Lungs, Old Vic in the Autumn

I know this goes against the general view, but I personally didn't really like it. I found the characters very dull and self-centered, and by the end, I didn't care about them enough to be concerned about what happens to them. Also, I didn't get what was going on with the accents. They are both clearly very well spoken, but Matt seemed to be slipping into Ali G at points, and sometimes Claire sounded like Tony Blair, trying to be a bit more 'common'. When I spend a lot of money to see something, it would be nice to have a bit of scenery, or at least some props (and an interval!). I just felt a bit short-changed, and if it wasn't for Claire and Matt, I don't think the play would stand up on it's own merit. Only my view, of course, and it seems like most people really enjoyed it (overheard lots of positive comments on the way out), so perhaps I am just missing something...

We had a long stop about five minutes before the end last night. Someone in the seats on what is usually the stage took ill and ambulance people were called. She walked out, thankfully, to a round of applause that I think was more for the medics, but she gave a little bow. I’d never been in the theatre and heard the cry ‘is there a doctor in the house?’ before. Apparently lots of doctors go to the theatre, there was a swarm to the stage.

The play is nothing much new and I imagine will always be performed with a famous pair. The dialogue is very conversational, perhaps it’s working really hard, but my sense was that Clare and Matt were doing the heavy-lifting. My attention was kept for the duration and I did end up having more empathy for the really quite unlikable characters than others on here.



the environmental message was shoehorned in and the ending felt like it could have been from a different play. The sudden condensing of time felt out of whack with the rest of the play.

But, at 80 minutes it was enjoyable enough.

I booked on the basis of casting as I hadn't seen either MT or CF on stage and wished to and that might have coloured my judgement somewhat, I did like Claire Foy very much and enjoyed Matt Smith and that floppy hair of his. I was engaged but in the way that I wasn't entirely focussed to the exclusion of all else. I'm watching Seven Worlds, One Planet as I type this and the bleak information contained hits much harder than the environmental message in the play unsurprisingly.
That slightly tacked on ending didn't really sit either.
Still I left fairly happily and not just because I wasn't forced to talking the queue for the ladies.

But time is being condensed the whole way through the play, with it speeding up/condensing more as it goes on, which is reflective of how we experience time in real life.



First performed in 2011 with Kate O'Flynn in the W role, and so surely the argument there would be she was too young for the latter 30 minutes? Given the span of the play, suspension of disbelief over the age of the performers will be necessary for some of it, regardless.

Not following many of these criticisms, tbh. Yes, people are self centred, esp. when it comes to children.

How many families do you know where the first two children were of the same sex and there at least three in total.

And, yes, timelines contract and expand. Most of us understand Uni passes in a flash and the first year in work is like a decade, etc.

Fwiw, I thought the writing absolutely captured a male person and a female person of a type not uncommon.

I’d like to pick up a copy of the text because I’m intrigued to see if the first scene in Ikea is longer than the scene after the miscarriage. The pacing felt like it was no more than three years in 75 minutes, then sixty years in four. I’m intrigued that it’s possibly more complex than that, so that’s given me a something to explore. This idea that the language and meaning are being condensed, rather than time being skipped, is very interesting.

I know the Old Vic needs to make money to survive, but £65 is a bit cheeky for a "socially distanced" version of a play that is all about a relationship and isn't that long to begin with...

Foy and Smith are great but not sure I'd bother to watch the play again.

Yes, especially given Matt Smith's more fannish fanbase is probably younger and less upper-middle-class/London than the typical OV theatregoer.

Scrap my last comment - I see there are going to be £10 tickets. I don't see why they should limit them to 1000 per performance though, given the Frankenstein NT Live attracted millions of viewers and these two actors also have global recognition and in Smith's case a cult fanbase. 

Seems a bit of a waste of money to pay the actors to do it every night, unless they are doing it for free? Record it once and sell tickets to the live and to encore screenings without needing all the running costs of doing it every night.

I’m guessing it’s to distinguish it from other ‘screenings’. More likely to become an ‘event’ and get people to stump up