I pay and someone with genuine financial constraints gets the freebie than tedious middle class me.
There should still be plenty of young people discounts, don’t get me wrong, they’re essential for getting new theatregoers through the door and keeping new theatregoers regular, but things like the Donmar Shakespeare trilogy scheme are just getting silly. I’d love to know how many of the under-25s going to that have never seen a Shakespeare before. I’d love to know how many hadn’t seen Julius Caesar or Henry IV before. I’d love to know how many hadn’t seen Phyllida Lloyd’s Julius Caesar or Henry IV before.
Giving free tickets to people genuinely too poor to see the theatre they love, or the theatre they may love given half a chance - that's how to broaden what a theatregoer is, that's how to genuinely diversify audiences, that's what subsidies should work towards.
Actually, that’s an opinion that’s probably not unpopular – most ‘encourage new theatregoer’ schemes aren’t that, they’re ‘subsidise regular theatregoer’ schemes, and most people instigating those schemes have no idea what they’re banging on about.
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Post by Nicholas on Jun 17, 2016 2:48:22 GMT
Cabaret (given the right production) is a fantastic stage show - and the film is simply awful. It rips the heart out of the show and stomps on it. NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO. Etc. The film is a masterpiece. It perfectly evokes not just the Weimar era paranoia, but perverts the art of the Weimar era to make the boldest statement about how casually evil rises. The cabaret itself is iconically horrible, the songs dingy metaphors that use the abstraction and abnormality of bursting into song to truly icky, unsettling effect, only magnifying the naturalistic horrors of Nazism which Fosse so mundanely shows outside. The outside scenes are spectacularly done; take the songs out and call it I Am A Camera and it’s a beautifully subtle, elegant, and sad little movie with spectacular performances. Liza – OK, perhaps Sally shouldn’t sing as well as Liza, but I saw the film again recently after having read Isherwood for the first time, and the sad, self-deluding, broken-but-outwardly-confident Sally he writes in the book simply IS Liza in the film – too much is made of her great singing, too little made of the fact that she’s a great straight actor and the book of the musical/script of the movie is a great role she smashes. Joel Grey sometimes appears in my nightmares.
Meanwhile, if some perverse twist of fate made me a history teacher, the way I’d teach children about the rise of Nazism is Tomorrow Belongs To Me – and yes, a good production would do that too, but Fosse does it with gusto. How better to show how evil can become the norm than the loveable angelic child singing a loveable angelic song of hope and peace and goodwill towards the future that evolves into, well, that camera pan down to the Swastika, that group-singalong group-think, that poor man struggling to abstain, that violence with which it’s sung at the end? It's chilling, but normal. It's a scene I genuinely like on a musical and aesthetic level, I watch it and suffer picnic envy, I idly hum that song unforgivably often, and it's unapologetically on the Nazi's side, and in watching it filmed as Fosse filmed it, not just as Kander and Ebb wrote it, Fosse implicates me in liking the song, even singing along, and for that one moment, implicating me in, well... By the time I know the meaning of the scene, I'm on its side, and that's how a master moviemaker uses his camera. I feel Fosse's camerawork matched to Kander and Ebb's masterpiece says more about the subject than, say, CP Taylor's Good. Fosse deserved to beat Coppola for the Oscar.
I saw a documentary about movie musicals which said "After Cabaret's success, all musicals were set in Weimar Germany, even those that weren't". I wonder how much Fosse dislike is Fosse-imitation dislike.
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Post by oxfordsimon on Jun 17, 2016 8:04:34 GMT
Cabaret (given the right production) is a fantastic stage show - and the film is simply awful. It rips the heart out of the show and stomps on it. NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO. Etc. The film is a masterpiece. It perfectly evokes not just the Weimar era paranoia, but perverts the art of the Weimar era to make the boldest statement about how casually evil rises. The cabaret itself is iconically horrible, the songs dingy metaphors that use the abstraction and abnormality of bursting into song to truly icky, unsettling effect, only magnifying the naturalistic horrors of Nazism which Fosse so mundanely shows outside. The outside scenes are spectacularly done; take the songs out and call it I Am A Camera and it’s a beautifully subtle, elegant, and sad little movie with spectacular performances. Liza – OK, perhaps Sally shouldn’t sing as well as Liza, but I saw the film again recently after having read Isherwood for the first time, and the sad, self-deluding, broken-but-outwardly-confident Sally he writes in the book simply IS Liza in the film – too much is made of her great singing, too little made of the fact that she’s a great straight actor and the book of the musical/script of the movie is a great role she smashes. Joel Grey sometimes appears in my nightmares.
Meanwhile, if some perverse twist of fate made me a history teacher, the way I’d teach children about the rise of Nazism is Tomorrow Belongs To Me – and yes, a good production would do that too, but Fosse does it with gusto. How better to show how evil can become the norm than the loveable angelic child singing a loveable angelic song of hope and peace and goodwill towards the future that evolves into, well, that camera pan down to the Swastika, that group-singalong group-think, that poor man struggling to abstain, that violence with which it’s sung at the end? It's chilling, but normal. It's a scene I genuinely like on a musical and aesthetic level, I watch it and suffer picnic envy, I idly hum that song unforgivably often, and it's unapologetically on the Nazi's side, and in watching it filmed as Fosse filmed it, not just as Kander and Ebb wrote it, Fosse implicates me in liking the song, even singing along, and for that one moment, implicating me in, well... By the time I know the meaning of the scene, I'm on its side, and that's how a master moviemaker uses his camera. I feel Fosse's camerawork matched to Kander and Ebb's masterpiece says more about the subject than, say, CP Taylor's Good. Fosse deserved to beat Coppola for the Oscar.
I saw a documentary about movie musicals which said "After Cabaret's success, all musicals were set in Weimar Germany, even those that weren't". I wonder how much Fosse dislike is Fosse-imitation dislike.
I can appreciate your passion for the film version and your analysis of why you admire it so much - but for me, I greatly mourn the loss of the Schneider/Schultz relationship that, in the stage version, is the very heart of the piece. Sally's story is central but the human tragedy of the older couple's lives is something that has always, always touched me. I can understand why the film made the changes but it has never affected me emotionally as I watch it. And so that is why I will always prefer a great stage version to the film. (And not all stage versions have got it right - sadly) |
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Post by Hana PlaysAndParasols on Jun 17, 2016 17:23:42 GMT
Young people shouldn't get ultra cheap or free theatre tickets What are you talking about? Do you only want to see elderly rich people in theatre? Especially NT's Entry Pass and Haymarket's Masterclass are absolutely incredible. I was on the other hand baffled that Menier Chocolate Factory had a discount for seniors and not for students. I’d love to know how many of the under-25s going to that have never seen a Shakespeare before. I’d love to know how many hadn’t seen Julius Caesar or Henry IV before. I’d love to know how many hadn’t seen Phyllida Lloyd’s Julius Caesar or Henry IV before. I am not sure if I'll be able to catch this as I am turning 26 in November. But it totally caught my attention and I can inform you that I have never seen Henry IV (seen Julius Caesar in a different country about 6 years ago), never seen a Donmar production and don't know Phyllida Lloyd. So I don't know what you're implying here..? |
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