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Post by couldileaveyou on Dec 29, 2019 19:44:51 GMT
I did not feel any sense of being in Naples/Italy at all. A simple name change of the gangs and it could've literally been set in England and told the exact same story.
My biggest problems however was the playing of every character - apart from the 2 leads - as caricatures in EVERY scene. It ruined the whole play and I couldn't take any of it seriously.
Absolutely this, they took Naples out of Neapolitan novels and made the setting so generic that it could have been set anywhere. And I also agree on the acting, I really liked Niamh Cusack and Catherine McCormack but I found most of the other performances frankly offensive. My overall opinion is that there was very little intelligence going on behind the concept of this adaptation. Not only De Angelis - in what I guess is an attempt to "universalize" the story - minimized the role of Naples (which in the novels is a sort of third protagonist), but also the choice of the material from the novels is poorly thought-out. In the impossible effort of putting everything that happens in the novels on stage, De Angelis seems not to have spent a moment thinking about what was important, what was trivial, and what was essential. The first two novels are pretty much entirely on education, how almost impossible it was for these girls to achieve, the constant hardship and struggle. In the play Lenù turns up out of the blue in a nice dress and says "look, I've just graduaded from university", as if the fact that someone of her gender and socio-economic position didn't make this an unique case in that place and time. If there is a version of "[name] is turning in their grave" for the living, this must be the case for Elena Ferrante.
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Post by intoanewlife on Dec 29, 2019 20:04:56 GMT
I did not feel any sense of being in Naples/Italy at all. A simple name change of the gangs and it could've literally been set in England and told the exact same story.
My biggest problems however was the playing of every character - apart from the 2 leads - as caricatures in EVERY scene. It ruined the whole play and I couldn't take any of it seriously.
Absolutely this, they took Naples out of Neapolitan novels and made the setting so generic that it could have been set anywhere. And I also agree on the acting, I really liked Niamh Cusack and Catherine McCormack but I found most of the other performances frankly offensive. My overall opinion is that there was very little intelligence going on behind the concept of this adaptation. Not only De Angelis - in what I guess is an attempt to "universalize" the story - minimized the role of Naples (which in the novels is a sort of third protagonist), but also the choice of the material from the novels is poorly thought-out. In the impossible effort of putting everything that happens in the novels on stage, De Angelis seems not to have spent a moment thinking about what was important, what was trivial, and what was essential. The first two novels are pretty much entirely on education, how almost impossible it was for these girls to achieve, the constant hardship and struggle. In the play Lenù turns up out of the blue in a nice dress and says "look, I've just graduaded from university", as if the fact that someone of her gender and socio-economic position didn't make this an unique case in that place and time. If there is a version of "[name] is turning in their grave" for the living, this must be the case for Elena Ferrante. Out of interest as I have never read any of the books... Is the humour in the books?
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Post by intoanewlife on Dec 30, 2019 16:57:53 GMT
I finally found an image of 'the baby'...seriously what were they thinking?!?!?!
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4,038 posts
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Post by kathryn on Jan 12, 2020 19:42:06 GMT
Saw both parts of this yesterday. Have never read the novels or seen the TV show, and had managed to avoid reviews, so was really going in blind.
I enjoyed it a lot. Thought the puppetry worked really well - particularly the use of the dresses as puppets during the violent scenes.
The lead actresses were very good but we did find it hard to keep track of who everyone else was. I understand why they didn’t got for Italian accents but without that the Italian names were kind of hard to understand sometimes - at first I was like, Donna Keely, who’s that?!
The setting definitely didn’t feel very Italian - in fact for the first few moments I thought it was Ireland!
But it did keep me gripped for the full 5 hours!
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528 posts
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Post by jek on Jan 16, 2020 9:35:26 GMT
Went to the first part on Monday and the second part last night. Was really pleased to emerge from the first part looking forward to the second - otherwise it would have felt like a real effort to make the trip to Waterloo on a January night. I am someone who has read all the novels and seen the Italian mini series (I believe the second installment of this is due in the spring). I thought the central performances were excellent as was the staging and music (last night's performance was captioned so we got a running set list of what was being played!). But I did find the second part a disappointment. It's unsurprising - I suppose - that the concentration is on the more visually dramatic Camorra storyline rather than the feminist consciousness raising but it did really shift the emphasis away from the central theme of the books - and interestingly the ideas highlighted in the essays (by Sue Rainsford and Michelle Tarnopolsky) in the programme.
On a different point we go to the National fairly regularly - I have priority membership - but this is the first time I can remember my seats being upgraded. For both parts we were moved from the £15 seats in the circle to fairly central row K seats in the stalls. Not sure how this happened as the circle still looked pretty busy but it was a real treat. My partner was joking that they have a database and choose people who sat through St George and the Dragon and other less than pleasurable evenings for an upgrade!
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4,402 posts
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Post by Being Alive on Jan 21, 2020 23:30:15 GMT
Went into this blind today, not having a clue where it was set or about any kind of concept - and I think that was a positive and a negative.
It being set in Italy I think was pretty clear to me from the off (although they did absolutely nothing to establish that or try to build on that with characterisation or set/costume). I think my main negative is that I thought it was too long, particularly the first part. At least 30-40 mins (but probably up to an hour) could have gone from Part 1 and it make no difference to the story. Niamh Cusack and Catherine McCormack both gave excellent performances (particularly McCormack) but I didn't feel they were able to be excellent all the time because there was a lot of 'filler' that was unnecessary. There'd be 10 mins of excellent text, and then 15 minutes of unnecessary drivel. I also got really confused with what was happening in terms of time jumps in the second act of Part 2. I found it relatively easy to follow till then, but it got too confusing for me in the final few scenes.
Apart from the two leads, I didn't think that really any of the cast were up to scratch (apart from Nino some of the time). It felt like bits of it were being dragged through by the leading performances.
I sort of liked the stripped back set that they'd gone for instead of the other option, and certainly helped with laying out the situation at the beginning. We had an issue with the revolve in the fact that it didn't work for Act 1 of Part 1, and stage crew had to push on and move things the revolve would usually control. It was going again by the end of Part 1.
Overall I'd say a solid 3 stars, with two 4 star leading performances, but it needed someone to take a red pen to the script and rework it I think. I think there's an excellent 3 and a half hour play in here somewhere that's trying to get out, but is being blocked in by lots of stuff around it that's unnecessary.
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