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Post by samuelwhiskers on May 1, 2022 12:35:44 GMT
Stratford is absolutely heaving at the moment. Mile-long queues outside the food stalls in the outdoor market. Yet not many people going inside the theatre. Even the hire boats were doing better trade!
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Post by samuelwhiskers on May 1, 2022 8:45:25 GMT
Someone working there told me they’re replacing the seating. Don’t know how extensively.
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Post by samuelwhiskers on May 1, 2022 7:21:29 GMT
Has there been any word on when the Swan will re-open after its refurbishment?
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Post by samuelwhiskers on May 1, 2022 7:20:24 GMT
Acting is, for the most part, a freelance profession. It’s absolutely the norm of actors to juggle multiple different jobs. A freelancer having multiple clients is not “moonlighting” and not remotely comparable to an employee on a permanent contract moonlighting by juggling two jobs. Both legally and in custom, they are two very different things.
If her voice is suffering that’s something else, but what she’s doing is completely the norm for the acting industry.
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Post by samuelwhiskers on Apr 28, 2022 11:17:57 GMT
Maybe, but the theatre industry is very snooty about TV actors, especially those who didn’t go to drama school. (And it was way worse a few years ago.)
Having worked for the RSC off and on over the years, I doubt the RSC of 2015 would have looked favourably on (“rising star” but still fairly obscure) TV actor with no training or stage experience. Hell I still hear snide comments about Jodie now - which are likely jealousy or snobbery. Even David Tennant being cast as Hamlet drew a lot of anti-TV snobbery and ire, and he started his career with the RSC and played leading roles there for years before becoming a TV star.
I very much hope that she’ll do more theatre but I imagine it will be in tent pole commercial West End productions like this, not necessarily one-woman shows but certainly plays written around her character.
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Post by samuelwhiskers on Apr 27, 2022 10:51:12 GMT
I think the lack of Shakespeare (and especially the decision not to transfer the Henries) is appalling but unless they’d have to almightily screw this up not to make it a huge hit.
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Post by samuelwhiskers on Apr 27, 2022 9:38:20 GMT
Anyway, what is this iconic film. I've never heard of it. Has anyone ? Yes, it’s one of the most famous and beloved Japanese films of all time. You personally may not have heard of it but it is a very famous and iconic film. My entire Twitter feed is people talking about how excited they are.
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Post by samuelwhiskers on Apr 25, 2022 12:19:11 GMT
Someone who understands the practicalities of running a building is as essential as artistic vision.
There are two theatres in London that appointed young talented directors as ADs and it backfired massively (one was recently fired, the other is likely not going to last long) because while they are very good at directing plays, they just aren’t up to the boring grunt work of running a building. I can’t remember the details, but didn’t a former NT AD once say that being an AD was all about bins and loos?
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Post by samuelwhiskers on Apr 24, 2022 20:08:21 GMT
Can someone spoiler me this sandwich bit? I have absolutely no memory of it. I remember the crew girl "volunteer" getting covered in cake mixture or something on stage, but I loathed the play and have forgotten most of it. Francis is talking about how hungry he is - a running plotline throughout the first half - and at one point asks the audience if they have any food he can have. Someone in the audience shouts back and offers him a sandwich, at which he fake corpses and says something like “thank you but that kinda messes with the play” (because if someone gives Francis food, it destroys his motivation for many of his actions that drive the plot forward. Then he asked “what kind of sandwich” and the audience member says “hummus” and he makes a joke about that - because obviously Francis wouldn’t eat or know what hummus is. The dialogue about the sandwich isn’t in the original playtext - it just says “opportunity to improvise with the audience” but the whole hummus sandwich bit was the same in every performance so must have developed in rehearsals.
When word got out about the sandwich line, audience members starting to bring their own sandwiches, leading to actual unscripted moments and even people throwing hot dogs and (non hummus) sandwiches on stage!
Funnily enough the Guardian wrote an article claiming Nick Hytner had given the cast a bollocking for fooling around and improvising too much on stage and seemed to believe the hummus sandwich exchange was a genuine ad lib they got in trouble for!
The other major plant is “Christine Patterson”, supposedly a real audience member who’s brought up on stage to help Francis with food and winds up being sprayed with a fire extinguisher - the actress playing that role was never credited to protect the illusion. The script says “He hands the soup to Christine (a plant).”
On the other hand, the two people called on stage to help move the trunk are genuine audience members. At one performance Max Hastings (Daily Mail journo) was the one of the trunk-movers and wrote an article moaning that they’d deliberately moved his seat in order to target him .
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Post by samuelwhiskers on Apr 20, 2022 22:28:01 GMT
Watching the theatre industry tear its hair out trying to figure out who or what this is might be more entertaining than the play.
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Post by samuelwhiskers on Apr 20, 2022 20:10:25 GMT
I liked it a lot but I found much of the writing (especially the tedious rants about “woke virtue signallers pretending to care to impress Twitter”) very preachy, and you could tell it had been written by a middle aged white man. Not that that’s a bad thing, but there’s such a glut of media commentators all over TV and the tabloids ranting about “wokesters” it’s just kind of played out, and I felt the script would have been better if it had targeted things that were a bit less cliched. The costume at the end that was supposed to be so shocking -nudity? I don’t find that very shocking but I can’t think of anything else. If she really wanted to destroy Lady Climber’s reputation surely blackface or a culturally appropriated costume would be more effective? [/spoiler]
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Post by samuelwhiskers on Apr 18, 2022 11:17:39 GMT
I’ve never been to a Punchdrunk show which I guess makes me a “basic” (or is it a tourist?) but presumably people find immersive theatre an activity they want to enjoy with others, and that the experience is enhanced by doing it communally, rather than being timid.
I’m going on press night, with low expectations but an open mind.
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Post by samuelwhiskers on Apr 17, 2022 10:51:30 GMT
They do a full rehearsal the day before so all the performers know the timings for when to leave their seats.
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Post by samuelwhiskers on Apr 17, 2022 10:50:37 GMT
Absolutely great fun. But can’t help thinking it’s a 5* production of a 3* script.
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Post by samuelwhiskers on Apr 16, 2022 17:40:44 GMT
The Tammy Faye musical is opening at the Almeida this autumn, ahead of a West End run next spring.
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Post by samuelwhiskers on Apr 15, 2022 22:20:27 GMT
It’s all very tedious.
I’m going up to SuA in a couple of weeks for the Henry VI trilogy (being done as two plays). I love and have studied that period of history and know those plays reasonably well, so fingers crossed they’re decent. Owen Horsley is a unshowy but reliable director who doesn’t tend to go in for those stupid gimmicks.
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Post by samuelwhiskers on Apr 15, 2022 13:32:04 GMT
They’re looking for one director to direct all five plays, and with the intent to tour I assume they’ll all be fairly well-known plays.
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Post by samuelwhiskers on Apr 15, 2022 11:14:14 GMT
I mean, it depends. Obviously no actor should feel obligated to stop for photos or autographs, but equally “blanking” fans - especially when they’re children - is just rude. It’s easy to walk past quickly while saying “thanks for coming sorry can’t stop.”
Of course it’s very possible the actor did just that, and the fan is angry because they wouldn’t stop for photos. I also wonder how old Anissa is.
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Post by samuelwhiskers on Apr 14, 2022 15:28:37 GMT
Interesting.
“We are planning an ambitious creative programme from January 2023 in the Royal Shakespeare Theatre and in partnership nationally. In the 400th anniversary of the publication of the First Folio, we are celebrating five of the many plays which we would not have today if they had not been included in the Folio. These five plays will all deal with questions of power; who has it, who doesn’t, how does it change a human being, when does it corrupt, how does it interact with our faith in democracy, how is it apportioned according to race, gender, class, and how could we share power in new ways.”
The five plays will tour nationally.
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Post by samuelwhiskers on Apr 4, 2022 7:58:48 GMT
If Tammy Faye ends up scheduked over the summer I'd be ecastic. What may sound like a dumb question - with nearly all West End and other theatres having annpounced their summer season - is there a conern that unless Almeida has an extraordinary out of the gate hit already to be scheduled - arent they missing out on possible box office? I do love that theatre. I’ve heard September. It may wind up being pushed back but I doubt it’ll be earlier than September.
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Post by samuelwhiskers on Mar 31, 2022 3:40:38 GMT
Interesting Twitter thread from the winner of the award Chris Rock presented, on another problematic “joke” he told that night.
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Post by samuelwhiskers on Mar 28, 2022 9:17:37 GMT
Some poor podcaster who happens to also be named Will Smith and owns the Twitter handle @willsmith is having a very fun day on Twitter today.
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Post by samuelwhiskers on Mar 24, 2022 22:02:39 GMT
I attended a few years ago. Food is excellent. It’s fun only if you know a lot of people or are with mates (or are the kind of person who’s thrilled just to be in the same room as celebs). Otherwise it’s just theatre types chatting with each other, patrons being schmoozed, and everyone else kinda gets left out.
I don’t think it’s an Olivier thing as nominees from non-NT shows were there too.
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Post by samuelwhiskers on Mar 24, 2022 1:38:30 GMT
I went to see Habit of Art in Richmond and we were the only people in the audience not audibly sucking our breath and tutting at the fellatio references. Still at least they were sucking something.
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Post by samuelwhiskers on Mar 19, 2022 18:26:11 GMT
If you want to see this for cheap/free, I can recommend calling your local council and asking if you can observe the next urban planning meeting to discuss local road closures. It’s basically the exact same thing.
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