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Post by lynette on Jan 27, 2021 16:51:09 GMT
On Sunday at 7pm from. Jermyn St, a reading but looks good cast and Jermyn St have been very competent in getting stuff out to us. I think on YouTube
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Post by Jan on Jan 27, 2021 18:37:05 GMT
On Sunday at 7pm from. Jermyn St, a reading but looks good cast and Jermyn St have been very competent in getting stuff out to us. I think on YouTube Yes could be worthwhile. A rare play, you'll never see it produced again.
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Post by lynette on Feb 5, 2021 15:27:09 GMT
They are doing She Stoops to Conquer on Wednesday. Easier to follow and more well known.
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Post by theatrelover123 on Feb 5, 2021 17:53:49 GMT
They are doing She Stoops to Conquer on Wednesday. Easier to follow and more well known. Excellent. Do you have more details about this?
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Post by peggs on Feb 5, 2021 20:34:04 GMT
Ohh no so many things, so little time!
I sort of watched Love in a Wood, as in I watched but also sort of browsed other things, I was a little confused and reflecting how restoration comedy (I think i've seen maybe two?) is a lot of couples getting up to things or being thought to be getting up to things, and people spying on other people and marriage market and a bit of lies and deceit and wondering if you saw this staged they'd literally be running round a wood hiding behind trees?
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Post by Jan on Feb 6, 2021 13:05:04 GMT
Ohh no so many things, so little time! I sort of watched Love in a Wood, as in I watched but also sort of browsed other things, I was a little confused and reflecting how restoration comedy (I think i've seen maybe two?) is a lot of couples getting up to things or being thought to be getting up to things, and people spying on other people and marriage market and a bit of lies and deceit and wondering if you saw this staged they'd literally be running round a wood hiding behind trees? Yes I found it hard to follow the plot, but I expected this as it is hard to follow most of these restoration comedies in the theare too. That's not the only barrier, much of their humour is also satirical and so is totally lost on us because we are too far distant from that era. You very rarely get a good theatre production, and then only with the very top comic actors involved.
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Post by peggs on Feb 6, 2021 15:54:32 GMT
You may well have a point, I think I was rather confused when I see a restoration comedy in the theatre too.
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Post by lynette on Feb 6, 2021 19:05:59 GMT
They are doing She Stoops to Conquer on Wednesday. Easier to follow and more well known. Excellent. Do you have more details about this? Seems to be for ‘Friends’ only. Sorry. But might be worth joining with future offerings...
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Post by TallPaul on Feb 7, 2021 10:01:37 GMT
In Balancing Acts, Nicholas Hytner writes about restoration comedy being both popular and widely understood as recently as his teenage years. He was born in 1956 so, if I've done the maths right, that's circa 1969 to 1976. Its demise must have been rapid!
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Post by theatrelover123 on Feb 7, 2021 10:10:18 GMT
Ahhh yes that rapid 40 year demise
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Post by Jan on Feb 7, 2021 11:50:50 GMT
In Balancing Acts, Nicholas Hytner writes about restoration comedy being both popular and widely understood as recently as his teenage years. He was born in 1956 so, if I've done the maths right, that's circa 1969 to 1976. Its demise must have been rapid! Yes. They used to be a staple of rep before that, but these days you’ll find it almost impossible to see many of the most famous ones, I can think of very few Congreve productions in the last 30 years or so. In the 1980s the Royal Court got a reputation for staging them in a pared back almost Brechtian way, which was an idea, but not a very good one. I think if the NT spent their entire production budget on casting it would work, otherwise not.
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Post by lynette on Feb 7, 2021 12:03:43 GMT
School for Scandal is fabulous. The later She Stoops is superb. What was the one the Donmar did most recently, a really fabulous production, not stuffed with stars and with a ‘diverse’ casting? Saw it twice ( memory gone lockdown ish..) Anyway, I agree the language is dense and the jokes sometimes too of the moment for us, unlike Shakespeare which can be acted ‘funny’. But if paced right and if the actors know what is going on, these plays do mark a particularly interesting time in politics and in theatre history and they are often, really funny, really on the ball with human vanity.
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Post by Jan on Feb 7, 2021 12:42:55 GMT
Another genre, still quite popular, where the plots are hard to follow is Jacobean revenge tragedies. If you don’t concentrate intensely in the first five minutes you have no chance because there’s normally a big section of exposition telling you what’s going on in the Italian court in1500.
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Post by lynette on Feb 11, 2021 15:28:37 GMT
The Jermyn St reading of She Stoops was very good. It showed how much clearer the language is and the plotting so much Packer and funnier than say Love in a Wood. Great little play.
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Post by Jan on Feb 11, 2021 19:04:34 GMT
The Jermyn St reading of She Stoops was very good. It showed how much clearer the language is and the plotting so much Packer and funnier than say Love in a Wood. Great little play. Yes it is a good play - I've seen it twice at NT, the first of those with Tom Baker and Dora Bryan was very funny, the second one directed by Jamie Lloyd was good too.
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