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Post by Nicholas on Jun 2, 2016 3:18:55 GMT
Anyone under 25 fancy a free ticket on the 10th? Bought an Entry Pass one but frankly I can’t be arsed anymore, so would rather someone who wanted it had it for free. Send me a message if you do – I’ll post it out free of charge, or I’m in London enough to just hand it over (and if this doesn’t meet board standards, apologies to mods, do let me know!).
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Post by Nicholas on Jun 2, 2016 3:18:40 GMT
Saw it previously in a live relay (which added another layer to it, a play simultaneously filmed being simultaneously broadcast from Germany!). It was one of my highlights of the year and fully deserving of the praise. Was that the Barbican in 2014? I was there too! I agree, thought it was marvellous too, if not quite up there in contention as one of the highlights for the year. Again, as with People, Places and Things, I want to praise the always brilliant, perennially overlooked Duncan Macmillan for bringing together these disparate strands of texts and ideas and intellectual arguments into something quite resembling or perhaps parodying not just a 70 minute movie but a 70 minute 1940s melodrama: a near black-and-white tale of women pushed to the edge, making a mockery of that melodramatic female trope, which added to the political, feminist reclamation of this history that Mitchell was going for. The plot had moments of contentious high drama as ‘Women’s Films’ of the 40s did, and I thought there was something quite straight-laced in how Mitchell and Macmillan showed strong, smart women overwhelmed by war – in playing it so straight and conventional and old-fashioned, however, and in fleshing out these great women’s biographies, that cliché was challenged completely, at no cost to the dramatic energy. Visually – cinematically and theatrically – it was brilliant, obvs, and the tale of misused science still shocks me thinking back now, but well more than the sum of its parts, a compelling, shocking and revealing tale in and of itself.
I’ve got to say, Steve, much as I’m absolutely willing to concede to your superior knowledge on the subject (as always, damn your breadth of reading/learning/living!), what you read as sexism I read as melodrama, taking a point to its extreme and prioritising emotion over academia; so whilst I agree it’s not particularly kind on our gender and perhaps that’s their agenda, I think that’s for maximum narrative impact over making a broader gender point, and as such I was willing to forgive it that. It would be too easy to focus on simply how important its ideology was, how innovative it was theatrically and how interesting its history was and thus to overlook how damn entertaining it was. If the Schaubühne released this on DVD, I think a lot of young people would find this very entertaining and very inspiring – I actually felt towards this a lot like I felt towards Mark Hayhurt’s quite underrated Taken at Midnight – and if I didn’t love it, I still learnt a lot and I still enjoyed the heck out of it.
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Post by Nicholas on Jun 2, 2016 3:18:24 GMT
Finally caught up with these over the bank holiday, and I’ve got to say I really didn’t like Henry VI. The first part was quite good, because Hugh Bonneville, Sally Hawkins and Sophie Okonedo were very good, but the matter-of-factness to the visuals, the endless scene of posh blokes with hair extensions in dark rooms talking politics, made a mockery of bringing these plays to TV. They were so simple, so repetitive, so visually one-note, so booooooring. I tend to like Cooke, but I can’t help but feel he was swamped by the sheer tedium of the plays with scene after scene of scene-setting politics, and no director could make much of that, but still I wish there’d been more wit to proceedings, more variety, more character to the camera. I quite liked the West Wing-esque walk-and-talk moments, but beyond that I was squinting in the dark as hairy poshos talked politics, and that didn’t do it for me. The second part was MUCH worse for this (poor Andrew Scott, roped in for five minutes with nothing to do but exposition, what a waste of a great actor that was), and the endless, repetitive blood-letting just got boring (what a shame the play’s major moments of contrast – Henry’s speech on the hill, or the father/son on the battlefield – were tossed away as asides to allow for more repetitive shouting and stabbing). The second part of this has to be one of the dullest things I’ve seen on TV this year, and I saw all of ITV’s Beowulf: Return to the sh*tlands.
And we’ve got Tom Sturridge, who seems to me to be one of the worst working actors today. He was rubbish in American Buffalo, galumphing into this naturalistic play about self-deception with such hammy obviousness, playing the role like Smike on smack, or Gollum in Trainspotting, embarrassingly obvious and embarrassingly out-acted by John Goodman (to be fair, most people are). Here, dear god, his one-note DEE-CLAAR-MAAR-TORR-REEEE TOOOOONE made FitKit’s Faustus seem like Lee Strasberg in comparison. Tony and Olivier nominated, so what do I know, but this was like a death mask shouting for four hours. Why wasn’t the much more handsome, much more talented Luke Treadaway in this role?
Richard III’s a much better play, though, which is why things picked up then – not quite as spectacularly as I’d hoped, I can’t agree with the five stars, but there was much to like. After the really quite boring Cumberhamlet, it was nice to see old Cumbers do what he does best, which is a conniving, intelligent arsehole. Yes, it was a bit humourless and I like some fun to my Richards, and no he’s not up there with Rylance or Mckellen or Olivier (high benchmarks, to be fair), but his Frankenstinian focused villain (both brilliant doctor and brutalised monster) suited his style and Cooke’s arc (that said, as humourless, straight-laced Richards go, the bulky, skulking hulk of a Fuhrer in his bunker that was Hans Kesting gets the gold, Kings of War has really stuck with me more than most shows do). More importantly, Cooke pulled his finger out and did something more interesting with the camera – not hard, given there’s more to work with, and too much was still declaiming in dark rooms – and with the Kurosawa-on-the-cheap armies marching, the rapport between Cumbers and the camera, that final helicopter shot, and a certain nice parallel to Thea Sharrock in the Bosworth/Agincourt scenes, this was a far better piece of television, which unlike Henry VI used its medium’s freedom to good, if not great, effect.
One of the joys of the original Hollow Crown was that, in its three directors, there was real exploration and variety. Sharrock’s Henry V was the least exciting, but there was a real solid competence and simple understanding of character in Eyre’s Henry IV, and giving Rupert Goold free reign made Richard II an occasionally OTT and obvious (St Sebastian, sacred lights, Michael Jackson) but always exhilarating watch. That series developed with voice and vision. Perhaps this time it was too few cook(e)s who spoiled the broth (apologies), or more likely Charlie Chaplin himself couldn’t make something cinematic of these plays. Personally, I think the way to make them zing would be to bring out their oddities – more of Joan, more of Jack Cade – but in doing so I suppose the Richard III story gets a bit sidelined. Some good and some great acting aside, Henry VI was a slog, but at least Richard III proved a worthwhile watch in the end.
And after Undercover, nice to see Sophie Okonedo get a story with a half-decent finale.
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Post by Nicholas on Jun 2, 2016 3:18:12 GMT
Also saw this last week, and admired it hugely. The score, and particularly the direction, made this something quite special, quite incisive, and unlike Cleansed quite a painful watch. At times I almost thought I was going to walk out – not to do a Parsley, not because it wasn’t good, but because the sheer relentlessness of this deepest of depressions was really starting to get to me – and isn’t that how this play should be?
I wasn’t a huge fan of Mitchell’s Cleansed. It suffered from Jamie-Lloyd-itis – going all out surface level, and thus missing out on any deeper discoveries. The ever wonderful Michelle Terry aside, I felt that Sarah Kane’s play about the torture of love became a production about the torture of institutionalised violence, and thus missed the point. In prioritising the images over the emotions, I also thought the show became a very easy watch; the theatrical trickery behind the grossest moments was easy to see, and should it become too much it was easy to look away. The two exceptions, and striking exceptions they were, were Terry’s penis and the chocolate-eating scene – once the simple shock of the sight faded away, the oddity of the images remained, and unlike the other moments of gore, it wasn’t about what the moment was but about what the moment meant; there’s no looking away from that.
There was no looking away from any of 4.48 Psychosis. That’s why I thought, however this sounded and worked as a new opera, this was a truly shocking yet honourable production of Kane’s script. Venables’ music was wonderful and a wonderful match for the text; much like Kane’s script he hid moments of conventional beauty underneath. This was the wordless white noise of depression, the atonality of hopeless, the polyphony of suicidal thoughts, occasionally making way for tuneful clarity. It couldn’t have been better served than by Ted Huffman’s direction, though, which is why this worked where Mitchell didn’t. As I say, looking away from violence is fine and dandy, but looking away from the inner life is impossible. By keeping this rolling along with relentless pace, the violence that was internalised and self-inflicted was inescapable. By staging clear, simple, human tableaus uncluttered by physical superfluities, the superfluity of suicidal thoughts sang through. As I say, its mood was so convincingly created that I almost felt like walking out, as it would be the only relief from the action; in that, I’d imagine it’s a chillingly accurate depiction of a suicidal mind, and one I think it was important if almost impossible to endure, as a form of empathy. It’s not a play I know well, and one I think I’ll never love due to its relentlessness, but if it lacks variety and depth, it makes up for that in being such an uncompromising sensory experience, albeit one which (like Cleansed, and really like all Kane, I suppose) needs a convincing, uncompromising production to make its mission statement work. Huffman’s production would have worked all too convincingly on Kane’s play alone; Venebles’ score only enhanced this further.
So I don’t know how this worked as a new opera – I’m not au fait enough on that subject, though I thought the music very good and the six singers a beautifully collaborative sextet – but as a sensoround, four dimensional immersion into a suicidal mind, it was a tremendous psychological recreation of what Sarah Kane so boldly wrote. The real hero is neither Kane nor Venebles, but Huffman for his production which, in its all-encompassing mood, felt all too chillingly precise.
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Post by Nicholas on Jun 2, 2016 3:17:58 GMT
I saw this about a month ago and tried to write about it, but so angered was I that in my documents there’s a page which just reads “Bullsh*t production, bullsh*t acting, bullsh*t directing, bullsh*t bullsh*t bullsh*t”. I think enough time has passed that I can try and be more constructive. It’s hard, because yes, this is indeed absolute bullsh*t, but I think I can control myself. I do hate this, I think it’s one of the most hateful things I’ve ever seen, and I absolutely still think it’s utter bullsh*t, but I think I’m able to finally come to terms with why.
Jamie Lloyd likes text. He doesn’t like subtext. When that works, it works: Assassins was haunting, The Hothouse was an inventive reading of that play’s comic set-up, and She Stoops was an absolute joy. When that doesn’t work, it really bloody doesn’t work: Richard III was boring, The Ruling Class was OK but one joke stretched too far, and The Homecoming became all about violent violence, not domesticated violence. Needless to say, his Faustus is all text, and all bullsh*t. It’s so surface level it’s intellectually offensive. When walking into a theatre to see a play about a devil for whom I’m meant to feel sympathy, and the director plays Sympathy for the Devil on the speakers, I can’t help but feel patronised. Another director would be ironic about this fact, but Lloyd isn’t; it either shows an absolute stupidity of vision, or an absolute lack of confidence in the audience. If the former, I expect better, if the latter, I deserve better. Plus, with these mucky white vests and clumsy unison formations, it looked like it had the budget of a student production, albeit none of the necessary inventiveness – a student production wouldn’t have been so boring as to play it so straight, used black vomit to indicate hellishness, used pathetic clichéd unison shouting to indicate demonic-ness. I have no idea why Lloyd chose to direct a show that looks so cheap – it looked cheap aesthetically, and felt cheap intellectually, so it matches, I suppose. It was hell by the numbers, which still had the gall to speak down to me.
A word on the acting – Russell, dragged down from her usual sensitive brilliance, delivered every line as if she should be twirling a moustache. Harrington made her look subtle. It was an amateurish DECLAIM FIRST, characterise later style I haven’t seen since those parody scenes in Red Velvet. At first I assumed it was intentional, a parody of traditional verse speaking, but then Jenna Russell came on and did the same herself, and then he performed Teevan’s bits like Edmund Kean. Is it a choice, or has Lloyd forgotten how to fill a big auditorium convincingly? Perhaps they’ve calmed down by now, but when I saw this there was this utter, hammy desperation to declaim even Teevan’s sh*ttest lines, and it just came across as sad, frankly.
As for the new middle section, I’ve like Teevan’s translations in the past, but what was he thinking? I suppose here I admire him for reading Marlowe’s mythical play and trying to adapt it as a sitcom for E4, but if I wanted to watch an amateur magician not sleep with his roommate, I’d stay home and watch Barney and Robin in How I Met Your Mother, for all the insight this had. Take this part in isolation, as a new play, and it’s simply a bad new play. Using all the powers of hell to become a second rate magician? That makes him a really boring character and I was bored by his boring antics. Nothing happens, the satire is obvious, the characters are flat, the dialogue isn’t creative or believable... It says nothing about temptation, sin, power and everything Marlowe’s about; it says a teeny tiny bullsh*t point about fame corrupting, except even then, even then it doesn’t say that, because Faustus is peculiarly un-corrupt-able and uses his powers so, so, so, so tediously... Marlowe’s play isn’t great, but at least it says something about temptation and sin; what did this actually say, for all its noise? I mean, they invoke political satire when they suggest Faustus has the power to take any politician to task for moral mistakes – a satiric point filled with potential – and waste it on one cheap on-the-nose gag about tax. Any politician, any target, and we have this, an easy point poorly made. This new play is worse than Anya Reiss’ bastardised Chekhovs, it’s a waste of an interesting theme on uninteresting characters, uninteresting plot and absolutely no substance whatsoever, made even worse, even more bullsh*t, by the ugly, uninspired, cheap, pathetic visuals.
That said, so attuned was I to Teevan’s terribleness that when Marlowe finally reared his head again it was a real jar to the system. Much like How I Met Your Mother, this threw a lot of inconsistent ideas in the air and squandered them on a terrible finale. Here there were two major mishandlings of major moments; the first mishandling being tasteless, the second being aesthetic. The Helen Of Troy moment was mishandled in a truly tasteless way: using Mephistopheles’ powers to execute such an act is inherent in a play which features Lust itself, and reading Faustus’ demand for and control of Helen as a rape scene could have been worth an insight worth making, but so unfocused are its earlier sh*tty sitcom scenes that this moment doesn’t end an arc about lust, and is completely out of character for the sexless Faustus of the middle scenes; coming so out of the blue as it does, it feels like a controversial afterthought to be radical, and is testament to how little control over the text this had earlier. Go back to page 7, read cainc’s far more impressive reading of the scene. And then Kit goes to hell, and a teeny weeny smoke machine goes off. A teeny weeny smoke machine. The West End. The cheapest, clumsiest, most clichéd depiction of hell. A smoke machine. Some of you found the last image haunting. I wish I could. I was distracted. By the smoke machine. By the bullsh*t bloody smoke machine.
So you know what? Sod it. This was absolute, utter, complete bullsh*t, and I hated hated hated hated this bullsh*t bullsh*t play. I hated its bullsh*t direction. I hated its bullsh*t obviousness. I hated its bullsh*t ugliness. I hated its bullsh*t performances. I hated its bullsh*t Marlowe, and I hated its bullsh*t Teevan. I hated its bullsh*t lack of ambition. I hated its bullsh*t nothingness. I hated all of its bullsh*t bullsh*ttiness. It’s the worst thing I’ve ever seen in the West End. It’s worse than wonder.land, at least there was something laughable in that. It’s bullsh*t theatre, completely and utterly, absolute bullsh*t. Bullsh*t bullsh*t bullsh*t bullsh*t bullsh*t that demeans Marlowe, demeans Teevan, demeans Harrington, demeans Lloyd and demeans me. Bullsh*t.
And the worst thing? Kit with his kit off isn’t even that attractive.
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Post by Nicholas on May 22, 2016 14:48:03 GMT
Except Mark Shenton, apparently I don't believe his companion can't buy their own ticket. He seems to see theatre as a night out rather than his job. I don't doubt freelance pays terribly but seems to be in the US all the time so I am sure he is doing fine.
OK, I’m sorry, but if I knew a critic and I knew he could get me the best seat in the house to any show I wanted for a mere £20, I’d pay the £20 myself. You know what? If you're reading this, Mark, send me a message before every NT Press Night and I'll pay the £20 to accompany you to a front row stalls ticket to huge stars in great shows.
If SHenton’s friends are only his friends because he gives them freebies, then I really do hope you’re reading this, Marky, because I’m going to give you the advice your parents and PSHE teachers should have given you: they’re not you’re real friends, and when you’re using money to buy someone’s affections, that’s prostitution.
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Post by Nicholas on May 21, 2016 15:07:16 GMT
If you give "anyone with a blog" free tickets, it's just another version of an "under 25s access scheme." Limit it to a few influential bloggers, I can see the point, but please don't tell me that anyone with Wordpress is automatically going to be any good or ever be any good as someone who really captures public attention sufficient to justify the free ticket / marketing gain ratio a good reviewer should for a theatre.
I obviously don’t think that anyone with an Ethernet cable deserves a free ticket, or that starting a blog and demanding free tickets inherently means you’ll become the new Jacques Derrida, and I do think a form of discrimination has to occur – I just hope it tends towards the looser end, and encourages a number of people. If these comps are given to any Tom Dick or Harry with a tumbler then that delegitimizes them, but similarly if they’re only kept back to people who started blogging when it was a novelty and now are established, that delegitimizes them too.
Only giving blogging tickets to blogging bigwigs actually pushes blogging backwards, suggesting the future of blogging's less varied than its past, and that there is a bar over which you need to jump (Readers? Reviews written? Shows seen?) before you’ve ‘made it’. Obviously giving blogging tickets to blogging bozos who are just looking for a cheap night out pushes blogging backwards, because there has to be a form of quality control. Giving blogging tickets to influential bloggers is hopefully a balance of old hats and new voices: what makes an critic influential now and what will make a critic influential in the future is experience, and giving half-decent bloggers now the experience of broadening themselves and developing their voice and influence is better than blocking them off because they've not got the influence they can only get by being seeing the theatre they're not allowed to see until they've got the influence they can't get without being influential in the first place. Theatre criticism needs to broaden - as of now, blogging's still too cliquey, there absolutely is a 'team' of central figures, there's this awful internet group-think about how everything Ivo van Hove and Robert Icke to is genius and everything David Hare or Alan Ayckbourn do is middle class wank - and broadening the amount of emerging voices does just the trick to oppose this cul-de-sac. Only giving them to established writers is simply staying in this cul-de-sac.
Besides, the difference between ‘emerging bloggers’ and ‘folk who like theatre and talk about themselves on the internet too much’ is fairly clear – there will be people truly using the freedom of self-publishing to try and push analysis further than a 700-word press-night write-up can offer, or doing interesting things with the medium, or focusing their attentions on becoming an expert in a niche. Those ‘emerging bloggers’ may not be influential, they may not be established, they may not even be that good yet, but if they’ve got a voice that looks like it might develop into something special, the teeny compensation of one ticket is good. And if they don’t grow into critics, no harm is done by the NT in giving them the chance to fail amidst giving better critics the chance to succeed. So I absolutely think there should be a limit, I absolutely think there need to be criteria to be met, I absolutely think quality control is essential, I just think they ought to be lax, they ought to be positive and they ought to be beneficial to the critics who will grow into great critics. I don’t know how you’d limit this (I’d be terrible at it – for all that I’m being positive now, most professional critics get on my wick these days), but someone’s job should be like a football talent scout – to read all the sh*t banging about on the internet, to struggle through the obvious comments or insipid prose of too many young writers, to find the people with some solid knowledge of and passion for theatre, and give them this meagre compensation of £20 to help set them on their way.
I still expect the average blogger to have their 9 to 5, to scrape the time, the travel, the research, the writing experience themselves. If they really care about theatre then, like you, like me, like most of us on here, they’ll give it their all financially and time-wise anyway – a £20 freebie doesn’t make or break anyone. But what this does (well, I’m overstating, but if this does set a precedent, what that precedent does) is legitimize blogging, and in a very minor way democratise it. Much like you or I, any young theatre lover absolutely has to fund it themselves, to live their own lives a propos of this, to put in all the legwork for love and love alone. But the teeniest compensation of £20 back is deserved, and the more good voices banging about these days who can be supported into becoming great ones – that’s got to be a good thing in my books.
Of course, if they really cared about the theatre, they'd have regular "Theatreforum Only Nights", but that's another fight for another day.
Conversely, people like myself DID have to pay to build up our own knowledge - as would all the "official reviewers" we know today. If you have the dedication at a young age to do as I know I did - work up to 5 jobs at a time outside school - to pay for my habit, I'd argue the end result is the one we'd want. Actually dedicated and hardened people who know what they are talking about.
Well hey, that’s something I’m sure everyone on here understands. When I was a student, I was going to say my lowest point was that week I tried to survive on a seventh of a packet of value biscuits for dinner per day so as to fund theatre, but then there were days I just wouldn’t eat. I turned down dates because between financing sex or Sophocles I chose Sophocles. Just yesterday I went up to the local uni and had my head scanned for science for a mere £20 just so I could fund another trip – and I wish I could say that was the first time I’d funded a theatre trip by letting a stranger inside me for £20.
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Post by Nicholas on May 21, 2016 3:45:54 GMT
Oh, pur-lease. If bloggers are proper critics, and if bloggers can write as incisively and critically as the paid bunch – and they can, that isn’t a discussion any more – then bloggers deserve to be treated with the same respect and (it’s crude to talk about, but must be said) financial upkeep as ‘proper critics’. Broadening the number of people who review a show, and broadening the types of people who write about theatre, isn’t just a nice initiative – it’s necessary, to stop theatre criticism either becoming the preserve of those rich enough to live a London-centric life with the disposable income of two or three trips a week, or culturally inhibiting to those people out there unsure of how to fund a career in criticism and whether self-publishing their own analysis is worth it.
So, firstly, are bloggers critics? Yes. Do critics pay for their seats? No. That’s that then.
But as for discriminating deserving and undeserving bloggers, I hope the process is lax. Someone recently got in hot water for saying most bloggers lack the ‘intellectual background’ of a proper critic, of an Ann Treneman (former political sketch-editor, no theatrical background) or a Quentin Letts (a massive arsehole). Actually, I agree – most bloggers don’t have the intellectual background. By intellectual background, I don’t mean uni education or form of schooling, I mean theatrical experiences – only by seeing, and reading about, as much theatre as you can can you achieve this. I instinctively don’t trust any blogger younger than 25, and even then consider 25 too young to be an expert on anything. It’s not that I don’t trust young people to be incisive and informed and have their areas of expertise (I like to think I’m young, and the Best Director at the Oliviers is only 30 himself), but I enjoy reading voices I know will develop into bona fide experts only through gaining the intellectual background I’m reading them develop as we speak. If some of these tickets, thus, are given to relatively embryonic blogs and bloggers, Rufus can help educate in this necessary intellectual development. Plus, the styles of writing happening in the interweb are varied, are personal, are individualistic, are trying to develop what a critic is – not always successfully, not always necessarily, but hey ho. Doubling the amount of ‘critics’ attending means doubling the voices heard, and replacing unnecessary chums with necessary challengers and innovators (as far as theatre criticism ever is innovative) can only be a good thing.
It’s worth mentioning, too, that I expect my critics to be London-centric region-attending culturally broad well-read thrice-weekly-theatregoers. I simply cannot expect my bloggers to be self-funded. I don’t think finance in and of itself is a huge issue – theatregoing can be a very cheap hobby, and I don’t expect my critics to eat well or live anywhere nice or have a social life – but it’s one that needs to be discussed, and also one that leads on to a broader cultural problem: why would I try and set myself up to be the next Tynan if money’s too tight for a secure disposable income? If we expect emerging bloggers to build up this intellectual background, we can’t expect them to pay for it all themselves, otherwise we’re limiting who can be a critic down to who can afford it, and that’s not just wrong but dangerous for the medium.
So look. These tickets are £20. £20 isn’t much. Most wannabe critics and established bloggers would happily pay £20 for a seat. You and I know £20’s expensive for most places. But actually, £20 is the ability to take a slight risk in what you attend. £20 is the cost of the new Simon Stephens book or Billington book or something educational. £20 is the price of a Megabus to Manchester to see Maxine Peake in Hamlet, or to Chichester to see Imelda Staunton in Gypsy. £20 is a week’s meals, something for the bills, something for the rent. £20 is hopefully a precedent being set that other theatres will follow, so £20 becomes £40 becomes £100 and the financial constraint on struggling young bloggers is lessened. Most importantly, £20 is the generosity, encouragement and respect of a major theatrical institution being given to upstart writers who need encouragement and respect to set them on their way. In taking a ticket away from the friend of a man who sells mugs with his face on them, and giving it to one of the first enthusiasts to have spotted Denise Gough, or someone passionate about their opinion of Here We Go but willing to discuss art and concede differences of opinions, Rufus Norris is (for the first time in his tenure) really doing what a National theatre should – trying to bolster the artistic discussion and outlook of the nation. In doing this, he may, too, just uncover the next Billington, the next Tynan, and who among us can begrudge that?
Or perhaps Rufus is indeed taking revenge on the critics whose reviews made People, Places and Things an award-winning sell-out West End transfer and gave Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom the Olivier. “Har har,” thinks Rufus, “Now Mark Shenton, Tim Walker and Dominic Cavendish now have to treat their cushy job like a job. They have to turn up on time alone, and if they want a social life they have to talk to their co-workers! That’ll show them for being nice to me!”
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Post by Nicholas on May 7, 2016 15:03:26 GMT
My hunch is that most of the plays listed above seem not to lend themselves to a fresh directorial approach and so they're unlikely to be revived in today's theatre climate until they are much older and may become discoveries to a new generation. For now, they might be seen as a bit too stale and predictable. Which plays of the last fifty years might interest Robert Icke or Ivo van Hove or Blanche McIntyre? You say that, but who’d have read the frankly minor Arthur Miller that is A View from the Bridge, bearing in mind too how stubborn the Miller estate is, and gone “Gee, set this in a shiny box, have everyone barefoot, have Michael Gould skulking about looking tired, and that will be the show of the year!”? I loved last year’s Husbands and Sons, and in isolation those DH Lawrence plays are slight and dated, but give them to Marianne Elliot (the most underrated director working today?) and watch them shine. There’s no reason a Hampton, a Hare, a Stoppard, an Edgar wouldn’t work with a new directorial approach.
I’d love to see Rupert Goold do Wesker’s The Merchant, building from his re-interpretation of Shakespeare and bringing that to Wesker’s flawed reclamation of Shylock. I’d love to see van Hove do Bennett’s George III and treat it as grittily as he does Shakespeare’s kings. I’d love to see Robert Icke do Edgar’s Nicholas Nickleby, probably lasting a week given his sense of pacing, but bringing his clinical eye, his humanist edge and his interesting understanding of legacy to Dickens would be fascinating. And I’d love to see Joe Hill-Gibbons do No Sex Please We’re British.
Conversely, I’d love to see a workmanlike director like Lindsay Posner do a problematic text like Sarah Kane, or a play which requires directorial innovation like Simon Stephens, and see what happens in a purely functional production of those plays. And I’d love to see a Samuel Beckett revival where the Beckett estate finally go “Fine, do it how you please”.
Looking more recently, I’d also love to see Morton-Smith’s terrific Oppenheimer (how did he not get an Olivier nod?) revived as a chamber piece – Jackson’s production was very good, but there’s a Pinter-esque sparse intensity to the script that a claustrophobic setting would bring out brilliantly – and I’d love to see The James Plays revived as individual plays and not a saga (James II would make a blisteringly intense hour and a half). There are some plays, like almost anything Simon Stephens does, which will end up being frequently revived because of how easily they allow directors to take the fore, but I’m sure there are plenty of current, great plays which will end up being lost due to directors not seeing them as such springboards for something new, and that would be a crying shame.
There’s been a lot of great modern European drama that’s either not played here in twenty years, or hasn’t played here ever. Following that Oppenheimer, I wonder how In The Matter of J. Robert Oppenheimer, a flawed verbatim play, would manage under a fairly re-interpretative directorial eye. Peter Handke’s Offending the Audience (ever been done here?) would still offend audiences now. A few years ago I had a period really obsessed with the writing of Vaclav Havel, and there’s a real timeless profundity about Largo Desolato (and actually, wouldn’t his life make for a great play itself?). In short, I’d like a revival (perhaps a season) of late twentieth century European provocative drama (it’s seasons like that which probably made them choose Emma Rice over me), partly for historical interest, partly to see theatrical history from across the pond, mainly because I think they’d still be provocative, edgy and forward-thinking dramas which would offend, aggravate and anger in the same way Cleansed is, devoid of its Bosnian political framing, many years down the line.
There’s also a great deal of political drama from the 60s that now, I’m sure, doesn’t hold up at all, but I wonder if that would be a terrific reason to revive it – take a boldly anti-Thatcher play and play it not under her leadership but under her legacy, or take a play written about the cold war threat and see how we consider these international relations in a post-Litvinenko world, or take a play written about the bomb and see how we feel with no less of a threat of the bomb, only less talk about it. Last year’s Each His Own Wilderness was a strange one, as it wasn’t a great Lessing play and had dated somewhat, but in bringing it back into the limelight and playing it so straight and so sadly it was a chance to reflect on what good protesting did then, what a legacy that period set and what a world we live in now. I was quite a fan of that show and want more like it. Robert Bolt's The Tiger and its Tail is an interesting play covering the same period (actually, A Man for All Seasons deserves a revival too) and I'd love to see that done somewhere like the Orange Tree again. It would almost be to those play’s benefit, not their detriment, that they’re so stuck in their time.
It’s funny, actually – we bang on about how much we want new plays, how good it is that new plays are overtaking revivals, how sad it is to be stuck in the past with plays, when actually there are plenty of great plays that need to be revived, that would push theatre forwards by looking backwards. I think we just have the wrong approach to revivals – either money-making fillers (poor Aykbourn, an interesting, progressive writer damned to be seen as filler fluff) or a play we know quite well, so critics can compare it to the twenty-five revivals of the last however long. Let’s have more Les Blancs or the like, and fewer bloody Shakespeares.
P.S. Lynette, there was a beautiful version of Translations touring a few years ago. It's a real shame you missed it, it was one of my hits of the year - perhaps touring companies have the capacity to be that bit riskier in choices when they only have to sell out for days rather than four months.
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Post by Nicholas on Apr 29, 2016 16:02:00 GMT
I think it may come down to how much you empathise with internalised emotional distress. If you recognise it easily in yourself, then the play will instantly hook. If it isn't something you are particularly conscious of - and a lot of people are lucky not to be - then it's a harder climb. Agree Ms Gough works very hard, and deserves her success, but I still stand by my feeling that her psychologist was the deeper performance.
Absolutely. There were things that Emma would say about the way she saw the world in its brutal, unpleasant, unforgiving, godless awfulness that chimed with me, or at least felt like a way of looking at the world I recognised. Macmillan wrote many many moments where a character described extreme joy, extreme sadness, extreme melancholia, extreme confusion, or any extreme emotion we’ve all felt; throughout so many of these deeply touching, deeply relatable speeches I, who am lucky enough to have never been an addict, thought ‘There but for the grace of god go I’. And I think the variety of other characters, some nicer than others, some more troubled than others, rather mediated this – Emma’s clearly the most charismatic addict there, but some of the duller ones allowed for many, broader entry points into this. Plus Herrin’s direction was so full on I was in Emma’s head from pretty much the word go.
And actually, Ryan, I think the best thing to say is yes, I found the characters irritating too. How Macmillan managed it I’ll never know, but he managed to show that people like Emma can be a wee bit annoying yet never had us off of her side. Gough deserves so much credit for this too (whenever I talk about the play, I tend to talk about direction and writing and leave her out of it – that’s wrong of me, she’s beyond incredible), but Emma got on my nerves, and the fact that she was allowed to be grating and problematic and not that awful cliché of a ‘strong female character’ is what made this so special. Had this painted addiction merely as some kind of last chance saloon that the desperate and mistreated go to and thus not dared to show addiction as dislikeable, it would have been terrible. Had this taken the tone of Sir David Hare’s terrible My Zinc Bed – that if it’s addiction or desire you have to sacrifice, be an addict – it would have been terrible. I think we never lost our sympathy with people who often knew that they were now trapped with something destructive within them for the rest of their lives, yet we weren’t asked to sympathise with their violence, their selfishness or their rudeness. We could empathise both with the victims and sufferers of addiction, and dislike them in their dislikeable moments. I thought this script was really quite incredible.
Also got to agree about Barbra Marten though. A truly amazing performance of withheld anger and a difficult life lived that was the perfect counterpoint to the louder, larger characters around her. That she was overlooked by not only the Oliviers but most reviews I’ve read disappoints and astounds me. But truly the bee’s knees is Denise.
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Post by Nicholas on Apr 25, 2016 3:20:25 GMT
Goodnight Dominic. Saw this Tempest on its final show on Friday, and I’m just back from the final Globe to Globe Hamlet, and I find myself rather moved by his extended farewell. The last five shows at the Globe/Wanamaker have seemed a perfect example of why the last ten years under his regime have been such wondrous years for a theatregoer.
Pericles was, for me, Dromgoole airing the play not to re-assess a lost masterpiece or the usual gubbins which comes with the lesser-knowns, but quite the opposite – to prove that, beneath the language we love and the dust 400 years gathers, Shakespeare was capable of writing an adventure every bit as much damn fun as Sinbad the Sailor or The Princess Bride. It wasn’t a production people will write about in years to come, but that was rather the point, and I left with a grin on my face and a spring in my step and with my buckle fully swashed.
Cymbeline, unexpectedly and possibly entirely due to the night I saw it, will be one of this year’s highlights – not because it was a great production (it was a good production) but because it was a great evening. Yates played this rather as Shakespeare the sitcom (I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, I never understand why people see the word ‘sitcomy’ as derogatory), as criss-crossing couples fall in and out of love in laughable situations. That meant some of the serious battle scenes and high-stakes deaths didn’t mean as much or have as high stakes as they could elsewhere, but Yates knew what he was doing. Probably half the audience were probably under 25, and there was definitely a group of tourists or students or what you will from America there. In the air it was evident that most of us hadn’t seen the play or knew what was coming, and I think what made Yates’ show great was that he deliberately played it to that exact audience. The noise that night shows it worked. I’ve never been at the theatre with so much laughing and smiling and oohing and aahing and clapping and cheering and whooping and hollering, entirely sincerely, entirely appreciatively – and this wasn’t Romeo and Juliet or Much Ado or a student favourite, this was bloody Cymbeline! That a lesser-known (and, frankly, lesser) ‘tragedy’ could charm the pants off everyone and remove behavioural inhibitions was a joy. It was wonderfully done by Yates, it’s what Dromgoole’s done in his ten years, it’s what Rylance did before him, and somewhere in the ether of the building next door, I felt that Sam Wanamaker was smiling a very broad smile that night.
The Winter’s Tale seemed the exact opposite of the Branagh one, in that where that show floundered in Bohemia but worked in court, I thought this came into its own when it was finally made free in its carefree Bohemian way. In court, I think the scales were tipped too far, with Leontes too violent and unpleasant and Stirling’s wonderful Hermione so hurt my heart bled for her. In Bohemia, on the other hand, there was a lovely simplicity to a life of farming and dancing, a breezy freedom to the lifestyle, and another stunning scene-stealing cameo from the great James Garnon. I can’t say it was my favourite Winter’s Tale of the year, but – shockingly – it managed to make the entertaining scenes genuinely entertaining. And a great bear.
And so to The Tempest, with which Dromgoole grants us farewell with characteristic warmth, wit and humanity. The Wanamaker leant itself to this play surprisingly well, converting its stage to a tiny little blip of an island and its candles to flickering fairy-like magic, and onto this, this cast of characters fit beautifully. Pippa Nixon’s Ariel was never of this world but full of wonder towards it, where Caliban was too of this world and full of hatred instead. Ferdinand as a funny flirt works, and Phoebe Pryce’s emotional vulnerability made their meeting beautiful. There was something so delightful about seeing familiar old faces in the cast of the crew of the ship. All these were of course overshadowed by Rowan and Fox, with Trevor’s timing and Rowan’s ridiculous improvisations (as Stephano’s a fool who thinks himself a king, Rowan’s Shakespearean delivery of absurd ad-libs fit the role to a tee) bringing me to tears with laughter.
And then we come to the subtle, wonderful Tim McMullan. Blest with one of the most naturally entertaining set of features, all eyes and eyebrows and THAT VOICE!, he can afford to be one of the best under-players there is. Beautifully, heartbreakingly repressed, his Prospero was a man whose tragedy was that he loved too much too deeply – Miranda and magic and Ariel and the island – and was now faced with the task of letting go of everything he held so dear. Watching him repress the personal sadness this caused for the happiness of others meant that once I’d rubbed the tears of laughter from my eyes, I was rubbing very different tears away instead. The way he said “I’ll drown my book”, the way he said goodbye to Ariel, the way he forgave all... I’m genuinely welling up now, as Dromgoole and McMullan made The Tempest a very humane, almost moral tale of doing the right thing for the people you love, painful though it may be to you. And all to end with that beautiful, beautiful jig, then out with the candle...
And finally, a word on Hamlet. It wasn’t perfect, but it was fascinating in its imperfections. In soliloquy, for example, this didn’t just overthink the words but would gesture to his mind when he was thoughtful, his eyes when he was crying, his sword when he was angry. For us, that’s a bit OTT, but for moments I would imagine I spoke no English, and were it all Greek to me I’d still follow the emotions if not the events – so when I say it wasn’t perfect, what I mean is it prioritised plain-speaking, storytelling and clarity over innovation and artsiness; and for a show that needed to speak to so many people, that was perfect. It was very good regardless, though, from wonderful music that told the story in and of itself, to a couldn’t-be-bettered troupe who were brimming with life and energy, to a fantastic comic Polonius as if Ade Edmonson were playing Sigmund Freud. Miles better than the CUmberhamlet. It could have taken bolder decisions in its politics, in its melancholy, in its atmosphere, but in doing so it would have imposed an interpretation of the play upon 197 countries; instead, this broadly comic, broadly moving, swiftly moving version is one to which countries can bring their preconceptions and find personal significances within. It shows what an incisive and audience-aware director Dromgoole’s been these last ten years. And then there was just that thrill of knowing the languages, the lives, the landscapes this show and these people have soaked up and are now bringing back to us. It wasn’t a production, it was an experience, and that experience – buoyed further by an oh-so-enthusiastic audience packed with famous faces old and new and a crowd who clearly loved this building and all it meant to them – was incomparable.
What separates Dromgoole from the other great Shakespearean directors is that Dromgoole’s always prioritised honouring the audience over honouring the plays. Historical accuracy or contemporary appreciation? We’ll have Nunn of the former and all of the latter. Dromgoole’s always understood that Shakespeare was a shameless, crowd-pleasing populist, and the Globe at its best magnifies this. I don’t think this has ever gotten in the way of scholarly insight or theatrical inspiration. His Henry IV is an exquisite piece of near-perfection, and the filmed versions are up there in the top ten filmed Shakespeare. This Tempest didn’t shirk on the colonialism of Caliban, only filtered it through the moving human drama. Of last year’s three Measure for Measures, I think his was not only the funniest nor just the best, but actually the most profound through its populism. This problem play was hardly problematic; it was a sincere love story of a novice nun finding a kindred spirit in this clumsy plot-layer trying to rectify his many mistakes, a relationship of mutual understanding and confusion through which they can both grow. There was something so fresh, so heartening, so insightful and so enriching about this. He played the Duke not as vindictive and cunning and dictatorial, nor Vienna as an evil over-governed police state; but the Duke as an overgrown enthusiastic child making it up as he goes along, and Vienna as a place of glorious debauchery – a little, one imagines, like Dromgoole and the Globe themselves.
I’ve always loved the Globe, since coincidentally I first went in 2006. For actors, no other theatre permits, or demands, actors push themselves so. For audiences, no other theatre is so democratising, yet no other theatre is so demanding. That’s Sam Wanamaker’s doing, and we still owe him thanks. But programming one Bible, two Rylances, several Allams, 37 countries, 197 countries, one van Kampen love letter to theatre, and Nell Gwynn is Dromgoole’s magic. Not just overseeing the Wanamaker playhouse, but opening it with such glee and such panache is Dromgoole’s magic. Making sure – through tour, through cinema, through globetrotting – Shakespeare reaches as many people as can be is Dromgoole’s magic.
I do have every faith in Emma Rice, but opening with a ‘Wonder’ season at the Globe is something of a tautology. Under Dromgoole, this theatre has been a real wonder.
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Post by Nicholas on Apr 22, 2016 12:28:52 GMT
Hmm. Not sure about this one. King Lear’s a man whose politics come second to a complacent leeching off of the family wealth; who resorts to unnecessary anger, petty ad hominem insults and madness when it is suggested the necessary cutbacks happen to his way of life; whose country disintegrates due to his placing of inept acquaintances in major positions of power; and who instigates a massive, unnecessary and devastating division of nationhood and unity.
All Glenda Jackson’s got to draw on for this is five years watching David Cameron at work.
I jest, of course. Lear only had one fool.
P.S. Very interesting interview with Glenda Jackson about this here - www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p03rn2gd
P.P.S. Are the full dates out yet? Glenda’s one of my fave actresses, and if it runs a couple of months it might coincide with my birthday! Though, thinking about it, might not be the best play to celebrate getting older, as we, unburdened, crawl towards death.
P.P.P.S. And, of course, it’s not the first time she’s played a Shakespearean male role:
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Post by Nicholas on Apr 18, 2016 0:05:21 GMT
I went away from the play thinking it was from Andre's POV, but now that I think about it, your right, they did have scenes without the father. Not really sure there's an answer to this confusion, unless you ask the writer. I think of it like an Agatha Christie mystery. (1) At first, you see it from Andre's point of view, so you get the benefit of the unique insight into his experience; (2) But then, the writer doesn't want to torture his audience, so he changes approach, and resolves the storyline. I would have preferred for the storyline not to be resolved, and just to stick with Andre's confusion, but then I think you'd have walkouts and annoyed audience members, and alot of people who get a lot from the show, wouldn't. So, maybe pleasing my appetite for something a bit more outre would have been a mistake. That’s my huge, huge, irreconcilable issue with this. As is so often the case, Steve, you’ve said nigh on exactly what I felt, but (I can’t remember what you thought of this, your review probably lost in the grip of theatermania’s evil clutches) I found that ease of approach, that unwillingness to follow through, that resolution, that was why this play really, really, really angered me. On the way out, yes, there were plenty of teary people, and what with Cranham’s tremendous performance (well deserved Olivier) I was one of them, but it ended up as much about its construction as about its emotion. As you say, it was a mystery, but one I saw through my eyes. I wasn't immersed in Andre's confusion, I was immersed in Zeller's mystery. I wasn't Andre, I was Poirot. I was impressed not by how I saw the world through Andre’s eyes, but I saw the mystery of Andre’s perspective through my eyes, connecting dots, drawing conclusions, and eventually getting the resolution I so craved so I could skip out of the Tricycle and get on with my comfortable life. It was a mystery, and like every good mystery the clues were there for me to solve and the answer came at the end. But dementia isn’t a mystery, and even half way through I felt uneasy about how Zeller was playing with us, offering us as audiences hints Andre didn’t have and giving us the benefit of real clarity around the corner. It wasn’t immersive. It was smug.
That’s why I thought Here We Go was devastatingly brilliant in every way this wasn't. Other than the fact that it has to end with blackout, applause and we all troll off, that final twenty minutes offered no explanation and no comfort and no relatabiltiy and no answer. If we empathised with Godfrey, we empathised with a meaningless meandering existence we don’t even control, damned to a Sisyphean torture that’s all too real. If we didn’t empathise with Godfrey, we became the relatives who cast him off and turn him into trite anecdotes – unempathetic, uncomfortable to acknowledge his discomfort, understanding his decline through our own secure position. I found that a far more cruel way of exploring this, yet far more real.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again – I thought this ended up being about how smart Florian Zeller was, as much as it was about how cruel dementia was. We had Visitors a year or two ago, where in naturalistically showing an almost Alan Bennett parody of a scene then showing the very early stages of a mental decline from four clear perspectives, the inhumanity of dementia was unbearably shown, its naturalism and recognisability its secret weapon as Norris’ authorial voice came second to Norris’ beautiful, unbearably relatable characters (for my money Visitors is the best new play of the last five years). Then we had Here We Go, with a very self-conscious stagecraft which nonetheless used Beckettian mime and allegory to really envelop us in dementia in full flow, forcing a response that’s far more instinctive than intellectual. The Father was neither fish nor fowl, superciliously cleverer than a naturalistic drama yet far archer in construction than Churchill’s deliberately divisive technique. Perhaps it’s me, but I felt very, very uncomfortable with how comfortable Zeller made me with this play. Perhaps that’s its genius – it depicts dementia with some modicum of the reality of the confusion it causes, but gives some sense of a conclusion for us, some catharsis then closure. But I don’t think that’s honest, or at least I think its closure was too arch and clever (Visitors has closure, but I’m glad I don’t have to see Bassett’s character now two years on). Perhaps this is a grander conversation about how comfortable theatre should be on any topic. On this it felt not just uncomfortably soft-touch, but very uncomfortably show-offy. I realise I'm a lone voice in disliking this, and I really didn't hate this by any means (probably three stars), but I could not get on with how this showed off.
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Post by Nicholas on Apr 17, 2016 16:17:18 GMT
Home media’s become so good that I think the great outdoors has to make a much stronger case to tempt people away. If at home you can watch or binge on Breaking Bad and have all the food/drink/talking/texting/other unseemly actions people do at home, why can’t I go to the cinema and have all the food/drink/talking/texting/other unseemly actions I have at home? Thus I’ve been to the cinema where people eat a three course meal or text throughout or shag (and sadly I wish I was exaggerating), and the theatre where it's basically that bad. I also think thickos think that because Netflix allows you to enjoy finely honed art by great creatives entirely on your basis entirely on whatever cruddy device you fancy, all art is like that – so because I can watch 12 Years a Slave on my phone on the tube and play Angry Birds during the bits I don’t fancy focusing on, so too at the cinema and the theatre can I play on my phone and ignore the movie in front of me.
I like to think that's the thick minority, but because it's the noisy minority people confuse it for the majority, and are over-catering for the wrong audience. People who text, over-eat, dance etc SHOULD be kicked out - not only would those of us on here be happier, but so would an entire auditorium. One bad expensive experience will put paying punters off for life. But people behind cinemas and theatres are getting it wrong and catering for the wrong people, assuming that what people enjoy at home (i.e. doing what you like and the art coming second) is what you want at the theatre. This affects the wrong people. I read on Twitter that someone walked out of Dr Faustus not because it's sh*t (it is, angry hate-filled write-up in progress) but because thick people nearby were making too many Game of Thrones jokes throughout. These are the people I would have shot banned - it's a shame one well behaved, well intentioned person missed the show (it's a shame they saw any of this bollocks in the first place) because other poorly behaved, poorly intentioned people were idiots. THey should have been reprimanded, and possibly kicked out. We should have stricter bans on people who behave like this, not half-arsed peace offerings. That cinema chain in America is allowing phones. Big mistake. Letting inmates run asylum, that is. Ban them instead. Ban them to hell.
One of my least favourite moments of theatre of last year was when Roger Allam had that speech about why it’s worthwhile paying extortionate fees for great art in Sir David Hare's The Moderate Soprano, but I begrudgingly admit there’s a point to that champagne socialist's plea for more champagne. Whoever it was at the ROH made the point a few years ago that casual evenings at the opera aren’t what people want, and one thing people do like about opera is the ‘event’ of it – the dressing up, the fanciness and foppery, the glamour of it all. You look at something like Secret Cinema – I went to one and found it overpriced hipster noodling to the worst degree, but there was something mildly liberating about knowing that everyone was giving away their phones, taking on a persona and throwing every bit of themselves into, in the end, seeing a movie.
So I think theatres ought to really up the live action immersiveness of it all, even though it’s hard to justify sitting in a comfy seat and watching Sophie Melville go through awful(ly written) poverty-related horrors or Wallace Shawn bang on about stuff that’s bothering him in government. I think the Globe is the best place for this, its grubby pit and sh*tty sightlines part of its charm, requiring us as an audience to pretend and invest far more than normal. Simon Evans is doing that with starry uncomfortable stuff at Found111 which really requires full commitment (and also, in such a small pit, means bad behavers can't hide). Dan Radcliffe and James Graham and Josie Rourke on Broadway, as they did at the Donmar, will encourage a new type of behaviour. The right kind of fringe theatre encourages involvement in the risks they’re taking. Actually, for all that people are snobby about celeb casting, I find that people who go for a Cumberbatch or a McAvoy or a Hiddleston are so intent to enjoy themselves they forego any potential distractions and behave themselves far better than the blue rinse brigade ticking off another Shakespeare before they shuffle off the mortal coil themselves. And dare I say, the bad behaviour at jukebox musicals or feel-good pieces or some comedies (and dare I say some eejits at local theatres, where travel and other expenses aren't an issue) comes from people thinking their hard-earned money earns them the right to 'enjoy' it at everyone else's expense, though hopefully that's a minority of idiots.
So I just think theatres ought to have more than ‘turn off your phone’ warnings, but encouragements that this is a place that only works when you do put your outside life outside and give all to the inside – a good prologue, doing up the box offices, actual encouragement. I actually think people would prefer that to just being told off. It shouldn’t be enforcement, it should be encouragement, and I actually think more people would want to go to the theatre for themselves becoming part of the theatrics. You do that and the bad behaviour will go down.
And if it doesn't, a knitting needle to the jugular does the trick.
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Post by Nicholas on Apr 8, 2016 12:00:43 GMT
may I just be a bit offtop and overemotional here? REading the couple of last pages in that topic makes me love you all and being very happy being able to discuss my fave shows in such a deep and interesting way. You are the best! THe thing I love most about the board is that we can have these topics about very sensitive and occasionally personal stories in a truly discursive way. Like the way diversity was discussed in the other thread - everyone heard everyone else out, and everyone responded thoughtfully and with decency, agreeing where they agreed and respectfully disagreeing where they disagreed. On any other board, about subjects much less sensitive than diversity or AIDS, the insults would have flown like arrows and at least three people would have been blocked. On here, an actual discussion! It's lovely to read, it always is. Plus you lot have areas of expertise (like extraordinarily varied, culturally rich and/or globetrotting lives, or actually being a writer no less, or PhDs on Rent!) that most of us can only dream of and it's wonderful when you employ them - it's also lovely how open everyone tends to be about their history and personal relationship to shows. Perhaps even more than that, it's all of your willingness to treat every musical with the intellectual nous criticism normally only saves for relatively radical new plays that makes me value this place more than I value actual criticism in any medium anymore. GUsh over.
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Post by Nicholas on Apr 5, 2016 15:33:20 GMT
That was a perfect example of how not to televise an awards ceremony. “Say, we’ve got to cut one of these, which do you think will attract more viewers – the famous, sexy, talented and popular star/writer of Sherlock giving an endearing speech, of Cindy Lauper duetting with Michael Ball? I can think of no better way to celebrate the best in British theatre than giving a ten minute plug to an American singer’s new country album.”. Given that plays were given five minutes of airtime I think that deserved the ‘mainstream audience’ of 23:00 on a Sunday night – four filmed scenes for plays, two of which are still on! How hard is that? Ignoring the fact that televising it so long after the fact and so late on a Sunday will make for terrible viewing figures anyway, the show itself was so bland, so poorly constructed and so badly shown anyone up at that time will have watched Sex Box instead.
That said, that was also a perfect example of how not to programme an awards ceremony. Whoever wrote Michael Ball’s script should be taken out back and shot, and bless Ball for knowing how bad it was from five minutes in but still persevering but blimey his intrusions into the songs he sang felt completely first-year-at-drama-school-look-at-me-look-at-me. Whoever wrote the autocue for the presenters, assuming it was someone else, ought to be taken out and shot as well – I always find the hyperbole of the Oscars grating, but these people deserve a little more than “Here are the nominees”, surely? Performances were all over the place – most of the musical numbers worked well and televisually (and any opportunity to see Staunton), but there was something very, very Alan Partridge about the “Best Musical Numbers of the last 40 year” (“Attend the tale of Sweeney Todd, then try a little priest” – REALLY? Plus Michael Feinstein looks like someone who’s skinned Barry Manilow’s face and pulled it too tightly over their own), Jack Savoretti’s performance could have been nice but was just a bad song (they should have taken snippets of the Rickman When Love Speaks project, possibly his sonnet or possibly just clips of him and Roger Rees and Geraldine McEwen reading, and had a music or musical star or someone like 2014’s Young Musician play underneath, that would have been far more moving and far more fitting the occasion) and every single one of those final actresses should regret what they did for love.
Can’t begrudge any of the winners, except maybe Hangmen as I didn’t love it as much as you lot whereas both Farinelli and PPT were really extraordinary and beautiful pieces of work. Particularly lovely to see Staunton, of course, and I think Gatiss has become one of our best stage actors while no-one was looking so it’s great to see him rewarded (two years after he should have been for Coriolanus). I thought the nominations this year were all over the place (David Suchet and the terrible Tom Sturridge over Streatfield and Flynn, the ‘Comedy’ category a patronising afterthought utterly discredited by the victory of a comedy in the Best Play category, Cumberbatch nominated over Heffernan, just off the top of my head...) but at least deserving winners floated to the top from a very bad assembly otherwise.
Plus, I think Dominic Dromgoole deserved the honorary award that Hytner and Starr got for leaving the successful NT and Spacey got for leaving the successful Old Vic – Dromgoole’s worked wonders for that theatre and for attracting new audiences to theatre, and to not get anything, presumably because he’s not famous or they couldn’t be arsed, is a real testimony to how terrible these awards were this year.
IF it’s going to be somewhere as glitzy as the ROH or RAH, it needs hyperbole, it needs genuine star power (specifically theatrical star power like, say, THIS YEAR’S SUPPORTING ACTOR OSCAR WINNER or esoteric choices like that) and it needs a sense of glitz throughout, and if it wants to be a fun night out for stagey types it ought to be a basement boozy supper. There was this attempt to be glitzy that felt wholly like tokenistic trying to be the Tonys (who do this much better, mostly because there’s a much better script to someone like Neil Patrick Harris’ hosting) and then this embarrassment at praising people too much. I think there’s this paradox in how the Brits do award shows (the Baftas struggle with this too) in that we want to stand up next to the glitz and glamour of the Tonys or the Oscars, but we want to preserve that British false modesty and underplaying of success, so we rent out the Opera House and bring in Dames and Knights and celebs to read an autocue knowingly underplaying the ceremony with crap like “I’m presenting this award to an actor” or just “And the nominees are...”. The ONLY thing to Oliviers do well is alphabetising the In Memoriam.
But actually I think there’s a genuinely insidious problem to the way these awards are constructed. When someone like Shirley Bassey comes on, it feels like the people behind the biggest theatre awards in the country don’t have any faith in theatre; likewise someone like Vanessa Redgrave who hasn’t been on stage in a couple of years and where no mention is made of appearing on stage again, she’s there purely because she’s famous. Last year, the script very wisely kept referencing the shows the presenters were about to be in, but this year (as with most years in these godforsaken bastard awards) it feels like the stars are being wheeled on stage to take our attention away from the grubby non-celebs off-stage (which is particularly egregious in a year when people like Bradley Cooper, Nicole Kidman, Cumberbatch, Matthew Perry for goodness’ sake are in London and on stage!). So, the impression the show gives isn’t that theatre is a glorious place of artistry or even a chance to see famous people up close; it’s that theatre’s not half as interesting as Cyndi Lauper and Michael Ball. The people behind the biggest theatre awards in the country turn away from the country to praise celebrities, pop music, and anything but theatre. It’s pathetic, it truly is.
But other than that, a good night! And congratulations to Sir Ken and Glenda Jackson for their wins next year.
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Post by Nicholas on Mar 22, 2016 0:18:22 GMT
Anyone see a screening of this tonight? i must admit I wasn't terribly impressed. Love Bryn Terfel but for an eponymous piece, Boris felt a wee bit underused! As lovely as choruses sound, when they appear in operas I'm generally willing them to hurry up so we can get back to the real story. And my goodness, there was a lot of the chorus in this. Fantastic closing scene, but I'm not sure it made up for the previous hour and 45 minutes where I was dangerously close to bored stiff. Good to see Richard Jones is a keen recycler though - looked like some of that yellow piping from The Hairy Ape was getting used again...
So, you're saying Boris Godunov... wasn't Boris Goodenough?
I'll get me coat.
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Post by Nicholas on Mar 21, 2016 23:11:01 GMT
Funnily enough, I’ve been thinking about this a lot recently, prompted by Computer Says Show (well worth watching) and Beyond the Fence. In a three-stars quite entertaining way, I actually did like Beyond the Fence – it had some half decent songs, a solid plot and set of characters, a very decent setting (which deserves a better musical) and hit the right emotional beats (albeit with too accurate a precision) – but for all that, it absolutely was not a great musical. I think that’s because of the computer, and the central flaw is its unwillingness to risk imperfection. The plot’s too streamlined, it hits too many tried and tested right notes, it follows the formula too closely. It doesn’t have that key risk at its heart.
So with that in mind, I’ve come to the conclusion that, whatever a computer might say, I think Human Error is the secret to a great musical. I think that what makes a show isn’t hitting the formulaic marks or having big sexy moments, but having that giant opportunity for massive failure. It has to have risk. It has to have the potentiality for failure. Obviously the best musicals don’t fail in the end, but there has to be that risk of failure in the beginning. Nothing ventured, nothing gained. That’s probably true of plays, too – Hytner said that the four biggest hits in his tenure were History Boys, War Horse, Curious Incident and One Man Two Guv’nors, and all of those weren’t successes on paper – and probably true of all great art of any medium be it Duchamp or Disney or Dostoevsky. That said, I think musicals stray into risky area less often, for tedious financial reasons. In this country we need a) better critical understanding and coverage of musicals (revivals and new, fringe, regions and West End, all need better understanding and coverage), and b) greater performance opportunities for musical writers to risk failure on a less public basis, and through that gain greater success through greater risk.
Also great tunes.
So what makes a great musical? Well, there’s that now-iconic quote by Leonard Cohen: There is a crack in everything; that’s how the light gets in. Thinking about some major musical successes, I think that’s proven true:
The cracks in Les Mis, for example, for all that it has the key ‘success’ points the computer marked, are manifold. It has multiple dying sex workers, Hugo’s novelistic structure and complicated religious and societal politics, and is set during a major historical failure most people only know now due to the musical’s success. In treating Hugo’s novel seriously as Nicholas Nickleby was treated, it doesn’t make concessions to the mainstream, and in risking alienating the mainstream I think that’s why the mainstream like it.
The cracks in the other hit of Hytner’s tenure, London Road, are obvious – a verbatim script and musical style about a provocative, recent, sensitive subject? If it hadn’t worked, it wouldn’t just be a bad musical, but a hugely distasteful one (though I thought the film did have issues in taste the play didn’t, the structure there making it a Midsomer Murders witchhunt for a killer, and it patronised the prostitutes as on stage it never did). On stage it was a huge success which did change how I feel and think about that aspect of community and communal healing.
The cracks in Cabaret are also obvious – just setting it in the time when Nazism became the norm is risky enough. That it ends with our heroine getting an abortion whilst our Jewish heroine has her final moment of happiness before the Third Reich takes hold says it all. Though it’s not too risky a world – George Osborne kept banging on that his budget was a budget that put the next generation first, so as a member of the next generation I think his point was that tomorrow belongs to me.
The cracks in ALW’s best work, for all that he’s now mostly seen as conventional, are actually very daring. The conflicted, heroic Judas of JCS, the complex Wilder plot of Sunset Blvd, the bonkersness of setting TS Eliot’s most childish animal poems to dance... The reason ALW's been so successful is that, actually, he chooses his best material with great discernment; then he mainstream-ises them by ripping off Puccini over the top.
The cracks in Sweeney Todd are something Sondheim’s said about before – taking a relatively flippant and unknown myth very seriously. In treating the morality of mass murder in a very adult way, and with a plot about violence begetting violence that’s absolutely Shakespearean, it could be a pretentious, unfunny muddle – but it’s Sondheim, so of course it isn’t. And then the risks in Assassins make Sweeney Todd look like Mamma Mia.
The cracks in Mrs Henderson Presents are those of Emma Williams and the chorus.
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Post by Nicholas on Mar 20, 2016 3:24:20 GMT
Loved this. Last night I was watching a violent Ballardian dystopia and this morning I woke up with a sore throat, so was in the mood for something light and undemanding, and this proved to be an appropriately-named tonic.
I saw that violent Ballardian dystopia last night as well! I thought it was a terrifying vision of an ignorant elite redistributing and stealing resources from those who most need them, looking down on the poor and expecting them to clean up the mess left for them, and eventually tearing themselves apart from within.
Inevitable punchline ahoy, George Osborne’s budget and Ian Duncan Smith’s departure made for quite a watch. And unless Ashcroft and Oakenshield were telling porkies in their biography of Cameron, the violent Ballardian dystopian theme of sex with inanimate objects with which you shouldn’t have sex also comes into this too.
Moving swiftly on, actually thought the film was fab, barking mad (forgive the pun) and often hilarious, passed the six laugh test even when I was appalled and/or bamboozled by the full-on depravity. Thoroughly recommended, and for a violent dystopia, surprisingly fun. And given that Sir Chuckles (does he chuckle in this? If he doesn’t I won’t bother) really launched Hiddleston into the mainstream, what with Ivanov then Wallander then Thor, a quite suitable double bill with this play. I wasn’t prioritising The Painkiller, but on the basis of these comments I think I’ll be entering the ballot on every available opportunity, so fingers crossed!
(Also, on an interesting theatrical sidenote, the voice of Thatcher at the end of High-Rise isn't Thatcher (unless I misunderstood what the credits meant by "Voice on Radio"), but Fenella Woolgar giving us her best Thatcher after Handbagged!)
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Post by Nicholas on Mar 17, 2016 6:02:26 GMT
Cunnilingus, cheerlessness and conservatism – this really is one hell of a show. It’s not my kind of music – I must confess I find The Smiths the most insufferable band – yet here, belted out by Horrocks with passion and fury and set in a context that gives them such meaning, the songs had a political as well as a musical prescience. Horrocks, naturally, is a tremendous singer whose love for the songs is clear in every passionate performance, but this is far far more than merely a gig of her greatest hits. It’s a cleverly constructed, politically important Janus of a show, looking back to look forwards and making a striking political point amid the rocking concert setting.
In some ways, Horrocks herself is not the focus – she has a brief spiel at beginning and end, and other than that sings songs to which the dancers perform. The plots instead focus on our four dancer protagonists – extremes of 80s lifestyles opaquely told through wonderful dance to apathetic lyrics. As Horrocks belts out The Human League’s ‘Empire State Human’, one man pumps weights incessantly, as a reminder of the macho man action movies suggested. Dancing the Macarena to Joy Division’s ‘Isolation’, the central oxymoron of the 80s club scene – that people dance alone to be together – is literalised very wittily. A Morrissey song is sung, before which the man and the woman rolled together into the one giggling snowball of full-figured copulation, as Horrocks sings “I just want a lover like any other/I’m in distress, I need a caress” – casual sex is a matter of course, as opposed to something meaningful, the moves and many positions far from Morrissey’s florid bad sex (“the pained frenzy of his bulbous salutation extenuating his excitement as it whacked and smacked its way into every muscle of Eliza’s body except for the otherwise central zone”) but as mechanical as the Macarena. One man first tentatively, then comfortably fumbles about with another man, the politics of Stonewall somewhere distant in the background as human feelings come first here. The miserable repetition of domestic life – in and out comes the fridge, school is tedium, work is tedium and home life is tedium – is a montage that works, given the miserable tone of most northern love songs. If this is an exercise in archaeology, what these various tableaus tend to do is recreate the youthful mood of the 80s; as a 90s band would later sing, our protagonists dance and drink and screw because there’s nothing else to do, and just as Planer, Ryan, Edmonson and the late great Mayall, they live in surreal situ together. As a recreation it’s on the button. But there is much more to this than merely being an exercise in archaeology. These are love songs, and the stories are nominally those of love (comfy home life, casual sex and youthful explorations), but these northern songs are steeped in the politics of the time, and it is here that the production pushes itself into something really quite remarkable.
Over the action presides the wonderful Jane Horrocks like the ghost of Conservatism yet to come. She casts a wry eye over proceedings, performing the songs with a slyness in her voice as if to warn the 80s characters of how little would change in 30 years. This is most clear when the 5’2 Horrocks belts out “Tall, tall, tall, I wanna be tall, tall, tall” with a knowing, self-mocking irony, but this knowingness goes through all the songs, with a far more political and far more pointed edge. Her brief archaeology-invoking introduction locates her (and us) in the present, and the pointed date she later states – 1978 – is, of course, the year before Thatcher’s election, setting the political scene. As such these are more than domestic love songs – they are retrospective political statements about Thatcher’s turbulent decade. The dissatisfaction and apathy the songs had then is clear through performance, but in setting the scene today looking back to yesterday, that apathy is given context and consequence – apathy then changed nothing, only encouraged apathy now. Scenes of work and school – clichés in movies (think Gregory’s Girl or Ken Loach) are set to songs about being alone and danced with dissatisfaction. ‘My New House’ – sung with an ever-increasing sarcasm in Horrocks’ voice over projections of overlapping and overlapping and overlapping house blueprints and similarly overlapping scenes of matter-of-fact f***ing – becomes, in one fell swoop, a parody of the Young Ones’ communal house and a barbed attack on Thatcher’s changes in social housing, which can only remind us of the headlines we read about the housing crisis today. Most affecting is the absence of the gay character – before this song, seen bloodied as if beaten, left alone by his friends and clearly shaken and unwell – who leaves the stage bare to let Horrocks sing ‘I Know It’s Over’; as Horrocks’ shaky voice on an empty stage begins “Oh mother, I can feel the soil falling over my head”, this song about mortality, being alone and the consequences of love gains a distressing poignancy it never had before, the AIDS crisis told not through major statistics and medical knowledge but that heartbreaking human loneliness that still means for loneliness today. At the end, Horrocks brings us to the present with ‘Life is a Pigsty’, Morrissey’s message of misery showing how little has changed, both in politics and apathetic attitudes towards. The relationship between the songs, the performances and the context makes this a profoundly political work, about the reasons there were to be apathetic in the 80s, the desperation for love, and the consequences of apathy today; this is not just a recreation of but a judgement of the 80s and a study of its legacy.
But amidst this apathetic reappraisal of already apathetic songs, there’s something more – something truly touching, truly personal, truly affecting about the way Horrocks structures this all, the plot it tells and the underlying message about love amidst politics, with a pulse as pounding in its romantic heart as in its punky spunky baselines. As Horrocks parades through the stage, she allows herself the odd lusty look at male beauty, the odd dance, the odd moment of interconnectivity. Her final musical choice might, in its chorus, hammer home the grimness the songs also explore – ‘Life Is A Pigsty’ – but its final words of “Even now, in the final hour of my life, I’m falling in love, again” are lines of hope against hopelessness and, cliché though it may be, love conquering all. If You Kiss Me Kiss Me may primarily be a rocking, passionate and wry look at how little political apathy and youthful optimism did then to negate the former and encourage the latter, but above all, as Larkin used carved rock to prove, Horrocks uses Northern Rock to prove our almost instinct almost true: what will survive of us is love.
So, perhaps I’m still high on Joey’s leftover horse tranquilisers from the New London Theatre the adrenaline of seeing Stephen Sondheim, and a part of me thinks I’m talking out of my bottom and probably reading too much into something that’s just meant to be a gig (great gig), but in direct contrast to n1david, surprising no-one more than myself, and for only the second time this year (the first being The Encounter), it’s a full five stars.
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Post by Nicholas on Mar 12, 2016 2:04:09 GMT
Would LOVE to know what he was thinking when watching Wonderland tonight as well.
I was this close to going to the box office and buying another ticket, in the hope that I could sit next to him, pretend not to know him, ask him what he thought and revel in the inevitable answer. I decided I couldn’t see the show again unless very very drunk. I decided I didn’t want Sondheim to see me very very drunk. I went home instead. Wonderful though the evening was, a part of me feels sick that Sondheim – the man who wrote Gee Officer Krupkee, Not Getting Married, A Little Priest, We’re Gonna Be Alright, Move On and all those other glorious lyrics – spent the evening on the same stage as Everyone Loves Charlie, Everyone Loves Charlie, and Not Alone/Like A Toenail All Ingrown.
Shame I didn’t see any of you – I did look, but no luck! I was fourth row stalls in blue, if anyone saw me. I did see Mike Leigh later, though (I think going to see Waste), so that’s something.
Sondheim might not have said anything not said or written down elsewhere, but there was plenty that I didn’t recognise (although the speed with which he gave some of the answers suggested they were answers he’d given before), from what he listens to, to how he develops a voice for each character and sometimes, as now, struggles to do so, to a long and effusive answer saying so much about Jonathan Tunick. Incidentally, nothing wrong with getting the same answers given context: when the inevitable “Musical-to-film” question was asked, he gave the same answer about West Side Story being a terrible movie as it’s too stagey, whilst Sweeney Todd’s a great movie because it’s conceived as a movie (I know that movie has haters on here, but I broadly agree that it’s a bad Sondheim movie but a tremendous Tim Burton movie and I think it’s wonderful cinema) – but he made no qualification about Into The Woods, indeed no mention of it whatsoever, and I might be looking for answers where none occur, but does that not suggest that he thinks it inferior to Sweeney? I just found that exclusion very interesting.
Regardless, I keep remembering moments (that write up, Squire Sullen, is so complete I envy your memory, but more importantly is a lovely and superb piece of writing), questions he answered, lines he said, and just smiling; the man’s an indisputable genius with a brain the size of a planet and an encyclopaedic knowledge and great human understanding of musical theatre, and having him, even just for 45 minutes, telling even a fragment of what he knows, even a fragment of what he’s written, was wonderful. Last year I had the privilege of seeing Peter Brook in conversation, and it’s a worthy comparison – two genii in their golden years who’ve lost nothing of their youthful passion for their medium but gained a lifetime of insight they’re able to share at the drop of a hat. I really am a lucky bugger, we all are.
More importantly, though, what we got was the man in all his fast-witted, down-to-earth, intense glory. When he said (to one of The Stage’s own journalists, no less!) “That’s a meaningless question” before qualifying it himself and giving a prescient as always answer; when he answered the question about form and content (the revue form for Assassins against the revue form by way of character story for Company) with such precision; that he took none of us for fools and explained nothing, expecting, nay demanding, us to have the knowledge of not only his oeuvre but the extensive oeuvre of Hammerstein and movie musicals; when he said “Don’t take a photo” to someone just behind me with such intensity that he rendered the Olivier silent as few actors are able to; when off the cuff he made the joke about the ushers knowing Jujitsu, or wonderfully answered the question “What do you listen to when relaxing on a Sunday evening?” with “RELAXING?”... Smug alert (as always): this was my third Sondheim sighting, but more than the other two times, I felt that we really saw the man behind the shows, the wonderful, warm man, but also the genius who takes no fools. It was an absolute privilege to see a mind like his in full flow, but an even greater privilege to see a man like him in full flow.
Now, what did he think of wonder.land?
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Post by Nicholas on Mar 2, 2016 4:59:47 GMT
Donald Trump is like an antagonist in Parks and Recreation. He says stupid things that everyone can tell are stupid, but the swayable majority applaud him and go for him instead of the sensible one with sensible options. Farce repeating itself as tragedy this time, the depressing fact is that in this relative situation the sensible one with sensible options wasn’t Leslie Knope but the third Bush, and that went well. I gave up hope some time ago that people would turn against him and realise that every claim he makes is a lie made up that morning and see that intelligent Americans, unintelligent Americans and THE REST OF THE WORLD despised him before the joke went too far let alone now, so now I’m just twiddling my thumbs, waiting for him to say something so illegal he constitutionally is not allowed to run, looking up ‘Least Nuke-able Countries’ to move to after he’s voted in.
Regarding Drumpf, I quite like keeping his name Trump. As an immature Brit, ‘trump’ means ‘fart’ to me, and that’s fair enough. This is the way the world ends. This is the way the world ends. This is the way the world ends. Not with a bang but with a great big smelly trump.
At least we have moderately amusing theatrical parodies to occupy us in the interim.
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Post by Nicholas on Feb 29, 2016 10:13:05 GMT
Mark Rylance Mark Rylance Mark Rylance! Still over the moon. Hoping he gets nominated for an Olivier later (as I hope van Kampen is), wouldn’t that be swell? My money was on Stallone, because the Academy often like to reward old-timers in that lifetime achievement way, though everything was crossed for the eventual deserving winner. It’s testament to how much I love Rylance that I don’t begrudge him having cost me my hard-earned coffers.
My money was also on Spotlight, though, which means, hold your applause, overall I’m up by a grand total of £3.46 (pub quiz is on me, clearly). My favourite nominated film was Room, but Spotlight was just behind, the brilliance of that film being that the ‘lead’ is the story, every cut and character and scene and moment dedicated not to cinematic show-offery where we appreciate how hard it must have been to make this shot for the actors, directors and cinematographer who ultimately win for their shameless, hollow, difficult spectacle, but to honouring the silenced people in a story that needs honouring.
Glad it beat The Revenant, which I thought was pants – it’s a Road Runner cartoon for pretentious people. Of the two “Maverick Director Takes Cast Into Inhospitable Terrain To Make OTT Impossible Chase Movie”s nominated, it wasn’t even my favourite and clearly not the technical best of the two. For the second year in a row, Inarritu wins for a film whose central message is “Allessandro G Inarritu really really really wants you to notice how innovative he is.”
But that said, Congratulations Leo. It’s nice that, in these times of political and economic instability, we can come together as a community to rally behind and celebrate a needy multi-millionaire finally getting his much-coveted lump of solid gold. I find it ridiculous that people can be so excited about this great actor finally getting his due in a year when Mark Rylance, the greatest living actor (maybe, possibly, probably), has upset people who thought it should go to the star of Stop Or My Mon Will Shoot, where Ennio Morricone only just won his first (first!) Oscar, and where Roger Deakins STILL hasn’t won. Go Leo, your grunting while a bloke in a blue bear costume straddled you was better than everyone else’s not grunting.
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Post by Nicholas on Feb 29, 2016 3:37:01 GMT
Mark Rylance!
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Post by Nicholas on Feb 27, 2016 21:31:59 GMT
Not for the last time, my first time wasn’t much to brag about. It would have been local pantos (hardly inspiring, but very good fun), getting involved in the odd am-dram (acting didn’t do it for me), and children’s shows live (vague memories, possibly fabricated, of Bodger and Badger Live). We were taken to some West End musicals when we were young – didn’t much care for Phantom, was particularly taken by Les Mis (I think we saw that three times before I was 10, which surprises me now looking back, given how dark and full of dying sex workers that show is (though you’d be surprised how many dying sex workers they snuck into Bodger and Badger Live)), and even, get this, saw Martine in My Fair Lady (undoubtedly it’s that show that prompted my love of musicals, though I’ve vague memories of a local Me and My Girl seeming like the most groundbreaking piece of work to innocent little me, still adore that show). Hell, I even enjoyed Stomp – was I ever that young?
The first thing I remember not just enjoying but adoring, the first thing that inspired the kind of awe only theatre can inspire, was my first NT trip which just happened to be His Dark Materials – it wasn’t until seeing Sir Chuckles in Ivanov during my formative teenage years that I felt that shared emotional weight and inexplicable empathy of theatre and became utterly obsessed, but long before that it was absolutely His Dark Materials which sowed those seeds and wowed me so. I’d loved the books, and add to that the on-stage magic and those tremendous performances from a cast you’d kill to see now – the memories amaze me still. I only now realise how much of that was less down to the stagecraft and more down to how well it spoke to my tender emotions at that young age. Obviously yes, I was impressed by a chasm as big as the Olivier, by the nature of the marathon, by seeing brought to life that impossible story that I knew by heart and loved back then, but it was more to do with the brilliance of the storytelling – said it before and will say it again, the moment that most lingers in the mind is the moment when Samuel Barnett takes off his mask and now he has become Death. Nicholas Wright was the unsung hero of that show. So yes, after that, how could I not love theatre?
In fact, that’s why I’d feel sorry for someone who’s first show would have been something like Treasure Island, or heaven forbid wonder.land – it’s impossible not to be impressed by a place like the Olivier and by the staging only it is capable of, but without a script that makes you care, it’s just empty spectacle, a quick thrill and then home – a bit like other first times I could mention.
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