Eureka Day - Old Vic

Hello, does anyone know when the onstage seating goes onsale for this?
Thanks!

I think that is just an error on the Old Vic website. I believe as A Christmas Carol has them, it automatically adds them to all the seating plans. Here they are said to be 'sold out' when they wont actually exist for this production at all. I think they have had this issue before. 

I had forgotten PWC was today and so I was late to the queue. Stalls seats long gone, so annoyed with myself. Still used the 4000 Miles credit, left with some change from that. Looks like there is a new OV Loyalty scheme for direct bookings too, small number of points for cheap bookings and some more for opting in. I suspect it'll take a lot of PWC previews to add up to any sort of discount but slow and steady etc etc.

Managed to get in very painlessly earlier. Might’ve been first in the queue as I arrived at 12pm and managed to get central row L for a Helen show. Never got PwC tickets before as I always forget but wow, what a bargain!! Very happy today

Tell that to Amy Adams - tickets readily available for the entire run of Menagerie.

Indeed! I was surprised Amy Adams did not attract more people. Compare that with Jodie Comer!

Academy Award, Golden Globe and Emmy winning actor Helen Hunt? I would say she is quite a big name. 

www.instagram.com/tv/CglwivKF-H0/?igshid=YmMyMTA2M2Y=

A rather American cast?

Susan Kelechi Watson was my favourite thing about This Is Us. I’m more excited to see her on stage than I am Helen Hunt! Even more happy with my front row centre PWC ticket now!

The running time in New York is reported as being 1:50 including (a presumably 15-minute) interval.

Does anyone have any insider knowledge of whether the Old Vic production is likely to be much different, aside from a likely longer interval?

I got that too. Any first-hand reports of what time the show ended tonight?

Saw this tonight, and agree with everything Al said: "extremely funny and thought-provoking!" The cast is uniformly terrific, the writing is clever, the first half is hilarious, the second half dramatically impactful. Really great theatre, well-worth a trip!

Some spoilers follow. . .

A school committee at a very liberal school tries to give everyone a hearing, but when mumps comes a calling, how do you bridge the line between vaxxers and anti-vaxxers?

There's a "Gods of Carnage" vibe of inevitability about these good souls falling out, but at the same time, this isn't as misanthropic as that play, a lot more complex than the idea that everyone is simply hiding an inner savage. In that sense, it's actually more interesting and I was a lot less sure about what would happen, which is great.

At the same time, it's always a lot less funny when people in shows are not going all the way savage lol.

Spector ingeniously manages to have his cake and eat it, in Act 1, by having a zoom meeting between the committee and the parents at the school. This imports a kind of anonymous social media savagery into the mix, which coupled with the hapless reactions of the committee, makes for some of the best stage comedy I've ever seen. The information flow is so fast and furious and funny, it is impossible to take it all in, and makes this a play it would be fun to see again, just to try to take in what you missed the first time round lol.

The second half of the play is less funny, more poignant, and all together, it's an exceptional play, although I yearned for more of the sheer unmanageable wildness of the scene that ended the first half, which the playwright denied me.

The players were terrific too.

I'm most familiar with Helen Hunt, having seen a bunch of nineties and noughties movies once upon a time. From her movies, I'd say her biggest strengths are her witty humour (eg arguing with Bill Paxton in "Twister," where, with exquisite comic timing, she pushes all his buttons deliberately) and her ability to emote extreme compassion (eg in "Project X" or "The Sessions" or "As Good as it gets," where, by wide-eyed, raised-brow, open countenanced empathy, I found myself crying over, in turn, the pain of experimental chimps, a man in an iron lung, and of all things, the meanest man in the world lol). Here, Hunt's talents are utilised in reverse, with her being the stiff hapless butt, rather than the witty loose instigator, of jokes, and her compassion is similarly polluted with a rigidity, whereby you half suspect she'll morph into Nurse Ratched at any minute and smother and destroy everything she purportedly stands for. It's a fascinating and beautifully calibrated performance that kept me off balance and interested for the duration.

By contrast, Mark McKinney's committee moderator is so predictably precise about sitting smack in the middle of every fence, that watching the plot constantly and cruelly throw him off balance is endlessly amusing as well as endearing.

The character I most identified with was Susan Kelechi Watson's Carina, a newcomer to the school committee, whose silent, raised eyebrowed, disbelief at all the extreme cosseted customs, was relatable and funny. By the most minimal micro-expressions, Kelechi Watson got laughs inversely proportional to how little she did to get them. The more she disguised her exasperation, the funnier it all was.

Anyhow, I loved this show, and I will certainly see it again.

4 and a half stars from me.