Les blancs - National Theatre

I would swap/give it all up, Jean. It is a long night and I think incredibly inconsiderate of the NT to start at 7:30 and threaten at 3 and a half hour play.

O how little you think of me, sad face. No, I won't say that. What I'm thinking is, what does the revolve say, represent or add to our understanding? Sorry, I didn't see Linda so I probably missed some thing that did work well. I saw that mad revenge play that whirred the revolve round like a demon and that kind of worked. I think if they had spent more time worrying about the front of house facilities and the audibility inside the auditorium , for two, they would have done better than spend so much on a revolve. 

A fascinating play.Incredibly relevant. Superbly set and directed and acted.A real treat.

Saw this tonight. Brilliant play, brilliant production!

The start was inauspicious, mingling seemingly inconsequential chitchat, little showing, much telling and declaiming.

But as the play progresses, the Olivier's great revolve marks time on the characters like a ticking clock, a silent Woman (Sheila Atim) mysteriously staggers her way round it, waiting for her day, and everything pays off. EVERYTHING. By the end, it felt like the definitive play about colonialism, a great African play, albeit written by an American, a staggeringly powerful piece of theatre.

With African "terrorists" (represented by Sidney Cole's Peter) engaging in one set of extreme activities, and the Colonial regime (represented by Clive Francis' Major Rice) engaged in another set of extreme activities, it is for Danny Sapani's Tshembe Matoseh to hold the centre, a man with compassion for all human beings, a rational cultured man, who yearns to spend time with his white wife and his son in England "watching telly." He is a pacifist by nature, but he is justifiably the angriest pacifist ever seen on stage. Fully aware of the tragedies building around him, compassionate for all the players, he roars his righteous anger at all these characters with a knowing sadness and a fiery conviction that is simply electrifying. Sapani, underused on the same stage in the McCrory Medea, gives the performance of his LIFE! A performance that deserves recognition.

James Fleet, as a mission Doctor, Willy Dekoven, gives a tremendous mirroring supporting performance to Sapani's, in that Dekoven is equally burdened by a full understanding of, and compassion for, the mixed motives of everyone around him.

Like Renoir said, everyone has their reasons, and playwright, Lorraine Hansbury gives all her characters their justifications, creating an incredibly rich and complex tapestry, as motivations strain and pull against each other, building to an inevitable explosion.

Gary Beadle convinces us that his character, Tshembe's brother, Abioseh, collaborates with the colonials out of a place of love and compassion. Tunji Kasim demonstrates how Tshembe's other brother, Eric, spirals into anger. Elliot Cowan skillfully shows the flowering of his righteous reporter's limited worldview. Anna Madeley does the opposite, showing us how a character's understanding of the world can wilt. Sian Phillips' oldtimer poignantly loses her bearings. As the Colonial master, Clive Francis is gripping, expressing his love for the African hills, all he can remember, and frightening in his insistence on the "sacredness" of white blood. Sidney Cole's "terrorist," Peter, is equally frightening in his devotion to ends by whatever means.

There are so many views, so many characters, all understandable, that we are put into the same dilemma as Sapani's Tshembe amd Fleet's Doctor, in that we are made to feel the full tragedy of the consequences of colonialism. The production finds an electric aliveness in balancing all these characters, to the extent that as in the best theatre, you are left with the feeling that ANYTHING can happen, and when it does, it feels utterly unpredictable, then with hindsight completely inevitable.

So yes, this starts off slowly, but it builds to one of the most earned, intense, memorable and disturbing climaxes imaginable.

This is another triumph for Rufus Norris' National Theatre after the equally terrific "Ma Rainey's Black Bottom." My eyes are opened to the imperatives and consequences of colonialism, as never before.

5 stars!

PS: Running time 2 hours, 50 minutes (beginning at 7:10pm, ending at 10pm).

Last night was Press Night so it started at 7pm, the rest of the time it starts at 7:30pm.

Had to book a matinee due to length but reviews are brilliant!

I'm feeling very hopeful about this one; slightly regret booking for a Thursday rather than Friday night but I never get anything done on a Friday anyway... It's nice to get some energy back at the NT, it's felt a bit forlorn recently (to me, anyway).

This is really something else.

A remarkable production of a great and important (hate that word normally but relevant here) masterpiece of 20th century theatre.

Farber has a style that's all her own and uses it to overwhelming effect here. The performances are all absolutely on point too.

The script could easily be preachy but is, instead, questioning. And not just your usual "pause for thought" questioning, but soul-wrenching questioning.

One of the most complete things I've ever seen at the National. Best viewed from the front of the stalls.



One thing that should be noted for future viewers: the production does contain a very sudden and very loud gunshot.

This was stunning, absolutely superb, and I speak as someone who was grumpy about the three hour running time and 7.30pm start! It didn't feel long at all and I could happily have taken more - length was totally justified since the play and production is thorough, detailed, rounded, complex - often extremely uncomfortable in as well, but in a good way. Superb staging and acting. Nice to see the theatre full - this really deserves an audience.

Would encourage people thinking about returning their tickets due to the length to give it a go - I've rarely overheard so many positive comments from the audience on the way out. It's also not as long as I feared - I made it to Waterloo station by not long after 10.30pm, so could be worse.

Also impressed by Olivier cloakroom staff - I find this new NT policy about not being able to take in a bag bigger than an envelope really annoying, but they were very efficient about returning things.

That was a perfectly acceptable mistake to make - it was very unclear what was queue and what was just people hanging around!

Overall, I found this a moving and sometimes terrifying play. If Danny Sapani isn't on the Best Actor list for the Oliviers next year, then we're either in for some stonking performances still to come, or something suspicious will have happened...

But the more I thought about it afterwards, the more I felt the story didn't quite hang together. It didn't seem likely to me that Tshembe would have such strong feelings about his country so quickly, having travelled so far and so widely for so long, and built a firm family unit elsewhere. And I was totally baffled why (major spoiler ahead - really, don't click if you don't want the ending revealed)



The fact I didn't even consider all of this until later is testament to the power of the acting, of course.