Tag: Christopher Morahan

Stevie by Hugh Whitemore, Hampstead Theatre, 6 March 2015

We rather liked this one. Not as much as the critics, who mostly lapped it up, but we did enjoy the play.

It’s about the poet Stevie Smith and of course Zoë Wannamaker is a superb actress; indeed all three of the cast were.

It’s a bit twee; both the setting (but then Stevie Smith did live a twee suburban life in Palmers Green) and also the play, which is a little old-fashioned in style. It reminded me of the sort of play that did well in the Hampstead Theatre’s portacabin glory days, back in the eighties and nineties.

Excellent Hampstead on-line resource saves me most of the trouble – click here – reviews too but of course only those effusive ones.

I think we were still going to Harry Morgan pre-theatre back then; the Friday evening Hampstead theatre gig worked that way most times.

The White House Murder Case by Jules Feiffer, Orange Tree Theatre, 20 October 2012

My weekend pages are a blank at this time, but by a process of elimination Janie and I must have seen this play on 13 October or 20 October 2012. Janie’s diaries (currently in the attic) might help solve that tiny element of the case.

At the time, in 2012, this cartoon-like 1970s play about some bizarre future White House regime, set about 40 years hence…i.e. about now…seemed crazy beyond belief.

Writing in 2018, I realise that the playwright, Jules Feiffer, merely lacked the imagination to envisage a Trump-like character in all his grotesqueness.

Here is a link to the Orange Tree resource on this play/production.

I don’t think Janie and I were overly smitten with this piece. It had its moments and some good acting – Bruce Alexander as the President I recall was a bit of a standout – but on the whole it seemed a bit silly and superficial to us.

I think the critics quite liked it on the whole – here is a link to a search on the reviews.

Equally Divided by Ronald Harwood, Richmond Theatre, 24 October 1998

We were on a Richmond kick that quarter, for some reason, with three visits to The Orange Tree and two visits to the Richmond Theatre. Coincidence really, I should imagine.

Janie liked it more than I did.

That is my log’s pithy conclusion.

Excellent cast, with Stephanie Cole, Stephanie Beacham, Benjamin Whitrow & Gerald Harper. Christopher Morahan directed it. A transfer from Bath, as was often the case at Richmond.

Here is the Theatricalia entry.

Here is Jody Lindbeck’s take on it in the local gazettes:

Equally GazetteEqually Gazette 23 Oct 1998, Fri Ealing and Acton Gazette (Ealing, London, England) Newspapers.com

Reading that review 25 years later, all I can think of is the wonderful Peter Cook quote: “I go to the theatre to be entertained. I don’t want to see plays about rape, sodomy and drug addiction – I can get all that at home.“