1,133 posts
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Post by Stephen on Oct 12, 2018 15:07:34 GMT
It's a really rainy day in Scotland (surprise) and thought it might be interesting to hear what everyone's best and worst productions have been EVER! What do you truly love and what have you really hated?
I absolutely adored the Sunset Boulevard and Cabaret revivals on Broadway. Over here most recently I thought that Labour of Love was truly excellent and managed to make politics great fun.
I found the RSC production of Death of a Salesman at the Noel Coward dull dull dull from beginning to end.
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Post by oxfordsimon on Oct 12, 2018 15:12:33 GMT
If we are going by productions (rather than pieces)
Worst - that is easy - RSC/Wooster Group production of Troilus and Cressida.
Best - Probably the National production of RIII with McKellen - which I saw in late 1991. I was so blown away by it that I couldn't speak for 30 minutes after leaving the theatre and just wandered the streets of Oxford in a daze.
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Post by Deleted on Oct 12, 2018 15:17:29 GMT
'Fatal Attraction' which clearly fits into both categories equally. I haven't laughed so much at a show in years.
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Post by Deleted on Oct 12, 2018 15:23:50 GMT
Worst - Stephen Ward. By a long shot. Awful. Only good part was Joanna Riding who made it worth it! Best - Currently it's 42nd Street if we are talking about production.  |
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Post by Deleted on Oct 12, 2018 15:24:16 GMT
My best is possibly still Propeller's Richard III, but I haven't interrogated that for a few years so it could be subject to change.
I never thought I'd hate anything more than We Want You To Watch at the National, but then I saw Ivo van Hove's Obsession and I was sadly proven wrong.
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1,863 posts
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Post by NeilVHughes on Oct 12, 2018 16:37:19 GMT
@baemax ditto, Obsession is my benchmark for awfulness, at least when I see the latest NT Olivier production I can say at least they’re not prattling about with an engine and running on a treadmill.
Best is more difficult, recently The Ferryman at the Royal Court last year was excellent and Billie Piper’s performance in Yerma was emotionally draining.
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4,156 posts
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Post by kathryn on Oct 12, 2018 18:45:50 GMT
'Fatal Attraction' which clearly fits into both categories equally. I haven't laughed so much at a show in years. Same here for Damned By Despair - I laughed for 10 minutes straight afterwards, it was so bad. Never going to forget it! The Genuine best production I find very hard to pick, to be honest - there’s a collection of productions that gave me what I like to call ‘a theatre high’ - that I had that actual physical reaction to. Made me hold my breath, my heart race, had that peculiar moment when the room seems to change size around you, laugh so hard that my face ached afterwards, made me cry. But choosing one of those as ‘the best’ is impossible! |
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Post by anthony40 on Oct 12, 2018 18:56:03 GMT
I have been in London (coming up to) 15 years and from memory the worst productions I have ever seen without question were Dirty Dancing and Grease.
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Post by jaqs on Oct 12, 2018 19:15:20 GMT
Worst musical production: Gone with the Wind (Carnaby street runner up)
Worst Play production: Polar bears, though I also hated Obsession
Best musical production: Hairspray original west end production, it made me fall back in love with musicals and was magical for me.
Best play production: Jerusalem, tied with Lear at the donmar with Derek Jacobi both haunt me still. With an honorable mention to Anna Christie at the Donmar, mostly for Jude Law's entrance.
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404 posts
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Post by altamont on Oct 12, 2018 19:16:31 GMT
Best -
Kevin Spacey's Richard III at the Old Vic
David Suchet in All My Sons
Ian McKellen's recent King Lear
Worst -
We Will Rock You - by a country mile
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3,321 posts
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Post by david on Oct 12, 2018 19:31:06 GMT
For me
The worst musical production - the last Saturday Night Fever tour (the actor-musician one) - The producers should have been shot for even putting this on.
The worst play - The NT’s The Prisoner (75mins of mind numbing theatre).
The best musical - Mamma Mia! (It’s my guilty pleasure!)
The best play - Angels in America (Andrew Garfield’s performance over 6hrs was just on a different level to anything I’ve seen)
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4,214 posts
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Post by anthony40 on Oct 12, 2018 20:03:47 GMT
I have been in London (coming up to) 15 years and from memory the worst productions I have ever seen without question were Dirty Dancing and Grease. Worst play was (something) Fish with Mark Rylance. Everyone was going gaga over it, but I just hated it. Best musical- The original Sunset Boulevard with Patti LuPone, Once at The Phoenix and Parade at The Donmar. I will NEVER forget that. I still get goosebumps when I tell people about it! |
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Post by Deleted on Oct 12, 2018 20:14:14 GMT
My opinions on best would change, depending on when you ask me, but this year I'm saying Six!
The worst thing I've ever seen was probably Desire Under the Elms in Sheffield last year. Or possibly that awful Pinter thing with Ian McKellen and Patrick Stewart, OR that godawful Merchant of Venice in Stratford with the giant pendulum and the tealights.
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Post by jaqs on Oct 12, 2018 20:21:03 GMT
Worst play was (something) Fish with Mark Rylance. Everyone was going gaga over it, but I just hated it. Best musical- The original Sunset Boulevard with Patti LuPone, Once at The Phoenix and Parade at The Donmar. I will NEVER forget that. I still get goosebumps when I tell people about it! That ice fishing thing was a snooze and a half, super boring. |
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Post by duncan on Oct 12, 2018 20:23:44 GMT
Best - Billy Elliot, Here Lies Love, The Ferryman and the Martine-less My Fair Lady.
Worst - Blood Brothers, We Happy Few - a desperately sh*te 3 hour plus vanity project by Stubbs, Nunn and Juliet Stevenson and the utter tedium of the Nationals in-I in which Juliette Binoche is hung on a wall via a giant magnet. With honourable mentions for Ian Richardson stinker The Creeper and the TRHaymarket version of The Country Wife.
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Post by Deleted on Oct 12, 2018 20:41:51 GMT
Best;
Curious Incident
Original Little Voice at the National
Yerma, even though I saw it on NTLive
Bent with Alan Cummings at Trafalgar Studios
Worst:
Memorial at the Barbican the other weekend. Two hours of pointless shuffling.
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Post by Deleted on Oct 12, 2018 21:05:24 GMT
I mean do we really have to ask?
Best: Angels. I am Marianne Elliott’s bitch forever.
Worst: Hamlet, Wooster Group. I’d say it was my uncultured 22 year old soul...but most of our group was bored and those were some pretentious wankers I was with.
Runner up Shakespeare to the one where there were ensemble pretending to be a free and a snake.
Runner up to Aspects of Love on tour for being a terrible production of a mediocre musical.
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1,250 posts
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Post by joem on Oct 12, 2018 21:15:28 GMT
Best: Jerusalem with Rylance
A View from the Bridge at the Cottesloe with Gambon
Honourable mentions: The Lady in the Van with Dame Maggie
Hedda Gabler with Juliet Stevenson
The Family Reunion at the Vaudeville with Edward Fox
Jesus Christ Superstar at the Palace in the 70's
Henry VI - 1,2,3 with David Oyelowo
Worst: Saved by Edward Bond at the Lyric Hammersmith
Bingo by Edward Bond at the Young Vic
Greenland, Common and Light Shining at the NT
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196 posts
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Post by rockinrobin on Oct 12, 2018 22:01:39 GMT
Worst - The Trial at the Young Vic. I will never get these 2 hours back. Felt like 20. God, how I suffered. And the guy next to me was actually snoring.
Best - A View from the Bridge, also at the Young Vic. People, Places and Things. The Dazzle. A Monster Calls. Apparently I have a disturbing tendency to enjoy the shows that make me cry buckets. Masochist.
That said, I've realised I saw dozens and dozens of shows that left me indifferent. I can't say anything about them. And that, I think - a show that doesn't make the audience feel anything - is somehow worse than a really horrible piece of theatre.
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4,156 posts
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Post by kathryn on Oct 12, 2018 23:03:03 GMT
. Worst: Hamlet, Wooster Group. I’d say it was my uncultured 22 year old soul...but most of our group was bored and those were some pretentious wankers I was with. Runner up Shakespeare to the one where there were ensemble pretending to be a free and a snake. . There is something especially awful about badly-done Shakespeare. Sitting there losing the will to live when you know that it can be done so much better. Mine was, I’m afraid to say, the laugh-free Twelfth Night at the National, directed by Peter Hall and starring Rebecca Hall. So much talent there, and it all went to waste. |
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Post by Deleted on Oct 13, 2018 6:31:30 GMT
. Worst: Hamlet, Wooster Group. I’d say it was my uncultured 22 year old soul...but most of our group was bored and those were some pretentious wankers I was with. Runner up Shakespeare to the one where there were ensemble pretending to be a free and a snake. . There is something especially awful about badly-done Shakespeare. Sitting there losing the will to live when you know that it can be done so much better. Mine was, I’m afraid to say, the laugh-free Twelfth Night at the National, directed by Peter Hall and starring Rebecca Hall. So much talent there, and it all went to waste. Yes! Especially as after a while you HAVE seen it done well (that was my first Hamlet too) On Hamlet, honourable mention to Clwyd’s Hamlet (where my friend was actually the Dane) while far from bad, didn’t give us an interval until after he’d got back from his bloody travels...to be or not to be was a question we were all asking no matter how good it was. |
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Post by Deleted on Oct 13, 2018 6:41:42 GMT
Hands down worst - Son of a Preacher Man.
Best - I'm struggling to identify one single production or piece; there have been many to encapsulate me with different reasoning.
I suppose I should mention Phantom though, as that was what turned me to theatre. I will never forget the impression it made on me as an 11 year old sat in the Stalls of the Liverpool Empire on its maiden UK tour.
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Post by Deleted on Oct 13, 2018 9:04:17 GMT
Best - Faust (Punchdrunk).
Could eaaily have been others of theirs but this was the major breakthrough and has affected me ever since. An experience akin to conscious dreaming.
Worst - Vieux Carre (Wooster Group).
The third time they’ve been mentioned already I think. A random staging of a weak late Tennessee Williams olay. Emerging in the sixties (as the Performance Group) they stopped being relevant decades ago but the lack of state funding in the States has meant that they were little challenged and allowed to prosper.
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Post by oxfordsimon on Oct 13, 2018 9:16:49 GMT
I am not sure what it says about our community and the Wooster Group - perhaps we are just not clever enough to understand their brilliance. Or perhaps it is just a case of the Emperor's New Clothes with them - there is just nothing there at all.
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1,348 posts
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Post by tmesis on Oct 13, 2018 9:21:07 GMT
Best ever production of a musical has to be the NT/Richard Eyre Guys and Dolls with the original cast of Julia Mackenzie, Bob Hoskins, Ian Charleston and Julie Covington.
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