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Post by samuelwhiskers on Jul 9, 2022 1:07:43 GMT
1. Millionaire shortbread 2. Tunnocks Teacakes 3. Cadbury’s fingers
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Post by samuelwhiskers on Jul 8, 2022 14:22:39 GMT
I smuggled in two bottles (one of which may not have contained water) half full of ice!
I found this weirdly compelling and hypnotic, though it absolutely feels like all the actors have just taken massive amounts of Valium. Such a strange directorial decision to have most of the actors speak their lines in an extremely slow flat monologue. Nina is a joy in the first half because she actually has energy and emotion in her voice.
The lack of set or movement does force you to pay attention to the dialogue and the dialogue only, despite the flat affect.
Script is pretty dire. I don’t need lines about mobile phone plans! The scene where they play Charades and argue about movies is just strange. The movies named aren’t interesting or relevant enough for such attention.
You either click into it and find it compelling, or hate it.
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Post by samuelwhiskers on Jul 8, 2022 14:11:24 GMT
And Broadway next year, iirc.
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Post by samuelwhiskers on Jul 8, 2022 14:10:41 GMT
I know someone who’s crew for these shows, and it’s basically celebs being paid to party with extremely wealthy people. Apparently the after-parties can turn quite um racy.
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Post by samuelwhiskers on Jul 6, 2022 15:07:37 GMT
Lily James at Atypical Rainbow at the Turbine (excellent play btw).
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Post by samuelwhiskers on Jul 6, 2022 15:05:43 GMT
Charging £40 to attend your birthday party is pretty cheeky even without the other stuff.
This all reminds me of the time an obsessed Ben Cumberbatch fan tried to throw an “official” Frankenstein last night party by reserving a space at the NT then hanging around outside trying to thrust self-printed invites into the cast and crew’s hands, and promoting it on Tumblr (or may even have been LiveJournal) as “the official NT party.” Iirc the cast and crew wound up partying at the BFI bar in full view of the “NT party.”
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Post by samuelwhiskers on Jul 5, 2022 10:15:43 GMT
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Post by samuelwhiskers on Jul 4, 2022 21:38:29 GMT
Sept next year, alas, not this year. (The original article did suggest this year.) Tickets on sale from tomorrow. Thanks, I see they've now amended the article to explicitly say Sept 2023. I'd have booked for this Sept; far too early for me to thinking about theatre in 14 months' time! Same! They must think JG will sell, or does the other Royal Court always put shows on sale 14 months in advance?
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Post by samuelwhiskers on Jul 4, 2022 15:49:02 GMT
Sept next year, alas, not this year. (The original article did suggest this year.)
Tickets on sale from tomorrow.
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Post by samuelwhiskers on Jul 2, 2022 23:51:16 GMT
On the subject of balloons 🎈🎈🎈🎈 The RSC has got a trigger warning on display for Richard III alerting the audience to the popping of a red balloon I appreciate that loud popping noises can cause very mild distress to a tiny number of people But this feels like a trigger warning too far For some people it’s absolutely essential because it could much more than mild distress. I don’t understand the argument that it’s gone too far. If it protects even one person surely it’s worth it? It’s just a single line of text, it doesn’t cost any money or barely any effort to do, and anyone it doesn’t apply to can easily just ignore it.
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Post by samuelwhiskers on Jun 30, 2022 19:51:18 GMT
I do miss a good, proper set with rooms and staircases and furniture. Last year’s Blithe Spirit wasn’t that great but ooh it had a lovely set. I can forgive a lot if there’s a lovely set. Robert Icke: revolutionising British theatre or what you’d get if you bought Ivo van Hove on Wish? Don’t know but quite liked the wind tunnel effect in Oresteia. I don’t go to the opera much and hardly ever outside of London but whenever I do it’s always… interesting? I saw a wonderfully bonkers Merry Widow in Stockholm where the widow was a famed soprano and the three men courting her the artistic directors of three leading Scandinavian opera houses, and at one point a character who was supposed to be a British “enfant terrible” director directed a play within the opera that was literally that terrible NT Macbeth with all the black rubbish sacks. Didn’t understand a thing but great fun! Though it opened with Brunnhilde greeting the sun so I spent the first 15 mins panicking that I was in the wrong opera house. Paris Opera Les Troyens but set in a mental institute with a key aria performed while the leads were playing ping pong was a low light. Had never heard of Regietheater before (so thank you for contributing to my theatre education!) but googling it brings up this delightfully bitchy article www.city-journal.org/html/abduction-opera-13034.html
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Post by samuelwhiskers on Jun 30, 2022 10:18:21 GMT
He has another play on at Riverside Studios which sounds excruciating and thematically sub-Gatiss.
“After ten years of marriage, Tom and Tim decide to spice up their sex life by booking an evening in a dungeon with a gorgeous male escort. Meanwhile, crime-busting superhero, the Stallion, and his intrepid side-kick, Butterfly, have been lured to the secret lair of their arch-nemesis: the dastardly Villainor.”
Ugh nepotism sucks.
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Post by samuelwhiskers on Jun 28, 2022 14:36:01 GMT
Peak RSC balloon era has to be the Dirty Dancing-esque King John with all the pastels?
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Post by samuelwhiskers on Jun 23, 2022 1:28:52 GMT
Oof. I was really looking forward to this.
Might, uh, wait for the reviews.
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Post by samuelwhiskers on Jun 19, 2022 17:40:29 GMT
Random question, but what theatres have cafes or just public spaces where you can go and sit or have a coffee even if you're not seeing a show?
I know the NT, Royal Court, Lyric Hammersmith, Bush and I think Kiln do. Bridge and Donmar don't (well the Donmar is probably too small). Commercial West End theatres tend not to have spaces like that, just bars for pre- and interval drinks.
Any others?
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Post by samuelwhiskers on Jun 17, 2022 15:17:51 GMT
Someone at Jitney last night had some kind of vibrating device in her bag (I know that sounds filthy but it wasn’t a vibrator) that pulsed every couple of seconds for about the first 30 minutes of the show, before someone asked her to switch it off. The only way I can describe it is it sounded exactly like an iPhone set to vibrate. I assumed it was someone’s phone ringing at first but it just went on and on, a phone wouldn’t ring for that long. Couldn’t hear a word of the damn play!
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Post by samuelwhiskers on Jun 16, 2022 23:51:00 GMT
John Heffernan and Charlie Russell (separately) at Jitney.
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Post by samuelwhiskers on Jun 16, 2022 21:28:15 GMT
Can there be a category at the next WOS awards for Best Show Drama? Nominees could be: Gemma Collins for her achy foot Rodney Vubya for his small ego Isaac Hesketh for their inclusive tweets Cock for its cheap tickets Andy Webz for his well-written letter Dave Davidson (and Shenton and Lukowski getting into a Twitter spat over it) has to be in the running too.
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Post by samuelwhiskers on Jun 16, 2022 21:21:46 GMT
They’re doing Othello next, I hear. Would prefer a less common Shakespeare personally Interesting. Director? Casting? Yes, I'd like them to go for something a little less obvious. It doesn't seem that long since their last Much Ado tbf (it's 14 years, I just looked it up - which is recent to me, but not to everyone, I grant you). When was the last time they did As You Like It? Cymbeline? Henry IVs? Measure for Measure? Troilus and Cressida? Titus Andronicus? Rhetorical questions - I do know the answers....except for As You Like it. Sorry I was drunk during the conversation where it was discussed so I can’t remember the details. I think they mentioned it’s a black director but don’t hold me to that. The actress playing Desdemona I didn’t recognise but apparently she’s done telly.
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Post by samuelwhiskers on Jun 16, 2022 13:02:27 GMT
I walk between South Ken and Sloane Square a lot and that’s what I call premium shopping. Even on small side streets it’s all Chanel and Prada and super expensive little independent boutiques selling organic vicuña nappies and things.
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NT 2022
Jun 16, 2022 12:58:58 GMT
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Post by samuelwhiskers on Jun 16, 2022 12:58:58 GMT
They’re doing Othello next, I hear. Would prefer a less common Shakespeare personally
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Post by samuelwhiskers on Jun 15, 2022 21:18:41 GMT
I was always going to like this because I love ancient Greek drama but I did really enjoy this. It’s the kind of thing you either click into the rhythms of it or you don’t. It is slow, and there’s so much symbolism and subtext in the use of clothing, shoes, feet, materials, surfaces, and other props. Probably the most stunning lighting I’ve ever seen on stage. The script is the weak element to the exceptional acting and design. What makes the Ancient Greek plays so powerful is the sense that an uncontrollable and unstoppable evil force has been unleashed by the original act (the murder of Iphigenia) that drives the action relentlessly on and on till it consumes everything in its wake until catharsis is achieved via more death. The decision to slow the action and put the focus on the domestic psychology how Clytemnestra and Agamemnon’s relationship decays in the years after the war, removed that sense. It reminded me a bit of “Middle”. And also the opposite of “Age of Rage” which hopscotches from dead girl to dead girl with alarming alacrity. Some changes are hard to understand. Not completely sold on Cassandra no longer being gifted with prophecy and what it added to the play. Another major plotline is over Clytemnestra’s younger daughter Leda, but in Greek drama and mythology Leda was actually the name of Clytemnestra’s mother; her other daughter was of course Electra who becomes a crucial part of the story in the future. So I was confused as to why Electra wasn’t mentioned, and why Clytemnestra was talking so much about Leda and who Leda was in this version if not C’s mother! The person I was with said there was passing reference to Electra I missed so apparently C has at least two surviving daughters in this version, but just…doesn’t give a [bad word] about her oldest daughter? In a play that’s all about mother-daughter love? Couldn’t figure out why the writer invented a new daughter character while pretty much ignoring the actual canonical children who had their own major roles to play. Of course that’s pedantic and it’s silly to even apply the word “canonical” to myth that has so many different sources and historically has been dramatised by so many different writers. Even the various Ancient Greek dramatists include different numbers of children. But I would have preferred Electra not to have been brushed over.
The second war is unnecessary and detracts from the psychological drama.
I did like that Cilissa had a whole subplot and backstory of her own when she has only one line in the original play. Having said that, the speech about dead girls, the conspiracy amongst men to kill girls, was one of the most affecting thing I’ve seen in theatre for a long time.
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Post by samuelwhiskers on Jun 14, 2022 20:38:19 GMT
I honestly did really like the play. And actually the themes of the play are more appealing to me than identity theft.
If they hadn’t done this gimmick and just presented it as a straight play by X, I reckon it would have received solid 3-5* across the board.
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Post by samuelwhiskers on Jun 14, 2022 11:06:59 GMT
The play’s marketing person is all over Twitter claiming that {Spoiler - click to view} Lucy Kirkwood invented the marketing “persona” for Dave Davidson, insisted he be described as a first time writer who’d been a security guard for 40 years. This is all such a cluster****.
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Post by samuelwhiskers on Jun 13, 2022 17:36:28 GMT
I’ll certainly be seeing all the plays by new-ish writers, but not the ones who I know got their commissions via being mates with the right person or so productions I was involved in discussions over and don’t feel were handled ethically.
I don’t think it’s unreasonable to want a theatre to stage an actual play, especially a theatre that does pretty much nothing but plays. To rush this out in such a way as a response to an antisemitism scandal, just feels cheap and not meaningful.
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