The Motive and the Cue - Lyttleton NT / Noel Coward

First review up!

Four stars from The Telegraph, The Times, Evening Standard, The Independent, The Stage, 3 stars from the graun though.


The press and social media seem a bit quiet for press night. It’s getting overshadowed by the news of the Met Gala, the Tony Awards nominations, and the Coronation. The show’s selling out fast and they have two more months so they have a lot to offer.

The Guardian was the only non 4 or 5 star review but I get the impression they don't like much theatre.

Must have missed that one!

Why would you want an American actress to play Elizabeth Taylor?

Elizabeth Taylor was British-American. She was born in London but her parents were both American (both her parents were from Kansas originally, and only came to Britain a couple of years before she was born). The family moved back to the US when she was 7, so she lived in the US for most of her life. She's certainly played here with an American accent, and to my ears one that is serviceable but not great.

Yes, I think most of us know that. But her early career was based on her having a British accent (which she had).  I think the whole point of the accent in the play was that it was an acquired one, not her native one. 

Mark Shenton the blogger did this once, I remember it was discussed on here a while back. He actually gave stars to the critics, it was quite entertaining to read (and then the people concerned had a laugh about this on twitter).

The Guardian wants obvious in-your-face contemporary relevance, as if today's audiences aren't competent to absorb meaningful content, more subtly presented. When Arifa Akbar reviewed the National's recent production of The Crucible, her three-star review was headed: "Director Lyndsey Turner misses the opportunity to give Arthur Miller’s allegory modern resonance with a too-faithful interpretation." She followed up by saying the National's production "might have borne more resonances to the group-think and scapegoating that recent populist narratives have peddled." Ms. Akbar went on to admire the design aspects of the production, as she does in her review of The Motive and the Cue.

When The Crucible originally opened on Broadway in 1953, it was clearly staged as a period piece set in 1692. Nevertheless, in his review in The New York Times, critic Brooks Atkinson wrote: "Neither Mr. Miller nor his audience are unaware of certain similarities between the perversions of justice then and today."

You don't have to hit audience members over the head in order to make the relevance point, but Guardian critics don't seem to get that. They need to appreciate that audiences can understand the subtle aspects of the text without dumbing it down.  

I can say the same a lot of the media these days. Not just in theatre but in newspapers, journals, magazines, and down to supposed 'fan' blogs there is an increasing number of journalists reviewing or writing about something they have no interest in or even have a disdain for the subject matter, and all they want to do is shove in their political views.

This Kotaku review of the Playstation 5 back in 2020 for example was heavily mocked for the way the writer went from giving a okay review of the console to just moaning about the state of the world at the end - kotaku.com/playstation-5-the-kotaku-review-1845588904. That and the things the Guardian theatre reviewer says are just a drop in the myriad of terrible pieces you can read out there.

It's funny you were suggesting about reviewing other people's reviews because on youtube there are an increasing number of channels who critique video reviews and essays to a minute detail. More geared towards film, video games and TV series. Admittedly they can go on for hours like EFAP (or Every Frame a Pause) www.youtube.com/@everyframeapause. As the title suggests they have live streams where they discuss every infinite detail about the latest media, video reviews and essays.

And believe me its very popular. Even I tune into some of these long livestreams. There's a hunger for objective and lengthy discussion about media that mainstream journalists are increasingly incapable of doing. A trend that's been going on since particularly 2016 when Star Wars The Last Jedi came out, a film that is famously polarised between critics and fans.

Yes the Guardian review is nonsense and Arifa Akbar has long seemed completely unsuited to the job.

But let that not distract from how superlatively wonderful this play is in every respect. It is instantly engaging and just gets better and better. It’s also given a really tip top production and full of fabulous performances.

I was reminded of seeing The History Boys (in the very same theatre) and the scene in which Richard Griffiths’ teacher character talks about reading something in a book by someone else that you yourself had previously thought was an original thought of your own it being like a hand reaching out to you (I’m paraphrasing badly!). That scene just had a magical effect on the audience as they thought about that idea and perhaps even felt that very thing about the statement itself.

Well for me, Gielgud’s speech about the theatre in the second half rivals that in its meta beauty and true theatre magic. The audience were so unbelievably intently listening - you could genuinely have heard the proverbial pin.

But it’s all just so, so, so good. Honestly if you have even the remotest passion for theatre as an art form, actors, Shakespeare, and/or just backstage gossip just get yourself a ticket.

I was able to get Friday Rush for Motive but that was before the reviews came out.