A Little Life - Richmond/Harold Pinter/Savoy/ Cinema

Poll added, let us know what your ratings are.

 Today Tix has a lottery which appears to be open from 25 March.

Here tonight. Note they give out says 1 hours 50 for Act 1, 20 min interval and 1 hours 30 for Act 2.

First half about an hour 42 mins. Went by quickly

Anyone would think we all want it to be over and done with as quickly as possible going by these posts! There’s always Six or My Son’s A Queer…

What are those who’ve seen it in Richmond making of it, other than the run time?

Thanks Foxa and dillon for your early reviews.

I am seeing it this weekend, so will be sure to report back.

I would expect Ivo Van Hove’s production to be pretty marmite. Bare set, possible camera work, TV or projections, smoke, loud music (?), but also tremendously committed performances. I’m not as sold on his productions generally though as sometimes something can get lost in how characters interact with each other.

Certainly the cast is great, and I’ve really enjoyed James Norton (in Bug, less so Belleville) and Luke Thompson (in Oresteia and Hamlet), so this is what made it a must see for me. I haven’t read the book.

Was the performance still “preview-y”? I would normally have avoided early performances but the lure of easy access and slightly cheaper tickets to Richmond persuaded me.

Btw, you don’t have to answer Foxa but was yours the 2 star rating? I guess I’m curious as the early ratings stand out and its good to know what the poster of a rating thought before the other reviews and ratings come in.

Was also there last night. First thing I'll say is do NOT go to this show on an empty stomach 

Overall I would say this is 4 stars for me.  The performances were excellent, highlight for me was Luke Thompson as Willem.  They hit all of the points in the story pretty much exactly as I would have expected them to, and the parts they had to cut weren't really missed.  I loved the sound design and having a small group of musicians wasn't something I was expecting, but added so much to the general feeling of unease and horror.  There were a few weird noises happening throughout which sounded like the whining you hear sometimes when automated parts of set are moving, but nothing was moving so I am not sure if they were intentional?

The star I knocked off is mainly down to some of the directing choices - this is very much a Van Hove production and I've never been the biggest fan of his work.  Some of these weird choices have already been mentioned in this thread.  If you aren't sat in the front stalls a lot of the stuff happening on stage can only be seen if you are sitting at the extreme sides of a row - for example i was sat house right (not in a restricted view seat) and I couldn't see at all anything that JB or Malcolm were doing on stage left, or any of the projections that were on that side.  Heard a lot of people saying what a weird directing choice the ending was


I'm really glad I'd listened to the audiobook in advance, some of the character switching could be a bit confusing if not familiar with the story.

I'm also going again tonight and will be sat on the end of the front row of the on stage seats (because I am a nightmare for FOMO with these sorts of things).  Slightly dreading it - the people sat on stage are VERY visibly lit, and getting to and from the seats looked like a military operation.  Also noticed they were making those sat on stage put their phones in those locked pouches.

Thank you jamb0r - great to hear so much about it. I remember seeing Van Hove’s All About Eve and the set was similar, with part of the set and the action taking place in the wings on either side of the stage - making a full view rather challenging from many seats at the Noel Coward.

I’ll be very interested to hear about your on-stage experience as that’s where I’m sat when I see it at the Pinter at the end of April (centre front row - eeek). It sounds like black jeans and a black tee might be a good idea so I’m as inconspicuous as possible!

I went last night too.
Running at three hours and forty minutes, this stage version of Hanya Yanagihara's best seller is certainly asking too much from the audience. Belgian theatre star director Ivo Van Hove has adapted the story as a play and I am afraid it didn't work at all for me, reaffirming my scepticism about stage adaptations of novels. One wonders why directors are so fond of them.They rarely work, as novels and plays are two very different beasts, each with its own time-scale constraints and conventions. it is almost impossible to cram the information contained in a novel into the structure of a stage play and Van Hove has been no exception: it fails. I have not read the novel, but I understand it is a seven hundred page door-stopper. Is it possible to fit all those pages into a play? The answer for me is no, it is not.
The action stretches through a sizeable length of time in the lives of four characters, four young New York professionals, four stereotypes: an artist, a lawyer, an actor...well, you know it all. We have seen them before many times in many novels and plays. There is nothing wrong with working with types. To a large extent, it is what writers must do, particularly playwrights: to turn individuals into "everymen" so readers or audiences identify with fictional characters. It is what you do with these types that matters.
The problem with Van Hove's adaptation is that the director has had to make very tough decisions in order to trim the river of vicissitudes that is the novel, packing all that into a manageable stage play, and one suspects a lot of the novel's strength has been lost in the process.
The play has basically concentrated on the character of Jude, one of the "boys in the band", so to speak, played with great skill by celebrity "du jour" James Norton, including a much talked about in the press full nudity. Jude is a seriously damaged man as a result of the horrific sexual abuse he suffered until he hit fifteen. The rest of the four characters soon all but disappear from the scene, except kind-hearted Willem, who helps Jude overcome his traumas through friendship and love.
Although stealing the reader from a comfortable happy ending, I understand that there is a redemptive element in the novel that, sadly, is lacking in the play, leaving us unhappy after the four hour smorgasbord of misery, and somewhat puzzled as to the fate and the point of the other characters, which is a huge fault, I think.
The story has a strong -and for me very controversial- message about the seemingly irreversible damages caused by child abuse, but one wonders why Van Hove bothered with it at all, as the novel no doubt can make a better point of that than his staging, which somewhat cheats us of any redemption-through-friendship present in Yanagihara's plot.
Ultimately, the play, and I suspect that the novel too, has little to add to what we already know about child trauma in wealthy Western societies, and it felt to me as yet another piece of American Hollywood sensationalist drivel, not much different from seventies titillating, best-selling "exposés" such as "Go Ask Alice" or "Born Innocent". Having said that, like those old stories, I suppose that "A Little Life" does its job giving visual form to the chilling consequences of abuse, and that is its point: theatre as journalism.

Saw this tonight and having recently finished the book,it was clear where the cuts had been made. While it was a shame to not see more of the other character's lives, I think it was right to mainly focus on Jude.

The whole cast was great, but I have no idea how James Norton is going to do that role every night for the rest of the run, he was fantastic.

I didn't understand why the screens were just running film on a loop and at times some of the music felt a bit too loud and distracting. That being said, having the live band there did really add to the piece. Some of the sound effects also felt too loud at times, especially when they were in Andy's surgery.

It was a hard watch at times, but I expected that and overall felt this was a good adaption of the novel.

Well my experience of being on stage last night almost pushed this to being 5 stars for me - it was an incredible experience. Anyone who has on stage seats - you’re in for a treat!

Getting to the seats was a bit like a military operation. We received an email the day before with a VERY long list of rules that had to be followed. We had to get there very early and line up in our row groups outside and have our phones locked in those Yondr pouches. Getting on stage was fascinating for any theatre nerd, having to walk through lots of the technical areas of backstage which I loved.

The actual action takes place literally inches from you. I was sat on the end of the front row on stage right which was £25 and had an incredible view with the cast regularly brushing my leg to get on and off stage. However a LOT of the more traumatic events happened within arms reach of where I was sat, so definitely not for the squeamish. Most scenes are played very well for those on stage with the actors mainly facing side on. I would say there was maybe 3 or 4 scenes totalling about 20 minutes where the actors were standing with their backs totally to us, but it really wasn’t that much of a problem.

These seats are a huge bargain - I would say the £25 ones had just as good a view as the £35 ones. I’d definitely recommend the seat I was in (which was AA14 in Richmond, not sure if they’ll have the same numbers elsewhere).

Now that I’ve seen this twice, there were a couple of flubbed lines from Norton last night, and one of the blood effects didn’t work at all later in the play, but everything still felt pretty polished and not preview-y at all.