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Post by lonlad on Dec 14, 2022 0:25:51 GMT
All this ilnness (STREETCAR, HAKAWATIS, WATCH ON THE RHINE, now this) recalls this time last year with multiple shows toppling in the run-up to xmas, except for Tamsin Greig at the Hampstead as Peggy Ramsay -- who was indomitable !
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Post by lonlad on Dec 13, 2022 13:34:19 GMT
The NY production was much better cast pretty much down the line and infinitely better designed - this one is visually so drab and dreary that it wrongfoots you from the start and the configuration of the desks in the first scene seems off, just for starters. It also felt more coherent, much more moving, and less piecemeal: this version diminishes the writing, at least for me. Interesting to see 2 stars or 4 stars from the crits. I would give it 3.
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Post by lonlad on Dec 13, 2022 0:01:54 GMT
Well, having sung this play's praises in NY, I can only report that the London version doesn't land at all and is spectacularly miscast in at least three of the central roles. Oh well: a shame, too, since the play is SO much better (moving/funny/etc) than this production lets on. Jack Holden is excellent. The rest is silence .....
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Post by lonlad on Dec 11, 2022 17:49:52 GMT
The New York production of it a decade or more ago (2011, I see now) was absolutely superb; let's hope this one follows suit! The cast there included Tony winners Joanna Gleason and Santino Fontana, so pretty stellar .....
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Post by lonlad on Dec 9, 2022 9:49:39 GMT
It's metallic and shrill, you're absolutely right.
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Post by lonlad on Dec 9, 2022 0:38:57 GMT
Oh no! After the double whammy of HEX and MANDELA - both dreadful - I don't know if I can take another bad musical in such quick succession ..... :-)
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Post by lonlad on Dec 9, 2022 0:34:39 GMT
>>I wasn't as thrilled with Vivien Parry as Fraulein Schneider,but can't put my finger on why.
Probably because she's about 1000 times too much in the part and plays it as if she's trying to out-Sally Sally. Liza S and Elliot L were sublime and richly deserved their supporting Oliviers - arguably more so than the lead trophies for Jessie and Eddie. Callum on the other hand is a major revelation here: a really superb performance.
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Post by lonlad on Dec 8, 2022 17:59:36 GMT
Patsy F is so NOT a Blanche -- this will be an intriguing changeover for sure: Rebecca F sticking with the tried and true.
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Post by lonlad on Dec 8, 2022 16:35:10 GMT
Except she isn't remotely painted as human - she's a crassly conceived parade of self-contradictions that don't begin to add up, though I laughed out loud at the notion that she would actual stop everything to bone up on her Ibsen. AS IF ! The tiramisu scene is so ludicrous as to be contemptible.
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Post by lonlad on Dec 8, 2022 15:04:52 GMT
The Grauniad review is spot on. Funny that they and the ideologically opposed Times think the same. The Telegraph has weighed in with a whopping two stars. Now all we need is the FT.
4 stars by the way from WOS - a critic there I've never heard of (Gareth Carr).
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Post by lonlad on Dec 8, 2022 7:46:03 GMT
I suspect others will follow suit
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Post by lonlad on Dec 7, 2022 23:37:37 GMT
One of the very worst things I have ever seen at the National and the audience clamour at its patronising, faux-empathic embrace of today's fractured society was almost as disturbing as the play itself. I have admired April de Angelis in the past, especially JUMPY, but this feels like the work of someone who's never seen a play much less written one. It's both insulting and incompetent, much - it has to be said - like HEX in the theatre adjoining it. The National seems hellbent just now on its own partial destruction.
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Post by lonlad on Dec 1, 2022 14:17:19 GMT
Everything now is miked, BEST OF ENEMIES deafeningly so - you'd think they were playing Wembley Arena.
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Post by lonlad on Nov 27, 2022 11:25:01 GMT
Why there aren't queues around the block for BLACKOUT SONGS is a mystery to me: and total raves from the Telegraph and the NYTimes, amongst others, should help with some sort of longer life. Don't miss it ! Alex Austin confirms his status as one of this country's finest young actors and the entire production brims with vitality, poignancy, and a sense of occasion.
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Post by lonlad on Oct 27, 2022 13:13:19 GMT
Or that it's actually just very very good - which it is !
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Post by lonlad on Oct 27, 2022 12:35:02 GMT
4 stars just in from The Arts Desk, londontheatre.co.uk, and Sarah Hemming in the FT
Those few early reviews are looking like real outliers.
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Post by lonlad on Oct 27, 2022 10:40:51 GMT
Yes, I noticed that, too: a political divide where one wouldn't necessarily have expected it. God only know what Quentin Letts will say !
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Post by lonlad on Oct 26, 2022 22:59:24 GMT
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Post by lonlad on Oct 19, 2022 7:49:10 GMT
I love the ongoing marketing campaign for this with the four performers, in whatever ragtag assemblage has been got together for the moment, always staring stern-faced into the camera. Hilarious, and kind of silly (just like the show).
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Post by lonlad on Oct 18, 2022 23:11:31 GMT
Wonderful first half and then it sort of goes to pieces in the second. The ending makes NO sense at all on any level except the most crassly manipulative and is rushed and hasty with it; I wasn't alone in not even realising it was the ending. But the first half, I must say, is bliss.
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Post by lonlad on Oct 12, 2022 22:57:38 GMT
Simply tremendous: I've seen all three major London productions of this play (alan howard, charles dance, now david tennant) and this one is by some measure the best, not least because Tennant uniquely amongst the three men plays goodness sliding into its opposite: a terrifying trajectory made more so by the hallucinatory approach taken by the production and a singularly brilliant design team in which the set, lighting and especially sound conjoin to overwhelming effect. Howard was great to watch (that voice!) but played the ending from the beginning, and Dance was more or less a nonentity in the role, alas.
Applause tonight seemed almost irrelevant at the end given the play's resonance with so much happening in the world at large just now. One wonders what it would be like to see this and CABARET on the same day. Not sure my nerves could take it, and I noticed Eliot Levey during the show tonight wiping away tears at one point. He wasn't the only one.
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Post by lonlad on Sept 25, 2022 12:56:19 GMT
Interesting. I think it's a wonderful venue -- spacious and airy with a hugely welcoming bar/foyer. YOUNG MARX was the first thing they produced and also the worst (well, rivaled perhaps by that dreadful McDonagh play), so things have improved since then! Hopes are high for JGB which has an utterly astonishing cast.
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Post by lonlad on Aug 15, 2022 21:58:19 GMT
Saw it tonight and bit of a curate's egg, this one - needs a much firmer, steadier directorial hand than the one provided by Natalie Abrahami; I kept wondering what Rob Icke would have brought to it. As it is, the first third is dismayingly flat and very few of the jurors, alas, really show any theatrical muscle at all - Joe Locke is among the few (he's also got a good stage voice). Lucy Cohu is superb as she always is but the very end doesn't land and the whole thing feels as if it's not quite ready to open - which is a shame since it opens tomorrow.
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Post by lonlad on Jul 10, 2022 20:39:46 GMT
>> Honestly it’s entertaining and celebrates breaking down the fourth wall
Hardly. Such moments are barely evidenced now and the few that remain (a guy in the front being called out for his appearance) suggested warmed-over Dame Edna. Virtually everything about this show has been done better elsewhere, often by the very same people. Oh well.
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Post by lonlad on Jul 9, 2022 10:32:48 GMT
>> Has the whole wooden duck subplot gone then or just this moment?
It's there and doesn't register at all and when Kerry H's character finds it at the end, you think, `so what?' Bean and Chris gave a joint interview to the FT where they banged on about the duck to great effect but they've clearly changed their minds. They should jettison it entirely.
Peter Forbes is wonderful in it.
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Post by lonlad on Jul 9, 2022 0:00:56 GMT
>> That sounds suspiciously like something that will happen every night.
Sorry, meant to add that the above "mishap" did not happen tonight
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Post by lonlad on Jul 8, 2022 23:59:06 GMT
>>The second time a character has a wooden duck to hide and hands it to an audience member near the front. The audience member has to shout pretending the duck is somewhere else. Later Kelvin Fletcher comes and finds the duck from said audience member.
Saw it tonight and that didn't happen at all. The running time is also down to 2 hrs 40 almost to the minute and the response at the end was very strong, with many standing. I didn't much like it and the poo joke is, sorry, execrable, but others seemed to love it and Caroline Quentin doing the splits has to be seen to be believed.
The ending is a blatant steal from love's labour's lost but then the whole show steals from better sources (including One man, two guvnors, which was INFINITELY better) so stealing from LLL is no big deal.
The Kelvin character btw is a total non-entity and doesn't register at all. The production is mostly about the oldies and about Kerry Howard, who shrieks her way through it unappealingly.
But I predict it will get raves.
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Post by lonlad on Jul 6, 2022 23:24:13 GMT
Notwithstanding the rave (not) review directly above, press night is tomorrow (Thursday).
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Post by lonlad on Jun 21, 2022 9:21:40 GMT
Interesting to have 2 stars in the Gdn and 5 stars in the Telegraph -- is the play THAT politically divisive?
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Post by lonlad on Jun 21, 2022 9:16:53 GMT
>> the "bitches" line I think is meant to convey his anger rather than misogyny, and it jarred last night as it did 22 years ago.
Exactly right but it played as misogynistic as did Partridge's entire performance -- you couldnt fathom for a single moment why he was interested in any of those women ..... all the swearing just seemed silly. The musical wasn't written by David Mamet.
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