5,138 posts
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Post by Being Alive on Oct 26, 2023 12:34:20 GMT
You know it's bad when even Baz isn't positive.
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898 posts
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Post by bordeaux on Oct 26, 2023 14:46:54 GMT
Please tell me no one is standing to applaud this at the end. I assume the actors know this isn't hitting the spot from the nature of the applause at the end? Interesting interview with the author on the Guardian website. She initially sent it to Nick Hytner at the Bridge who seem to have passed (and are presumably now thanking their lucky stars - or good judgment), then after a rewrite sent it directly to Ian Rickson who took it to Sonia Friedman. www.theguardian.com/stage/2023/oct/13/playwright-penelope-skinner-lyonesse-interview |
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Post by lonlad on Oct 26, 2023 15:46:52 GMT
Lots of people were standing the other night.
There's now a further pan of it, this time from the New York Times.
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Post by amyja89 on Oct 26, 2023 15:56:07 GMT
I've seen pockets of standers in some of the curtain call pictures on Twitter etc., some people might be digging it, and then again some people are probably being slightly sycophantic towards KST and Lily James.
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1,217 posts
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Post by nash16 on Oct 26, 2023 16:26:26 GMT
Only about 6 the night I saw it. The two Americans in front of me jumped up, but then only a few front stalls.
It was just over 3hrs and when you get a play that long (and this bad) people are normally too tired to stand. (Unlike Sunset Boulevard where they seem to be standing every five seconds, Britain’s Got Talent itus style…)
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Post by oxfordsimon on Oct 26, 2023 16:28:02 GMT
Sometimes audiences are very enthusiastic because they know that it isn't the actors who are to blame...
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Post by adolphus on Oct 26, 2023 21:56:28 GMT
Sometimes audiences are very enthusiastic because they know that it isn't the actors who are to blame... But they are if they've signed on after reading the script. Both actresses have done very good work, and should have known this was a dog. Presumably the money was too good to resist. And their agents thought so too. |
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Post by parsley1 on Oct 26, 2023 22:00:03 GMT
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3,528 posts
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Post by Rory on Oct 26, 2023 22:09:45 GMT
To be fair, it wasn't just the cast. Ian Rickson is a good director and this is a rare misfire for Sonia Friedman. And I recalled excellent reviews for Penelope Skinner's 'The Village Bike' and I thought her play 'Linda' also sounded intriguing. So as a package, it seemed a sure bet. Can't get it right all the time. I'll go and to be fair I'll probably still enjoy it. I recall awful reviews for 'Dr Faustus' with Kit Harrington came out the week before I went and whilst they weren't necessarily wrong, that production has stayed with me to this day. It was a memorable experience! |
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Post by parsley1 on Oct 26, 2023 22:14:34 GMT
To be fair, it wasn't just the cast. Ian Rickson is a good director and this is a rare misfire for Sonia Friedman. And I recalled excellent reviews for Penelope Skinner's 'The Village Bike' and I thought her play 'Linda' also sounded intriguing. So as a package, it seemed a sure bet. Can't get it right all the time. I'll go and to be fair I'll probably still enjoy it. I recall awful reviews for 'Dr Faustus' with Kit Harrington came out the week before I went and whilst they weren't necessarily wrong, that production has stayed with me to this day. It was a memorable experience! It’s ironic her first main stage work since the Royal Court Is such a disaster I am sure there is something to be said For having new writing premiere at a suitable venue And I bet the RC are glad it’s not cluttering their stage Part of the issue ARE the stars Had it been an unknown cast It would not have been on in the WE at all So the point the article is making is a good one The first ingredient should be a good script And then you find the talent Not shoehorn talent into rubbish |
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Post by capybara on Oct 27, 2023 0:50:57 GMT
This really isn’t very good. Lily James was especially one dimensional and disappointing.
The script is directionless and with no clear idea of what the play is supposed to be.
KST is decent and the only redeeming moments are down to her.
Two people in my vicinity fell asleep in act one. Two stars.
Mods, can we get a poll for this? I’d be fascinated to see if forum users are in step with the critics on it.
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Post by teamyali on Oct 27, 2023 1:27:14 GMT
KST was supposed to do Simon Stone’s version of Phaedra at the National in 2020 but COVID happened. Eventually Janet McTeer played the lead when it was finally staged earlier this year. Slow Horses on Apple TV+ is a hit so far and the money isn’t all bad on Kristin’s part.
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Post by dr on Oct 27, 2023 19:39:59 GMT
I think I agree most with the Time Out review, here. This isn't a bad play, and there are some very interesting symbols, motifs and subversions in here that contribute quite successfully to Me Too discourse. Kristin Scott Thomas convinces as Elaine, and there's a monologue in the first act which is so well-delivered and nuanced that it commands the space. Ian Rickson directs the play as a comedy, even with moments of slapstick, and it sort of works in selling it to the audience. And the sound design is gorgeous - after the National's "Crucible," Tingying Dong is a real rising star who makes use of spatial audio to an incredibly high standard. Good to see her doubly booked in the NT's upcoming season.
The problem here, really, is with the writing. Particularly when it comes to Lily James' character, Kate, who feels as though she is cut and paste from a different play entirely: she is essentially a ditzy, cardboard rom-com character from the early 2000s, and when Skinner attempts to use her as a vehicle for a serious message about trauma and childbirth (which would make a very interesting play in itself), it falls incredibly flat. Everything is exposition in "Lyonesse" - the first scene, arguably the only offensively bad one in the play, is literally a spoken-word Wikipedia article. Breaking several rules of playwriting, Skinner just has a character walk on, deliver a few clichéd small-talk jokes, then give a giant monologue explaining the backstory of the play. It's the kind of stuff that would have been fixed in workshops, or during a run at a subsidised theatre.
Which is the critical point. As Time Out remarks, this would have been an average play at the Royal Court, NT Dorfman, Hampstead or Donmar. They could cast solid, but not Hollywood-level, actors (Lindsay Duncan for Elaine?), and fix the major inconsistencies in quality and plot in the script. But put prematurely in the West End, with star-level prices, the weakness of the script stings harder than it should. It's a shame really, as the two biggest misfires sink the whole ship: Skinner, whose hiatus deserved a better return than this, and Sonia Friedman, who really should give new plays a decent development time before calling ATG.
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Post by sfsusan on Oct 28, 2023 18:05:36 GMT
When I went week before last, I'd forgotten it was in previews and afterward I went looking for reviews to figure out what the heck I'd seen. Now that reviews are out, seems like the critics really didn't know, either. I think comments about the husband's role are interesting, because I didn't see anything in the first act that predicted his behavior in the second act, so it felt like a complete flip to me. And was the sound of the waves shaking the house (twice, if I recall) tied in to anything happening (or about to happen) in the story? It just seemed random to me, and ultimately unused since {Spoiler - click to view}the house didn't wash away. For me, that effect was like having a gun prominently on stage that is never used. It distracts me from the story because I keep wondering "when's that going to go off?" (I just found out this is called the rule of Chekhov's gun!) |
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Post by Jon on Oct 28, 2023 23:23:42 GMT
Saw it tonight and it was okay, the ideas are there but I can't help but think Penelope Skinner should have developed the script a bit more and indeed I wonder what the first version was like if this was the final product.
KST and Lily James were good, we had Nicola Blackman in lieu of Doon Mackinon as Sue who was on book which weirdly kind of worked considering the character of Sue is a executive of the film company although I think maybe it would have better to have the script on a phone rather than a tablet/Kindle. There was a small technical hitch towards the end where Nicola's mic stopped working and she's improvised a line about technology which got a laugh and both her and Lily James walked off for a few minutes before coming back to finish the scene.
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Post by Steve on Oct 28, 2023 23:47:23 GMT
Saw this tonight and found that the humour blunted the drama and the drama blunted the humour. It's like batty Kristin Scott Thomas is the comic relief in Lily James's serious story, but Lily James is also the scatty comic relief in Kristin Scott Thomas's serious story. And that kind of confusion just can't engender any kind of focused emotional response, in me anyway. I ended up just laughing at everything, whether it was supposed to be funny or not. Some spoilers follow. . . I felt this was not as good as "The Village Bike" and "Angry Alan," both of which I loved, and "Linda," which I liked. Like others in this thread, I wished I was watching the two Pinters that KST did in this theatre, "Betrayal" and "Old Times," both of which were 5 star awesome. To make matters worse, Doon Mackichan was indisposed tonight, so we had the understudy reading dryly from a Kindle, without the kind of comic inflection that Mackichan is so good at, and poor Lily James trying to react to the dryness as if she just heard something caustic and biting. And to make matters even worse, at one point the Kindle just stopped working so the poor understudy and James had to slink off stage until it was fixed. Thinking of Mackichan, I recall how off-the-hook funny she was in "Jumpy" at the Royal Court, and I think that production was a masterclass in how to include broad comedy without undercutting serious drama. The key was that Tamsin Greig played her long suffering beaten lead character dead straight, while Mackichan and Bel Powley and others unleashed a comic assault on her, and that made the sum effect simultaneously deeply poignant and wildly funny. Here, all the actors undercut the drama with comedy all the time, with noone acting as a consistent emotional human anchor to identify with. How on earth can we really care about the dead parakeets (sketch) if their owner, Scott Thomas, is wild-eyed broad, wearing silly outfits and jumping up and down singing "Free?" Are we really going to think Lily James's predicament is a sequel to "The Doll's House" if she's klutzily knocking over lightbulbs and fretting like a flapping fish? Still, it's James's story that picks up the most steam, principally because James Corrigan is very effective at passive aggressively treating her like crap, and because James's klutzy antics are endearingly human, rather than being off-the-wall amusing yet alienating wackiness, like what Scott Thomas is asked to do. There is no dour and desperate Tom Francis here to give balance and weight to Scott Thomas's Norma Desmond clone's antics. All in all, I 'm not sorry I saw this, as I laughed at Scott Thomas's antics and I liked James's flustered character, but emotionally, it didn't hit me where it wanted to, being so tonally self-destructive, and I walked away giggling. 2 and a half stars from me.  |
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Post by parsley1 on Oct 29, 2023 0:45:23 GMT
Saw this tonight and found that the humour blunted the drama and the drama blunted the humour. It's like batty Kristin Scott Thomas is the comic relief in Lily James's serious story, but Lily James is also the scatty comic relief in Kristin Scott Thomas's serious story. And that kind of confusion just can't engender any kind of focused emotional response, in me anyway. I ended up just laughing at everything, whether it was supposed to be funny or not. Some spoilers follow. . . I felt this was not as good as "The Village Bike" and "Angry Alan," both of which I loved, and "Linda," which I liked. Like others in this thread, I wished I was watching the two Pinters that KST did in this theatre, "Betrayal" and "Old Times," both of which were 5 star awesome. To make matters worse, Doon Mackichan was indisposed tonight, so we had the understudy reading dryly from a Kindle, without the kind of comic inflection that Mackichan is so good at, and poor Lily James trying to react to the dryness as if she just heard something caustic and biting. And to make matters even worse, at one point the Kindle just stopped working so the poor understudy and James had to slink off stage until it was fixed. Thinking of Mackichan, I recall how off-the-hook funny she was in "Jumpy" at the Royal Court, and I think that production was a masterclass in how to include broad comedy without undercutting serious drama. The key was that Tamsin Greig played her long suffering beaten lead character dead straight, while Mackichan and Bel Powley and others unleashed a comic assault on her, and that made the sum effect simultaneously deeply poignant and wildly funny. Here, all the actors undercut the drama with comedy all the time, with noone acting as a consistent emotional human anchor to identify with. How on earth can we really care about the dead parakeets (sketch) if their owner, Scott Thomas, is wild-eyed broad, wearing silly outfits and jumping up and down singing "Free?" Are we really going to think Lily James's predicament is a sequel to "The Doll's House" if she's klutzily knocking over lightbulbs and fretting like a flapping fish? Still, it's James's story that picks up the most steam, principally because James Corrigan is very effective at passive aggressively treating her like crap, and because James's klutzy antics are endearingly human, rather than being off-the-wall amusing yet alienating wackiness, like what Scott Thomas is asked to do. There is no dour and desperate Tom Francis here to give balance and weight to Scott Thomas's Norma Desmond clone's antics. All in all, I 'm not sorry I saw this, as I laughed at Scott Thomas's antics and I liked James's flustered character, but emotionally, it didn't hit me where it wanted to, being so tonally self-destructive, and I walked away giggling. 2 and a half stars from me. I wonder if Doon is busy finding alternative employment for the next 2 months and was at an audition 😂 |
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Post by Jan on Oct 29, 2023 9:39:38 GMT
Someone reading from a Kindle isn’t really an understudy. They’ve surely sold enough tickets at massive prices to have afforded real understudies for this and it’s a bit of an insult to the audience that they haven’t - this isn’t some fringe or small theatre production.
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Post by capybara on Oct 29, 2023 12:56:46 GMT
In fairness, when I went the other night, it was the first time I can remember seeing an actor (a principal, not an understudy, I might add) receiving an off-stage prompt after forgetting a line.
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Post by amyja89 on Oct 29, 2023 14:59:19 GMT
In fairness, when I went the other night, it was the first time I can remember seeing an actor (a principal, not an understudy, I might add) receiving an off-stage prompt after forgetting a line. Oh, do tell! ... |
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Post by Jan on Oct 29, 2023 15:00:08 GMT
In fairness, when I went the other night, it was the first time I can remember seeing an actor (a principal, not an understudy, I might add) receiving an off-stage prompt after forgetting a line. That is indeed very rare. Don't think I've seen that happen more than twice, and one of those was Ralph Richardson in his final role and wasn't entirely unexpected. The other was about 7 hours into Nicholas Nickleby so ditto I suppose. |
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Post by sfsusan on Oct 29, 2023 15:06:24 GMT
In fairness, when I went the other night, it was the first time I can remember seeing an actor (a principal, not an understudy, I might add) receiving an off-stage prompt after forgetting a line. Do you suppose they're making script changes at this point (perhaps in response to the reviews)? I wonder if you remember the exact line, if someone could say whether it had been changed from when they saw the show. |
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Post by theoracle on Oct 29, 2023 18:36:32 GMT
I was there on Friday night and laughed a lot... but probably for the wrong reasons. The first act monologue from KST wearing that costume, the awkward silence in the audience just got me. Lily James is ok in this show but I don't think she does anything particularly different to what she did in All About Eve, I'm actually quite amazed how far she made it in this industry as I wouldn't have been able o tell she was a big actress if I wasn't aware of her previously. The second act I think was funnier in some ways but during the more "poignant" moments, it felt rather wooden. I wasn't sure what was supposed to be a gag or not and I left rather confused. There was a fantastic piece by Clive Davis pointing out how cross he was by the fact that the general pubic have been duped into spending £££ on this which I do agree about. This level of writing could be seen in a fringe space but should not be carrying such a hefty pricetag. I normally love Ian Rickson too but this was clearly a misfire and it gives me no pleasure to say that. Audiences deserve better, nuff said
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Post by frauleinsallybowles on Oct 29, 2023 18:48:30 GMT
In fairness, when I went the other night, it was the first time I can remember seeing an actor (a principal, not an understudy, I might add) receiving an off-stage prompt after forgetting a line. This happened at the performance I saw as well last Saturday 21 October. It's the first time I've seen an actor ask for a prompt too, I believe, but it was in previews at that point. It was in Act 2 when Kristin Scott Thomas was discussing Sue being a film producer that is a "supporter of women" or something to that effect with Chris. It was handled very quickly––KST calling the prompter's name, the line being read, and the scene immediately continued without any pause or remark about the situation. |
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Post by capybara on Oct 29, 2023 22:21:15 GMT
I can’t remember where in the play it fell but it was a scene between Kate and Sue in (I think) the second act.
The line was “Do you know what I think?”. Doon Mackichan called off stage “Yes, Janine?” as if we were supposed to think her office door had been knocked on.
The off stage reply came “do you know what I think?” which lo and behold was Doon’s next line…
It seemed to pass off without any drama but I was amazed it happened.
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