The Antipodes - Dorfman

Out of interest, did you see The Flick?

Sadly not. Circs didn't allow. Having read some about it, I did wonder if Baker worked part-time while a student

2.5 stars from Monstagigz. Press Night tonight. 

Perhaps  it occurs when the x axis says an hour has passed but the y axis says there's still 55' to go ..

They were doing this a week ago. Longer queues at the collections desk. Iirc it was expensive seats that were being reallocated ..

Really bad. Maybe it should have been an arthouse film instead, or staged with the stage much lower and with the table on a revolve.

The night I went, most of Row L in the Pit was blocked off apart from the end seats.

The play or the reactions? Some people clearly love this - fair enough, horses for courses, Marmite and all that, but it annoys me when they loftily dismiss those who thought it half-baked as conservative. And I think some reviews have given an extra star for her reputation - the Indie's doesn't read like a 4 star review.

I do wonder why the debate so quickly turns to dismissing differing opinions on a piece of (subjective) art.
Especially when it's prefixed with being annoyed at have been dismissed for their own opinion. Odd to me.

Another discussion being hijacked by the "People only like it because of the name attached" argument.

That's certainly true sometimes, leaving aside British TV writers (because they tend to write the whole of a show themselves), there are a crop of very well known showrunner type writers in America (Vince Gilligan of Breaking Bad, David Simon of The Wire, although he's just recently got himself into hot water over defending James Franco), and though there are exceptions, they are still mostly white middle aged men. But, I'm not sure beyond the showrunners' names, if a general audience (not people interest in screenwriting themselves) could reel off a list of writers for episodes of their favourite shows. Mostly, outside other writers, most TV writers aren't household names at all. Even if you told the audience which episodes of Better Call Saul or Game of Thrones they wrote and they realised "oh! I love that one!".

That is reflected in Antipodes, if we go with the theory it's a TV show brainstorm, with Sandy as the big cheese, and the guy he was mentored by himself, and with Heathens being mentioned as his name making prestige show. The other writers in the room are just fodder for the endless churning mill. A lot of screenwriters are still treated poorly and underpaid behind the scenes, or suddenly dropped from a project with no warning. There always seems to be some problem going on with the WGA or a strike, and PAs are treated even worse.

So given that, I find it entirely plausible that Sandy is a prestige drama showrunner who had a hit and now has the pressure of trying to recreate that magic in a bottle again, starting from scratch with a new bunch of writers. In the increasingly overloaded "golden age of TV" where everyone's bored of anti heroes, they've seen the hero's journey a million times, most historical periods have been done, violence/nudity/etc don't shock anymore, I can totally see it being a nightmare to try and find "something new to say". It's also maybe that Sandy is a one hit wonder and isn't really that good at his job. I kept thinking of William Goldman's line that nobody knows anything in Hollywood about what will work, everyone's just guessing and hoping.

The play is about interaction between a bunch of people who know each other to varying degrees (some going back longer than others), but none of them really know each other, and they're there to work, so I don't mind that none of them develop deep bonds because that often isn't the case at work, and I actually like that depiction when paired with the fact they're all forced to tell intimate stories and fears, that doing that doesn't really open them up to each other, or seriously change anyone's opinion of anyone else, or make them truly empathetic to each other either. I like that the play both works as an ode to the power of stories, since every time they fall into despair, someone begins one and once again they are all drawn irresistibly into listening... but also, it's about the limits of stories, or the contradiction, that they are trying to find the heart of something in that room, but nothing they tell each other makes them really care about each other.

(don't know if the below counts as spoilers, so I'll say just in case)

Although I think in small ways there are subtle developments and changes of view. Sinéad Matthews cares about Stuart McQuarrie, from my memory I think they both bring each other water bottles and share stuff, quietly, while most of the team ignore him. I also think it's very pointed that they all wake up and realise the power of Fisayo Akinade's long story after its been pointed he and Matthews are the only two (not white men!) who the intern doesn't take notes from.

I thought there were clear biblical and other nods in the text and staging but she threw so much into it nothing really seemed to stick for me - it was more like watching someone's copious essay notes: I didn't think it had that theatrical alchemy that, say, Caryl Churchill brings to similar material. Maybe if you were sitting somewhere else this would play differently (Vinay Patel was asking this question with this in mind on Twitter yesterday): for example, Conleth Hill with his George Lucas, JRR Martin, Charlton Heston Moses look was hidden from me by the staging.