St. Joan at Donmar Warehouse

THE GOOD WIFE happened, that's what.  And with it the American market and $$$ and maybe film work for Cush.  Wanted to see her too, but Gemma will do.

www.eonline.com/uk/news/702709/the-good-wife-fan-who-became-its-breakout-star-meet-cush-jumbo

Yep Duff was very good. One of Shaw's better plays but still a bit ponderous.

Anyone know when tickets for the new seasons go on sale, couldn't see anything on the Donmar website (only want to see this, not the Muhammad Ali play)

I believe it's Friday 22nd July. Not sure where I read it, but I remember being distinctly relieved because it's after payday.

Hooray! Wasn't sure if this was for me or not, and if it's not, it's easier to leave a cinema unobtrusively than a theatre...

Ah, I had completely forgotten Gemma had said that. I haven't seen anything, aside from 'The Vote' that has been filmed live at the Donmar. Does the intimacy of the small space do the cameras any favour with regards to the quality of filming shots. Providing the cinema tickets aren't too expensive, I'll probably try this, I thought Gemma was fabulous in Nell Gwynn, if I have no luck with the front row.

Ditto

There is a conference table on an ever-spinning revolve like in the young vic 'Streetcar Named Desire' and three screens that shows the news, the weather, medieval and renaissance paintings... Joan recognizes the Dolphine on Skype while she's alone on stage and all the others characters were offstage. Some bits of the text are incredibly modern, but the play itself seems to be too involved with medieval political and religious life to be staged in this way.

The choice of having it set in modern times is just so weird. You obviously see the post-brexit and post-Trump parallels but all the thing with the church makes no sense and it's not fully developed, so the whole thing is a gimmick rather than a concept. There is a new ending that doesn't involve Charles.

Fisayo Akinade as the Dauphin delivers the best performance on stage, he's truly a fantastic character actor. Also, Elliot Levey is a very good Cauchon. On the other hand, Gemma Arterton was not good. She essentially played a Disney princess for the whole time and she was goodish only in the trial scene (btw, the trial scene and the previous scene are so masterfully written - you really cannot do them wrong, that writing could save the scenes from the worst actors in the universe). And yet, even in the trial scene, she totally gave away that gorgeous speech where she retracts her abjuration: it was flat and really poorly acted. It's very hard to see something inspirational or even miraculous in her Joan, she plays a childish girl and it's very easy to think she's totally insane. The choice of having her dressed in period clothes while the rest of the cast wears modern ones is not very smart... you see what they're trying to do, but at the end of the day it just makes Joan look mad as a hatter.

The flaws are intrinsically linked to the direction, they are not something that will naturally improve during previews unless they totally reconsider some aspects of it.

I thought Gemma Atherton was quite magnificent in this, I liked her more here than Neil Gwyne.

However the production seemed to be lacklustre, which was done in modern dress in projections of Renaissance paintings.
I found the constant revolve to be insufferable and really was more gimmick than affect.

Well Josie Rourke IS a rubbish director and Gemma Arterton is hardly Denise Gough.