The Ferryman(Royal Court)

Dustin Hoffman, Barry McGuigan, Robert Peston and Sinead Cusack there on Friday night. This was truly an epic (not just in length) with moments of real pathos, humour and tragic intensity. This is real theatre chock full of beautiful writing and excellent performances. Highly recommended.

Has anyone received their tickets for the Gielgud run yet?

Crikey, a feature on this on the BBC News at Ten. Interviews with Jez and Sam, clips from the opening scene. Theatre on mainstream news, whatever next!

Dare I say, but after all the hype was quite disappointed with this.

It's wonderful to have such a large cast of humans and animals and a kitchen sink onstage, but the play itself is too sprawling to draw us in, and does not justify it's too long running time.

The very first scene seems to give away where the play is ultimately going to end up (and does), which seems a crazy thing to signpost so early on. It removes all sense of drama from watching the slow-paced events that follow.

The main scenes in the house are sort of well written, in that you're never bored watching them, but what are they saying? A rambling monologue here from the granny, a funny bit with the other bitchy gran. The kids running in and running out again. The baby.

It feels as though it should all be building to something and the focus should be on Paddy Considine's character, but instead our focus was on Laura Donnelly, but that was mainly because she was giving the best acting performance of the night. Considine's accent, and a couple of others, really need work. What was the Poor Tom's A Cold character all about too?

As I said, it never bored us, but come the inevitable easily predicted end, what is the point of it all? We felt it was overlong for what it actually ended up doing.

It also felt like a complete Best Of Irish Plays: Butterworth seems to have stolen from Friel/McDonagh/McPherson/O'Casey et al. especially with the rambling memory filled monologues. And don't start us on the dancing scene... It's all clich-tastic.

We thought we were going to see something absolutely incredible based on those reviews (Does Sonia Friedman have that much power to get 5* from everyone for her production?). Instead we left feeling a bit meh about it all. Donnelly is on a different level, and maybe a different play. A shame.

Oh thank goodness.  We thought we'd literally be the only dissenting voices.  

You're right, the production and performances and set are all good, but it's the play itself.  

Whereas Jerusalem worked as a sprawling slice of that world, this one really doesn't.  It feels like we're waiting hours and hours for an inevitability we know is coming from the first two lines.  Yes, 2hrs would have worked better, and focused the action more.

I need to find that Saturday Review show on iplayer.

I don't get how anyone can be disappointed with this play!! It's big, sprawling.. rich .. fabulous acting across the board and a thrilling ending. Beautiful set and lighting.i went for the second time last night and I want to go again, there's so much in it that one sitting isn't enough IMO.

Any chance it's gonna be extended through October, just a little bit? Dying to see this but cannot possibly catch it in upcoming months..

For me, it really doesn't matter if I can see the end coming or not, as long as I enjoy the journey. I'm not going to declare, say, Romeo and Juliet a complete write-off just because the prologue tells me exactly how it's going to end. And frankly it's sort of worrying if people think an unpredictable ending is *the* thing that denotes quality, it's thinking like that that leads to M Night Shyamalan movies.

I don't know that The Ferryman is a five-star modern classic, I don't know how predictable I found the ending, but I do know that I enjoyed it the entire time I was watching it, and I look forward to seeing it again to see if that holds true.

Really? Brooding young man, heavily symbolic dead white bird, highly implausible 'Lennie' type simpleton, Chekhov's gun etc...? I thought it was baggy - too indulgent, every character having their crowd-pleasing, pop-culture-referencing turn to the detriment of plot, tension, a sense of the real sickening menace of the historical period. Scenes I wanted to see were taken offstage, the dynamic with the sick wife underdeveloped, and instead we had lots of stuff like Aunt Maggie Far Away and more cute sweary children. I didn't get to see Jerusalem (this is the first Butterworth play I've managed to see on stage) - I booked last year with great anticipation given the writer and director's reputations, and was delighted when I saw the cast list. I suppose I was expecting more subtlety, more originality, a finer-tuned plot. This was like a West-End musical without the songs.

Sometimes a bird is just a bird. To repeat, I think it helps that I went in to it with zero expectation of what I was going to see. And one man's baggy is another man's character development. I could have watched scenes with Aunt Maggie for even longer. I loved the whole opening to act three as well. There were some other beautiful moments with Tom early in the play too. It's epic in scope and length and achievement. That some people take that to be "indulgent" and "crowd pleasing" and at a detriment to plot and tension, well, like I said earlier, I fundamentally can't agree. It's a bit like criticising Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf because George isn't very nice and Martha doesn't half bang on.

All human life is here with numerous issues at its core -

[THEMES SPOILER ALERT]
Can one ever really escape one's past?; the kindness of others towards those who are different or alone; the burden of religious faith under pressure; feeling like an outsider despite being surrounded by love; the innocence and joy of bustling family life being infiltrated and eroded by malign influences both outside and within; the difference in outlook between rural and urban; yearning desire thwarted by a sense of personal commitment and responsibility, and above all, love.

A rich and wonderful tapestry - beautifully written, directed, performed, lit and designed - and above all, mightily entertaining. No mean feat to achieve!