Girls and Boys, Royal Court

I do like an assertive first post! Also, everything’s better with bacon. 



Welcome to the board. 

I just remembered that Kelly’s The Ritual Slaughter of George Mastromo was the first play VF presented when she took over as AD. It was one of the worst nights I have ever spent at the RC let alone any other theatre. It was really indulgent and (to borrow bacon’s word) glib. I think for me (and this is just me, not necessarily right or wrong) I find that the RC seems to favour really dark pseudo experimental work, portentous yet - underneath the fantastic production values - lacking in substance. I am however looking forward to the new season because there are some veteran writers represented who will probably present more complex work.

Manipulative and even quite silly tosh but Carey M does well with it. And the design is STUNNING.

Clearly not, looking at the reviews.  The most positive review seems to be in the Telegraph, perhaps surprisingly.   Only three stars from Billington in the Guardian.

Without any specifics, and trying to be as spoiler-free as possible:



If you'd like more information then I'm happy to explain further, or it may be worth contacting the RC.

Telegraph 5 stars; Independent 4 stars; Evening Standard 4 stars; london theatre.co.uk 5 stars.

As Mark Shenton suggests - the denouement is well sign-posted but it's an amazing journey nevertheless.

Carey Mulligan is a revelation and the set is stunning.

I loved it.

I like Mulligan but I'm in the "second half wasn't good enough" column. I wasn't really sure what I was supposed to do with the 'events' that we're told of. There was no opportunity for me to feel the sadness, the grief with Mulligan because she's recounting events in quite a teachy way. But despite feeling teachy, I'm not sure what about this subject matter I was supposed to learn. I wouldn't have wanted a second half of more jokiness, because I was pulled in a bit more when the play got more serious, but it didn't quite pull it all the way through for me.

I very much liked the set and the projections (which I think one could have not spotted the presence of) and the lighting and Carey Mulligan, and the direction was probably as good with the material as it could have been. Overall I liked the play, but the last 20 minutes of it just didn't present the best version of itself.

So it was all Dennis Kelly's fault basically.

To get specific, I'm fairly sure the lighting effect is good use of "projection mapping", where a surface is recreated in 3D in a computer and a projection is designed to be displayed on top of it such that it takes advantage of the shapes it's being thrown on. So over the monochrome bookshelf, it projects perfectly the individual books in colour. The regular lighting has to be toned down to reflect this, as the projection will look best when there's not much light thrown on the same surface. It's done really well in this, I don't think I've ever seen the technology used in quite this way, and what's really nice is that it doesn't make a huge song and dance about it, it's a briefly seen effect.

That makes me feel better about missing it - he generally hates the things I love so I'm hoping the reverse is true.

It's reasonably similar to one of the recurring effects in Harry Potter and the Cursed Child. Certainly got the same basis, but used a lot more subtly here.

I saw this on Saturday night. I felt that Carey Mulligan did brilliantly with the script she was given, but ultimately there was not enough dramatic tension to sustain the play for the full 90 minutes.

The opening thirty-or-so minutes felt like an excerpt from a middle-of-the road stand-up act, which jarringly transformed into a very serious lecture about the folly of man, or rather, masculinity.

Morality plays work when the audience is readily able to empathise with the struggles and motives of the doomed individual. This crucial element is lacking in Girls & Boys, and therefore audience members merely find themselves nodding along to what effectively constitutes a TED talk framed around an anecdote.

The set was nice enough, and Carey Mulligan is very watchable, but this was unfortunately a disappointment from my perspective.

That's the boy.