David Hare's Beat the Devil

OMG OMG OMG BRIDGE THEATRE OPENING!

Now this is the kind of news I'd like more of! I have no idea how much tickets will be but I'll be going!

It sounds dull but I guess with Ralph Fiennes it will be a commercial success.
(E.g. Alan Rickman Helen Mirren Antony and Cleopatra)

It's sad that todaytix only are selling pairs. Apart from anything it's encouraging people to flout the rules as there is no way everyone with a pair of tickets is going with someone in their 'bubble'. Personally, I wouldn't sit in the park 6ft from a friend and then going into the theatre and share an armrest with them but we are really being incentivised not to care!

Personally I couldn't care less how Sir David Hare managed to cope with Covid. It's incredible how he can get anything he writes fast-tracked onto our major stages, usually the NT - it's the exact opposite of promoting diversity. 

I suspect it won't be long before we have the Hare Theatre

"Hare today gone tomorrow" doesn't really sum up the career of Sir David Hare, better would be "Hare today, yesterday, and tomorrow". I remember when Trevor Nunn took over at the NT Hare threw an enormous strop and denounced him as entirely unsuitable for the job with one of his arguments being "I don't even know him". Nunn then ushered in a golden period by becoming the only South Bank supremo not to stage a Hare play, a proud record he still holds. 

Saw this yesterday. Not a Hare fan but it was just great to be seeing a live performance for the first time since March! And I thought the play was pretty good, and Fiennes was excellent. Please to report he went Full Rigsby within 30 seconds of the show starting. Had a £10 seat in the front row which was an amazing bargain and just about socially distant enough from Ralph.

Very impressed with how the Bridge have set things up for this. You're given an entry timeslot (mine was between 4:25 and 4:40 for the 5PM show), you queue to enter the building, get tickets checked then have to look up to a temperature scanner mounted on the ceiling, then you're into the foyer where the bars, toilets etc are open as usual. At 4:40 we were then asked to go down and take our seats while they started letting in the next bunch of people. You don't HAVE to take your seat at this point though, and if you are later than your timeslot you can still get in, this is just about managing flow of people and numbers.

In the auditorium the FOH staff were very alert to people not wearing masks before the show - one of the ushers was just in front of me and was on her radio telling someone to go and remind someone in the gallery who had slipped their mask off. Unfortunately the guy next to me (well, 2 metres away) took his mask off to have a drink and then kept it off for about half the show. I guess not a lot they can do about that.

After the show you are directed out a different way, from the stalls we ended up going out of a side entrance and out through a fire exit to the side of the building. So no access to the loos afterwards although maybe you can ask if you need them. But I guess this is to give them time to clean everything before the next performance.

Saw this earlier today and also enjoyed it (more than I thought I would, to be honest): some of the laughter from the audience seemed a bit misplaced (I don’t know in what universe saying you looked like a Bosnian concentration camp attendee signifies that loud laughter should ensue) and to tell the truth, looking round I got the impression the bulk of the audience voted for this government but Fiennes was really good (although having read the Rigsby comment before going in, I was anticipating a ‘Miss Jones!’ moment to drop at any second) so good in fact, I stood up to give him a standing ovation when he came out for the second applause at the end (I think it was probably only me doing that but looking round before it started, there only seemed to be half a dozen people under the age of 60 so maybe they weren’t up for such decadent behaviour)

Honestly, when I saw this saturday afternoon I did not feel like the audience were Conservative voters at all, given how they reacted to the piece's criticisms of the government, no matter their age.

Though I would not agree that there were only a half dozen under age of 60, either. Most looked to be middle-aged to me.

Was he ever a Blairite?  I seem to remember him being critical of New Labour's lack of radicalism from the start.  But I've never heard him say anything about Corbyn, whom I can't imagine him supporting either, even if he agrees with more of the latter's positions.