Travel, Theatre, Music, Cricket, Tennis, Writing, Life
The programmes hadn’t arrived, so (most unusually for the Donmar) we got a simple black and white printed A4 foldy. Standards.
The play was very good indeed, though, as was the cast. The usual high production values for the Donmar too.
A bit slow, but then this IS a 19th century Russian story and it IS Brian Friel, whom we like very much, btw.
The critics on the whole shared our enjoyment of it – click here for a link to reviews.
In short, this was a good’n.
This was a fascinating piece.
It is an uber-modern play about privacy, data and all that. Some members of the audience, perhaps foolishly, left their mobile phones on and acquiesced to a request to submit a selfie – only to discover that geeks can find out a heck of a lot about you just from the simple combination of that submission and other stuff we readily transmit and is there to be found.
To some extent the piece was born of the Edward Snowden/Wikileaks saga, but in truth this play is an entertainment about the issues for ordinary people more than the geopolitical aspects or the Snowden case itself. We did subsequently see a super play that really was about a Snowden-type case, Mike Bartlett’s Wild at the Hampstead, which was cracking:
If this now sounds like a geeks night out without drama, I’m giving you the wrong idea. It was a powerful story and piece of drama to boot – a strong cast and superb production qualities as we might expect from the Donmar.
Click here for the excellent Donmar “Behind The Scenes” material for this play/production.
The first time we came across James Graham – This House, we weren’t so keen. But this one was sufficiently different and engaging to convert us to Graham’s writing…
…just as well, because Ink really was smashing:
This was an excellent play/production.
We had loved Constellations by Nick Payne, so he was very much on our list of writers to watch…
…yet this one was far more down to earth, subject-wise and style wise…
…but still excellent, just differently so.
Basically about ambulance-chasing lawyers and insurance fraudsters.
It reminded me in style of Mamet plays of the Glengarry Glen Ross type.
Click here for the Donmar’s excellent “Behind The Scenes” document on this play/production.
Below is an interview with Nick Payne about this piece:
Click here for a search term that finds the reviews. This one really split the critics – we’re with the critics who got it, but some of the critics found this piece shallow after Constellations.
Janie and I are partial to a bit of Conor McPherson. We absolutely loved The Weir, but then you can’t expect a playwright to achieve such giddy heights every time.
Further, this was our second visit to the theatre that weekend, having seen the superb Dances Of Death at The Gate the night before – click here or below:
Dances Of Death by August Strindberg in a new version by Howard Brenton, Gate Theatre, 21 June 2013
So I suppose this particular evening was all set up for disappointment.
A wonderful cast, especially Ciarán Hinds and Caoilfhionn Dunne, plus a good script, provided plenty of entertainment for the evening – so in that sense we were not disappointed. It just wasn’t quite the jaw-dropping, mouth-watering night of theatre we had hoped for when we booked it. Greedy pair, we are, me and Janie.
Having been critical of the Donmar’s lack of on-line resource on many Ogblog occasions – I have now discovered (perhaps it has only recently opened up and/or was well-buried) a wonderful trove of Behind The Scenes resource guides on many productions – click here…
…including this production of The Night Alive, which I have uploaded and which you can specifically click here. Excellent resources – well done Donmar.
Below is a Donmar trailer, mostly talking about the music – interesting to hear and see Conor McPherson talking about his own work:
Click here for a search term that finds the reviews for this production. It was mostly very well received and transferred well. I’m glad. It deserved to do well, even though it didn’t bowl us over. We’ll still look out for Conor McPherson’s work, though – he’s a special talent.