The Maids, Trafalgar Studios

If you haven't booked yet, be warned there's a weekend at the end of March when Uzo won't be appearing. I know the other cast members are great, but I've already seen them in plays, I'm looking forward to ticking off someone new who I already know is terrific.

(Not that it's far away mind!)

Zawe Ashton will not performr 17th and 18th March; Uzu Aduba will not perform 25th and 26th March.

I'm going on Monday, I can't wait! Is anyone going tonight?

Can anyone give me any idea as to what the stage seats are like in this theatre?

I saw it tonight and it was a mixed bag for me. The play is surely clever and interesting, but every now and then is just too verbose. The cast is very good, Uzo is brilliant (her last speech is breath-taking) but occasionally she seems to slip into her "Orange is the New Black" character: very, very good, but nothing new. Lady Edith is good - great American accent! - and I felt like the play didn't really started until she came in (a long way into the play, tbh): her scene is short but crucial. Zawe Ashton steals the show, for me.

The direction is meh, some times it fits the moment perfectly and some times it's just tacky; same about the lights. Beautiful set, full of hidden trapdoor. And boy, Jamie Lloyd really likes his confetti.

It's not really a violent play - it's not Cleansed - it's more psychologically violent. I wish there were more elegant terms to describe it, but for me it's a mixed bag.

uhm, they say 1h45m, but it was longer - almost two hours (considering that it started a few minutes late. Oh, and there is no interval).

they look great, it's nothing like "Farinelli and the King". They're not even on stage, they basically made the show on the round, putting a few rows of seats behind the performing space... something like "The Crucible" at the Old Vic.

Interview with Jamie Lloyd on The Guardians website (brief mention of Doctor Faustus too): link

Saw this last night, and like couldileaveyou, I'm in two minds about this - I thought Uzo was great, she tore into her lines with gusto (getting away with some Tod Slaughteresque levels of scenery chewing at points, excused on the part of the playacting involved) while having great fun doing so, Zawe and Laura were pretty good too, but overall I thought it was too long (not helped by the seating, I've been to Trafalgar Studios before and had no problems, but the seat this time was killing my back after half an hour or so, an interval would have been a blessed welcome), it could easily have done with a good 15-20 minutes being chopped out of it and I didn't really understand just WHY Solange and Claire wanted to kill Mistress, OK she was a self centred little madame, but I thought she came across as more of a vacuous Paris Hilton wannabe than a Cruella DeVille who kept them in squalor/chains. I was moved by the final scene between Uzo and Zawe, but came away feeling a fit ambivalent about how things turned out in the end (maybe because the ending was totally what I wasn't expecting after reading the press releases and interviews prior to seeing this).

Staging was minimal, it looked like Jamie Lloyd based the set on A View From The Bridge, basically four posts at the corner of the 'room' and a lot of confetti/'flowers' on the floor, and a roof with some flashing lights in it. I quite liked the sound design, mostly a looped bit of electro that came and went throughout the play without over doing things.

One word of warning if you go for stage seats - A) the majority of the time, you'll be watching the back of the people on stage, and B) don't go for the seats at the extreme ends of the rows, from where I was sat (row B of the front stalls), it looked like the curtains (and the posts) blocked off a fair bit of the stage and the people sitting there didn't get to see much.

Thanks Marwood I held off booking stage seats for that reason. I think I'll give them a miss if it's not really played towards those seats at all.