562 posts
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Stink
Oct 16, 2017 17:54:21 GMT
via mobile
Post by jadnoop on Oct 16, 2017 17:54:21 GMT
Bl**dy h*ll, the lack of compassion, and level of passive agressive self-centredness here is just ridiculous. Yep, we've all been out when something around us puts us off what we're there to see. Someone might smell funny/bad, or have an annoying tic, or breathe too loudly or whatever. But guess what? these things are mostly subjective. You might think someone stinks, but that toilet water you've slathered over yourself might not be all that sweet to your neighbour either. They might be doing that annoying tapping of their arm, but your watch clicking each second that you no longer notice might completely throw other people's concentration. Furthermore -believe it or not- not everyone can help these things, and characterizing everyone who smells simply as 'can't be bothered to shower' shows a complete lack of compassion. As though there couldn't be any reason for people to be like they are other than to annoy you. Lord knows no-one we would hang around with might go through a rough patch, or no longer be able to look after themselves to quite the standard that we would like. Don't get me wrong, it's frustrating when these things throw off a lovely night out, but I very much doubt everyone who you deem to be an assault on your senses is simply being so because they can't be bothered. And rather than dealing with things in a friendly and up-front manner, better to passively agressively spray them and then slink off onto the internet to bit*h anonymously to others. The height of compassionate, adult behaviour! edits: no idea what the board rules are on language Oh dear... sounds like we've touched a nerve here. Sure, I might smell terribly. Or I might be able to feel compassion for people who aren't me. It's probably one of the two. I've certainly had instances where the person sitting near me might be slightly smelly, or a bit too large on their seat, or breathing too loudly, or whatever. But I think there are nicer ways of dealing with it than muttering under my breath and then moaning later on in the school playground.
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Post by jadnoop on Oct 16, 2017 17:06:31 GMT
Bl**dy h*ll, the lack of compassion, and level of passive agressive self-centredness here is just ridiculous.
Yep, we've all been out when something around us puts us off what we're there to see. Someone might smell funny/bad, or have an annoying tic, or breathe too loudly or whatever.
But guess what? these things are mostly subjective. You might think someone stinks, but that toilet water you've slathered over yourself might not be all that sweet to your neighbour either. They might be doing that annoying tapping of their arm, but your watch clicking each second that you no longer notice might completely throw other people's concentration.
Furthermore -believe it or not- not everyone can help these things, and characterizing everyone who smells simply as 'can't be bothered to shower' shows a complete lack of compassion. As though there couldn't be any reason for people to be like they are other than to annoy you. Lord knows no-one we would hang around with might go through a rough patch, or no longer be able to look after themselves to quite the standard that we would like. Don't get me wrong, it's frustrating when these things throw off a lovely night out, but I very much doubt everyone who you deem to be an assault on your senses is simply being so because they can't be bothered.
And rather than dealing with things in a friendly and up-front manner, better to passively agressively spray them and then slink off onto the internet to bit*h anonymously to others. The height of compassionate, adult behaviour!
edits: no idea what the board rules are on language
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Post by jadnoop on Oct 11, 2017 12:48:30 GMT
The Stage comments are ridiculous, she is completely unable to be objective because of her personal opinions. It's not uncommon for people to call out reviewers for not being 'objective' enough, but I never really understand what that means. By definition any review of an artistic or cultural thing is going to be subjective. Sure, we each have our own concious and unconcious biases, but these will colour every aspect of a review: The way that we take in a story, or the subtexts that we do or don't see, whether we think something is faithful enough to the source material, whether it's funny or not (and whether or not we feel the humour to be intentional, or in good taste, or outdated), what we think of the music and the lighting and acting and whatnot are all going to be a reflection of our personal views and tastes. The fact that someone might view a work as an allegory for something, or in poor taste, or badly executed, or whatever doesn't make it more or less subjective than someone who views those things differently; it's just that their biases are slightly different. Indeed, the idea that a reviewer would try to curtail their subjective opinion seems to me to be entirely counter to the point of a review: Over the course of several articles the audience is able to get some idea of how a reviewer's tastes tally with their own. If reviewers started deliberately holding back on their thoughts to somehow be more representative of some unnamed everyman, then why bother having them in the first place? In the extreme, I suppose a truly objective review might be a dispassionate list of the technical specifications of each play.
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Post by jadnoop on Oct 11, 2017 11:43:21 GMT
Thanks for that. Did anyone else get an email from the Barbican about the on-sale date? I'm a member and didn't release booking opened today. I'm also a member, and didn't get any reminder about this one being on sale. This morning there was even a weekly email thing, which didn't mention it either which is weird.
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Post by jadnoop on Oct 11, 2017 10:16:48 GMT
Mark-Anthony Turnage's new opera, based on Neil Gaiman's Coraline is being performed at the Barbican next March & April. There doesn't seem to have been much noise about it, but tickets went on sale today for anyone interested: www.barbican.org.uk/whats-on/2018/event/the-royal-opera-coralineIf they're able to capture the mix of madcap fun and sinister undertones it could be great, but I think I'll wait for some feedback, or at least a few images to come out before deciding about tickets.
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Post by jadnoop on Oct 8, 2017 21:50:55 GMT
Wow. My expectations for this were sky high, and so I'm so pleased to say that it just blew me away.
It was beautiful and exciting, and filled with so many memorable & striking moments; a cello, a blue moon, a cherry blossom tree, and on and on.
I also really loved the framing with the shutters, and the old ladies eating onigiri & bento at the sides. The sword fighting also felt surprisingly visceral and exciting, especially when there were large groups of people.
Despite being 30 years old it felt so fresh. The one thing that possibly didn't work so well for me was the use of Adagio For Strings; beautiful, but a piece of music tgat has been used so often over the past few decades in film and tv. Given the melodrama of the performances though, even that seemed to fit wonderfully.
I wasn't sure about the translation. My Japanese isn't bad, and between that and knowing Macbeths rough storyline, I mostly just glanced occasionally at the surtitles, but there seemed to be some points where no translation was given but people were talking, so I'm not sure quite what was happening.
My one regret is that I didn't go for slightly more expensive seats. We went for central, but slightly higher level seats, and so some of the framing of the layers of action was probably lost. Fingers crossed they return to the uk soon. I'll definitely be getting better tickets next time.
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Post by jadnoop on Oct 3, 2017 17:29:32 GMT
Disappointing that there's still no news on Annie Baker's John. If I remember rightly it's supposed to be early 2018 Dorfman, so it seems strange that no info has come out about it.
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Post by jadnoop on Sept 12, 2017 12:15:08 GMT
Design by the Quay brothers! Despite quite liking the recent Caretaker, and No Man's Land runs, and loving Toby Jones as an actor, I was on the fence about this. However, the Quay brothers doing the design tips the balance for me. Absolutely love their short films and distinctive style. Instant buy. Thanks for mentioning it HG, I probably wouldn't have noticed otherwise.
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Post by jadnoop on Sept 6, 2017 0:18:05 GMT
But oh, what a patronising depiction of anyone "not middle class NT type" and why was Kevin The Teenager (bad impression of) in this? Ooh, that's fighting talk! I don't think the depiction of Jenny is patronising - the rest of the family's criticism of her is what comes across as loathsome. The Forrest Gump / Wizard of Oz line in the opening scene is double-edged: in those films, Gump is a more positive, powerful character than the supposedly smart but often doomed people who surround him, whilst the Wizard of Oz, behind the dazzling facade, is a small, scared human. Alice's most horrible speech to Jenny - including the line that maybe the loss of her baby was nature's way - is delivered at a point when, unknown to Alice, Jenny has potentially sacrificed herself to save Alice's son. Jenny is also the carer for a mother who despises her whilst praising the daughter who does her own thing in another country, and Alice irrationally pines for a husband so bound up in his work he doesn't attend the difficult birth of their only child and walks out on the boy when he's ill. Alice seems incapable of connecting with her son, who is in danger of being just as lost as Jenny's daughter (btw, in previews this thread was darker - after the sexting scene, you felt suicide might be on the cards). I thought the developing relationship between Jenny and Luke was beautifully done. I saw the play with my Mum who would probably be 'team Jenny' and she loved it, particularly the family / teenage scenes. I noticed many reviewers - presumably all from the Alice class - didn't pick up on the ambiguities (btw, the Boson's final speech suggests Jenny's man-made autism theory and Luke's end of the world fears aren't groundless). Yep, I agree. Alice became far more unsympathetic as the play wore on, as well as revealing a certain hypocrisy in the way that she sees her & Jenny's viewpoints. For example, the way that she talked down towards Jenny about her unscientific/irrational views (which were based on what the media was saying at the time), while leaning on religion when her son went missing. To be clear, I'm not suggesting that being religious is a bad thing, just that it's a way of looking at the world that says you won't solely rely on what you can explicitly prove or rationalise. The most telling moment for me, however, was the way that she switched in an instant towards Jenny: after being annoyed and patronising towards Jenny for most of the first act, she was suddenly tender and almost completely reliant on her when the son went missing. And practically begging Jenny to stay. And yet, a moment later, when the son returned all was instantly forgotten and Alice switched back to wanting Jenny out. It felt like an interesting way of showing how Alice treats people, especially with the context of the earlier scene of how Jenny and Alice reacted to their mother's incontinence. All in all, I think what's key though is that this play seems to have sparked interesting and varied discussion both from people who enjoyed, and hated it. Surely that at least is a positive.
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Post by jadnoop on Sept 6, 2017 0:09:52 GMT
Saw it this afternoon, and agree with a lot of the comments on here. Didn't do much for me, I'm afraid. The idea of pitting life (mosquitoes) against science as the deadlier threat to humanity was excellent. But oh, what a patronising depiction of anyone "not middle class NT type" and why was Kevin The Teenager (bad impression of) in this? 3 stars but no more. Disappointed. More on my site if anyone can be bothered to read it. Hey TM really interested to hear the comment about Jenny. Would you be able to point me in the direction of your comments? I couldn't find the page on your website, although I mostly use it for seating so I may have just missed an obvious link. I've seen a few reviews that have said similar things, but I didn't really see it that way when I went. On paper I probably have more in common with Alice, so it may simply be me reflecting my biases, but I found Jenny to be in many ways a far more nuanced, interesting and sympathetic character. My takeaway was that while Alice's position towards Jenny was patronising, I didn't feel that that was the play's view, or Lucy Kirkwood's.
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Post by jadnoop on Sept 5, 2017 23:46:21 GMT
I loved Punchdrunk when I attended The Drowned Man. I really did. And I would love to go and see something else by them. But either they want me to go or they don't. Ballots? Really? No thanks. I'm not that desperate that I want to tell them how much I like them only for them to tell me they don't want me. Pardon me for saying, but this is an odd way of thinking about what seems to be the most fair way of allocating the tickets. I mean, in practice, this isn't very different from a normal online ticket sale: Instead of refreshing a website and hoping your connection happens to get through before other peoples' does, you hope that your name is picked out of a hat. If anything, this system is fairer, since people aren't penalised for having poor/no internet access, or if they can't get time off work at a specific moment in time, or whatever. Given how far demand is going to outstrip supply, there was always going to be a huge number of disappointed people, but I'm not clear that there's any fairer way of choosing who gets the tickets.
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Post by jadnoop on Sept 4, 2017 17:08:12 GMT
I'm really not sure quite what to make of this. Despite finding Mamet's most recent films pretty terrible, I love the Glengarry Glen Ross film, and would like to see it 'for real'.
However, I'm not quite sure what to make of the cast. The brits seem solid enough, but I'm not that keen on Christian Slater, at least on screen. How is he on the stage?
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Post by jadnoop on Sept 4, 2017 13:11:17 GMT
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Post by jadnoop on Aug 31, 2017 15:54:42 GMT
I wonder how much motivation there is for a big name star to take on this role immediately after Paddy Considine.
Quinn Carney is a great role, and there are actors with more star-power who may well give a better performance than Paddy Considine. However, given how unanimous the critical praise has been for the play, anyone stepping in now can surely only see the reviews go down. As an audience member I tend to take the star ratings with a pinch of salt. However, I can imagine for the creative team -both in terms of their egos and their perceived 'value' in the industry- there might be a worry that updated reviews might reappraise The Ferryman, and by implication themselves, as four stars. It would be different if the play was transferring to the US, or if this was a revival.
Putting that aside someone like Michael Fassbender taking on the role would be fantastic, but would surely make finding tickets impossible. For someone in that scale of superstar, my vote would be for Cillian Murphy.
Of course, to some extent, the issue is somewhat moot; the standout turn when I saw it was probably Laura Donnelly, so if she's staying on (and has good chemistry with Considine's replacement), I'll be happy.
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Post by jadnoop on Aug 31, 2017 11:15:28 GMT
Annie Baker's John and the Tricycle co-production of The Great Wave have both been announced for the Dorfman early in the new year The NT/Tricycle might have missed a trick scheduling it for next year. I would have imagined that putting it on during, or straight after, the recent Hokusai exhibition at the British Museum might have made sense, especially since the play appears to be based on an existing play.
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Post by jadnoop on Aug 31, 2017 11:07:36 GMT
As much as I love Paddy Considine's film roles, I found him to be a little hit & miss on the night I went. Great energy and charm, but his accent seemed to waiver a little to my (admittedly slightly tin) ear. Does anyone know what the norm is for situations like this? Is it likely that another big name star will be brought in, or will the role probably be picked up by a lesser known name? I'm thinking of going again later in the run, and wonder if the loss of Paddy Considine might see a drop in ticket sales, and the chance of some discounts...
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Post by jadnoop on Aug 30, 2017 23:37:42 GMT
Two things come to mind here: - was there something else pencilled in for the Dorfman, for this to run in rep, which is now not going to be ready, so they have filled with more performances of BSC? - or is it just that BSC is selling well (which it is) and they have persuaded the cast to do more shows...? I'm pretty sure that the only other thing that's been explicitly mentioned to be coming up soon in the Dorfman is Annie Baker's new play John. Given that Network has been announced through to the end of March, it seems odd that nothing has come out about it. However, I think John was always meant to be in early 2018, although I might be mistaken and this might have originally been pencilled in for earlier on.
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Post by jadnoop on Aug 30, 2017 14:20:59 GMT
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Post by jadnoop on Aug 12, 2017 13:20:17 GMT
Ugh, the reviews for this are so disappointing.
I know that the general early consensus here seemed to be somewhere between negative and indifferent, but it seemed right up my alley; a dystopian sci-fi setting, an outline that -if treated appropriately- could have been interesting nuanced and thought-provoking, intriguing rehearsal photos, and the mentions of Margaret Atwood George Orwell & Aldous Huxley.
In the end, despite some excitement, I decided to take heed of the negative comments here, and hold off on booking for the Old Vic until the early reviews came out. Definitely thankful that I did now, so thanks everyone.
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Post by jadnoop on Aug 9, 2017 12:55:59 GMT
First performance of Part 1 was tonight. From a quick scan of the early twitter comments so far, it seems fairly evenly split between 'terrible' and 'great'. One did mention interval (and mid-performance) escapes though, so doesn't bode well. I can only find three tweets, two very good, one not. What phrase should I be searching for? #TheDivide seems to be the main one. Not lots, but if you sort by latest going back to yesterday early evening probably gives tweets from around ten people. I don't know quite what the Edinburgh Festival audiences are normally like, and not clear on what the reference to 'choristers' is for this play, but this photo on the left looks pretty disheartening if it reflects the audience turnout... the photo on the right looks like a member of the performance, but the one on the left looks like an audience-perspective(?)
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Post by jadnoop on Aug 9, 2017 2:20:59 GMT
First performance of Part 1 was tonight. From a quick scan of the early twitter comments so far, it seems fairly evenly split between 'terrible' and 'great'. One did mention interval (and mid-performance) escapes though, so doesn't bode well.
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Post by jadnoop on Aug 8, 2017 15:23:53 GMT
Not that I've been casually watching Twitter all day or anything, but no one seems to have had one yet, unless a condition of sale is not to mention your success on social media. RADA themselves replied to someone 7 hours ago saying entrants would be notified before booking opens tomorrow morning; that's a little open to interpretation but is beginning to sound like emails will go out as late as workably possible. Maybe the emails have long gone out, sitting unloved in the winners' spam inboxes, and RADA are wondering why there's no buzz...
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Post by jadnoop on Aug 2, 2017 13:10:24 GMT
Barbican have released a little teaser for the Ninagawa Macbeth. Towards the end there's a little footage of what's presumably a past performance or the stage rehearsals. Either way this looks fab.
edit: This video, has more footage, including some speaking and the actors' lists for Macbeth/Lady Macbeth/Banquo/Macduff/Duncan:
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Post by jadnoop on Aug 1, 2017 16:54:27 GMT
I was so emotionally invested in the show that I forgot to buy a program during the interval. I regret that deeply now, as I really wanted to have the list of the songs that were played. I am assuming here that the program has that list. Would anybody who bought the program or has access to the list of songs be an incredibly kind soul and share it? I downloaded this from somewhere imgur.com/a/49fzdDon't remember where I got it from originally. Might have been someone here...
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Post by jadnoop on Aug 1, 2017 12:50:48 GMT
In preparation for seeing The Twilight Zone - you might want to check this out: It's a 'Top Ten' compilation of some of the most famous episodes - the last two mentioned: Time Enough At Last and Nightmare at 20,000 Feet became iconic and have been referenced frequently. The page on the Almeida website lists Richard Matheson and Charles Beaumont who are writers for certain episodes, rather than the show's creators, so it looks like they're adapting specific episodes rather than the general format of the show. I wonder how they'll deal with the fact that twists are a big part of the appeal, but some of the big episodes are part of popular culture these days.
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