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Post by peggs on Sept 13, 2021 19:06:25 GMT
Saw sat and watched with assurance I could come on here afterwards and find out what I'd missed exactly. I didn't pick up on the bits that people have spoilered, well I wondered about one part and wouldn't have got references to the other. I'm not sure quite what I thought. My surrounding audience wound me up which didn't help and there was something in what theatrefan77 says about the size of the theatre, I was row J but felt fairly distanced, could have been a nice claustrophic effect in a smaller place but you'd have lost the visual impact I guess and that chilling speech possibly? It reconfimred that Patsy Ferran is so far proving to be worth watching in anything and Luke Thallon did himself no harm either, the nuances of their characters ably portrayed I think. The kissing shocked me, covid not prudiness. |
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Post by Mark on Sept 14, 2021 20:39:18 GMT
Brilliant acting in this from Ferran and Thallon. Both of them could well be Olivier nominated for this. I really liked the play, and have read through the thread since I came out of the theatre and I think either of the options discussed could be true. I didn’t pick up the references to the Jewish doctor and potential need for an overnight stay, but I think I’d lean towards the “yes she was” pregnant as opposed to not |
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Post by Forrest on Sept 14, 2021 21:19:31 GMT
Mark yes, absolutely, Ferran and Thallon are both just absolutely wonderful and I also would not be surprised if their performances were noticed in the awards-nominating circles. peggs, I giggled at your covid-shock at the kissing scenes. :) But yes, we truly haven't seen those in a while, have we?!
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Post by londonpostie on Sept 14, 2021 21:28:50 GMT
So pleased to have gone again. Someone should say it so thank you to Bank of Canada for sponsoring this work - it's excellent art: Ok, I was there 6 days ago and so the rewrites are noticeable , spoilers all the way, I'm afraid >
{Spoiler - click to view}
The rewrites seem to address quite a lot of what we’ve discussed here. On the big one – the is she or isn’t she – I’ll quote three lines which seemed new or repurposed:
• “Are you having a … baby!?” “Yes”
• Shouting: “You’re a monster. I’ll get rid of this if I have to tear it out of my body myself”
• On explaining her overnight stay: “So this is embarrassing but I went to visit a doctor who specialises in … women’s problems”. Iirc, this was previously described as the only Dr available. She says twice she visits because of the blisters on her feet.
The ambiguity has diminished in her emotional interaction but in the cool explanation .. well, Iirc, the Neocons called it plausible deniability.
Some other things that I probably picked up more on from relaxing into the work (rather than it being differently emphasised):
The repeated use of ‘dummy’ seems to be his subconscious expressing ‘yes, I did target you at the dance (the first scene) because you looked alone and naïve’. I don’t *think* she uses ‘dummy’ anymore.
I really picked up on where she had the epiphany, when before I was preoccupied with developments. Fwiw, Central Park (humanity in so many types), the letters in the phone book and the experience of the family’s home life – fwiw, they are still having broth with dumplings, but Rachel has been joined by Sam (I think it was Josh before) - maybe a change for the UK audience. Wifey is still receptionist and thank goodness they haven’t resorted to using a family name.
The Gods: Siegfried and Brunhilde: He says almost at the end “I am a killer, not a God”. Which is helpful and, for me, also made clearer the purpose of the wrestling match and the opponent who landed on his skull. As for her … possibly a looser translation of the legend.
The ending: where before I *thought* there were faint whiffs of Trump and Brexit were no longer (always a messy proposition anyway). Instead, it now felt more clearly as if we were on the cusp of historic events, winds of change, young people staring at fate, destiny, and also choices.
My own added denouement: He clearly dies in agony at Stalingrad with guts spilling down his Lederhosen. During the war, she translates documents from German for the US Government before later becoming a successful writer on I Love Lucy, and a grandmother to 10 Italian-Americans.
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Post by Steve on Sept 15, 2021 15:31:17 GMT
I saw this on Saturday night, and thought it was terrific! Some spoilers follow. . . Bess Wohl is basically attempting to achieve a holy grail of playwrighting, which is to address why so many people got caught up in Nazism (eg why the Nuremberg rallies were so popular when what they led to was so evil), in a way that doesn't come across as heavy-handed and didactic. And she massively succeeds partly by diverting the play to a Nazi Summer Camp in New York, but mostly by going all Romeo-and-Juliet young-love on us for most of the playing time. The way she uses words is captivating. For example, one moment the word "dummy" describes teen-self-hatred, one moment it is a term-of-endearment, and in yet another moment, it is a verbal ball in a power game. The freestyling changes of meaning perfectly match the changes in perpective of two young people forever changing and growing up. And no two actors could better portray youthfulness, and the corruption of youthfulness, than the two actors in this show. For example, it is both delightfully recognisably universal, as well as hilarious, the way Luke Thallon muscularly chops wood in an attempt to flex for a female, his exertions followed up by microexpressions of extreme pride, and then microexpressions of a plunging sudden and severe self-doubt. So too is it delightfully recognisably universal the way Patsy Ferran reveals minutiae of her character's life with a breathlessness and relentlessness that veers from staccato self-conceit to stumbling self-conciousness. That this rollercoaster of youthfulness will be co-opted by the evil Camp Siegfried to indoctrinate these kids is obvious. But the moment to moment interactions between the two characters are anything but obvious, allowing audience members to joyously ride a youthful rollercoaster of emotions, as well as experience the suspense as to where this might lead for each character. A really pithy and poignant play, at 90 minutes, beautifully acted! 5 stars from me.  |
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Post by andrew on Sept 15, 2021 16:04:17 GMT
You lot are very clever.
It's a great play, that's all I'm smart enough to say.
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Post by cavocado on Sept 16, 2021 13:19:15 GMT
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Post by couldileaveyou on Sept 16, 2021 13:30:11 GMT
It's so annoying this doesn't have rush tickets (yet)
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Post by couldileaveyou on Sept 23, 2021 23:43:20 GMT
Saw it tonight and really enjoyed it. Luke Thallon and Patsy Ferran are both wonderful and have great chemistry. Patsy in particular must be one of the finest actresses of her generation, I (selfishly) hope we won't lose her to the big and/or small screen. I thought the last few minutes let the (very fine) play down a little, but on the whole it was truly excellent. I think it would also work very well as a movie.
It's selling very poorly – the stalls was half empty, and the circle almost empty. I scored a ticket on row F of the stalls for 20£ fifteen minutes before curtain. I hope they'll start putting some deals online or on TodayTix, it deserves a wider audience
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Post by marob on Sept 24, 2021 9:36:45 GMT
Had a phone call 2 days ago to tell me they’d added extra seats, and checking if I was ok with no longer being on the aisle. Had an email today to say the performance is cancelled as they are reducing the number of performances due to “a slower than anticipated return to theatre by audiences.”
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Post by zahidf on Sept 24, 2021 12:51:29 GMT
I thought it was great, and the cast wonderful
I had a pillar seat which was upgraded to nearer the front of stalls. Looks like its selling very poorly, which is a shame, as i enjoyed it a lot
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Post by Mark on Sept 24, 2021 13:28:28 GMT
they are reducing the number of performances due to “a slower than anticipated return to theatre by audiences.” Hmm, that might be what they think but: £65/£55 for a decent seat. Not being sold on TodayTix (with or without discount) Not being sold ok TKTS (again, with or without discount) Minimal advertising 2 great actors of course, who may be known to some in the theatre community, but certainly not well known names. It's not the audiences not returning - it's because their marketing and pricing structure is inadequate for current times and they haven't adapted. You only need to look at certain shows which are selling to know where the market is right now. (That said, I still loved the play, so please do go!) |
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Post by marob on Sept 24, 2021 19:47:05 GMT
It's not the audiences not returning - it's because their marketing and pricing structure is inadequate for current times and they haven't adapted. You only need to look at certain shows which are selling to know where the market is right now. (That said, I still loved the play, so please do go!) Yeah, I thought the reason given was a bit off. I was in London a few weeks back and, except for Prince of Egypt, everything I saw looked pretty much full. After the past 18 months I can understand people not rushing to book a play with Hitler in the trailer. |
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Post by joem on Sept 25, 2021 22:28:24 GMT
Enjoyed this quite a bit, good writing and excellent acting - especially from Patsy Ferran who grows as the play progresses. I thought at first they both looked old for the parts but their acting abilities soon won me over. Not so sure about the aftermath following the big speech. It's a bit like those Shakespeare plays where the remaining characters rake over the embers and then all go off to a feast. Comes down a bit too much.
But have to say that the play is well written and does pose plenty of personal/political questions to keep you busy. Of course the context in which these camps happened is important, not just to understand the now but also to understand the then. What we take as inevitable is not always so, there was a very strong pro-Nazi undercurrent in the US before - and to a lesser extent even during - the Second World War and a much bigger group who simply wanted nothing to do with problems in Europe. With a few minor changes this might easily have led to permanent neutrality in the conflict for the US and a Nazi Europe for decades or more. Anyone interested in going beyond this play might wish to read "Hitler In Los Angeles" by Steven J Ross. Camp Siegfried was only a part of a much larger effort to indoctrinate and to subvert democracy.
Insofar as the personal relations, clearly the male is a less complex character and is typical of the type who was taken in by the paraphernalia and promises of the Reich and its fellow travellers. He wants to fit into something, he wants to prove he is a man... so procreation and the wish to fight provide simple solutions. For her part the girl wants to be loved, she wants to fit in too, but she sees the difficulties in simply falling unquestioningly into a mould - whether as gossipy teen, mother, "German" or whatever. This conflict in their aims/aspirations is what creates the personal drama which complements the politics of the piece.
Anyway, we pride ourselves - like all generations - as being far superior to what went before and really having a clear vision of the past, present and future. Typical human hubris, I'm afraid. Future generations will laugh at us and despise us as we laugh and despise others who came before. The theatre is the ideal forum to learn empathy and understand others but for many it merely serves to confirm their prejudices and superiority. You can lead a horse to water......
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Post by david on Oct 11, 2021 21:02:08 GMT
First show of my London week and it’s off to a great start. Having a upgraded seat in the stalls was a nice last minute bonus and it’s a shame that there where plenty of empty seats as Bess Wohl really has written a wonderful piece here that challenges you both as the play unfolds and leaves you with plenty to chew over afterwards. As a two hander, both Patsy Ferran and Luke Thallon are terrific. I’ll never get bored of watching Patsy on stage. A wonderful stage actress.
Reading the programme notes, Bess Wohl notes that she hopes that the play can be used as a reminder about hate and anti-semitism in society and certainly despite Camp Siegfried being 70 odd years ago, the fight for an equitable society still goes on.
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Post by couldileaveyou on Oct 11, 2021 21:11:30 GMT
Reading the programme notes, Bess Wohl notes that she hopes that the play can be used as a reminder about hate and anti-semitism in society and certainly despite Camp Siegfried being 70 odd years ago, the fight for an equitable society still goes on. This is interesting! I thought that on the whole the play was quite lenient on antisemitism – they are pretty much Trumpian, MAGA nazis that you would expect pulling out a smartphone and start tweeting from their young republican accounts. The antisemitic aspect of Nazi politcs were discussed rather briefly (and I think the doctor and his family became less clearly Jewish during previews) and they weren't a big part of the protagonists' social and political identity. I actually thought that Wohl willingly glossed over racism/antisemitism to make Him & Her a bit more sympathetic. |
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Post by david on Oct 11, 2021 21:19:56 GMT
Reading the programme notes, Bess Wohl notes that she hopes that the play can be used as a reminder about hate and anti-semitism in society and certainly despite Camp Siegfried being 70 odd years ago, the fight for an equitable society still goes on. This is interesting! I thought that on the whole the play was quite lenient on antisemitism – they are pretty much Trumpian, MAGA nazis that you would expect pulling out a smartphone and start tweeting from their young republican accounts. The antisemitic aspect of Nazi politcs were discussed rather briefly (and I think the doctor and his family became less clearly Jewish during previews) and they weren't a big part of the protagonists' social and political identity. I actually thought that Wohl willingly glossed over racism/antisemitism to make Him & Her a bit more sympathetic. I think this play definitely has a lot to talking points by the different conversations people were having on the way out tonight about what BW was trying to convey over the 90 minutes. |
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Post by cavocado on Oct 12, 2021 7:54:16 GMT
Reading the programme notes, Bess Wohl notes that she hopes that the play can be used as a reminder about hate and anti-semitism in society and certainly despite Camp Siegfried being 70 odd years ago, the fight for an equitable society still goes on. This is interesting! I thought that on the whole the play was quite lenient on antisemitism – they are pretty much Trumpian, MAGA nazis that you would expect pulling out a smartphone and start tweeting from their young republican accounts. The antisemitic aspect of Nazi politcs were discussed rather briefly (and I think the doctor and his family became less clearly Jewish during previews) and they weren't a big part of the protagonists' social and political identity. I actually thought that Wohl willingly glossed over racism/antisemitism to make Him & Her a bit more sympathetic. I thought the writing was clever in the way it portrayed the psychology of Nazism and the way that radicalisation works by targeting people's insecurities to draw them into an ideology that promises a sense of belonging, purpose, superiority. More overtly antisemitic characters might have made it easier for the audience to distance themselves.
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Post by pledge on Oct 28, 2021 21:33:25 GMT
Afraid I found this another rather unsatisfying two-hander (see also the undercooked Night Mother and the dreadful Rice). Though intelligent and original, this felt like a sequence of scenes illustrating a theme, rather than a fully worked out and developed drama: over the course of less than a month we see two (incredibly over-articulate?) teenagers change, in one case from a complete shrinking violet to a sexually and politically aggressive sixteen year old Hitlerian (and incidentally from barely being able to muster two words of German to a star public speaker). And though we are presented with the characters as having changed scene by scene, we don’t really see very much of the changing: unlike, say C P Taylor’s “Good”, in which we experience with him the “hero’s” terrible doubts, choices and betrayals, as he gradually becomes Nazified against his will. There’s also more than one scene which rather reeks of the Creative Writing Exercise (“List twenty different ways for your characters to say I Love You”) including a final (I would guess) three page speech of perfectly formed rhetoric - impressive as a piece of Fine Writing, but again hard to believe coming from a distressed adolescent. After about forty minutes I was longing for them to stop talking, and just Be for a few moments of reality. I also found the allusions to Trumpism a bit crowbarred in, and the irony (“It’s 1938...just think how wonderful things will be by 1940”) a tad obvious. All credit to the understudy cast, mind, who threw themselves into it with a will, and were technically irreproachable - in fact I suspect that in their determination to Give It Everything some nuance may have been lost? But further evidence of just how hard the two-hander format is to master; scene after scene of two people just Saying Aloud What They Think isn’t really enough...
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Post by lonlad on Oct 28, 2021 21:59:51 GMT
>>All credit to the understudy cast, mind, who threw themselves into it with a will, and were technically irreproachable
Did you go to an understudy runthrough or were Luke and Patsy BOTH off, which seems unlikely? I must say, their performances are as fine as anything London has seen all year.
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Post by rumbledoll on Oct 28, 2021 22:21:02 GMT
>>All credit to the understudy cast, mind, who threw themselves into it with a will, and were technically irreproachable Did you go to an understudy runthrough or were Luke and Patsy BOTH off, which seems unlikely? I must say, their performances are as fine as anything London has seen all year. I have a ticket for Oct 30, they are both off due to covid reasons it says in the email.. but it makes sense if one of them is ill, the other is the contact... I was so much looking forward to this but now I'd rather pass.. hope they both will be alright soon! |
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Post by cavocado on Oct 29, 2021 7:26:32 GMT
Interesting to hear pledge's impressions of an understudy cast. Patsy Ferran and Luke Thallon were so good, but I thought the play had flaws which are probably more apparent with understudies. One point though, I think the time scale is 2-3 months, not less than a month. But I agree it's a big change of heart/ideology for both, and they are astonishingly articulate teenagers. |
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Post by lonlad on Oct 29, 2021 8:46:52 GMT
Wow, that's amazing given that the run finishes tomorrow. So I guess Luke and Patsy won't be seen in this again -- a shame. They were quite something together. (And, yes, the time scale is indeed several months.)
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Post by jamesxxx on Oct 29, 2021 9:53:35 GMT
Excuse me. I saw this last night. Did I not see Luke and Patsy. No mention anywhere they were off. I booked 2 hours before. Outrageous. I wouldn't have gone had I known.
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Post by lonlad on Oct 29, 2021 11:03:57 GMT
I hope you DID see Luke and Patsy! google image them and you should be able to tell immediately whom you saw ..... they're both very distinctive performers, especially Patsy!
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