Drawing The Line by Howard Brenton, Hampstead Theatre, 27 December 2013

When we saw Jacquie and Hils Briegal for Christmas, we discovered that we were all going to see this play on the same night as couple of days later, along with Brother-in-law/Uncle Bernard Jacobs.

Typically, Jacquie said that Janie and I should join the family at her place for some supper after the show which we did.

Frankly, the play was rather dull. It’s funny how Howard Brenton tends to either get it very right or very wrong for me. this one missed the mark.

Fascinating subject, the partition of India, but what an old-fashioned “tell don’t show” history play it was.

Click here for a link to the Hampstead resource on this production.

Below is a video trailer with cast interviews:

Below is an interview with Howard Brenton about it:

The show got mostly good reviews – click here for a search term that finds them – so Janie and I form a minority view in that regard.

I think we were the least impressed among the family too.

What the family readily agreed, though, was that Jacquie’s supper spread and the family natter was the highlight of the evening. Bernard was in especially good form that night. Sadly, he passed away just before new year 2018 – more or less exactly four years after this splendid gathering, which I’m sure he enjoyed, as did we.

Judgment Day by Ödön Von Horváth, in a new version by Christopher Hampton, Almeida Theatre, 10 October 2009

We love the Almeida Theatre, despite the extra shlep involved in getting there from West London. At the time of writing (29 May 2017) we have just been again.

One really excellent thing about the Almeida is the quality of on-line resource they put up for the productions, with lots of information about the play, the creatives involved in the production, plenty of pictures and links to many reviews (the favourable ones of course).

Here is the Almeida’s on-line resource for Judgment Day.

The other really excellent thing about the Almeida is the quality of stuff it puts on. This play/production was no exception.

Ödön Von Horváth (imagine answering the “how do you spell it?” question with that name) has long fascinated Christopher Hampton. This seemingly small canvas German play, about the moral consequences of covering up the true reason for a deadly train crash, is in reality a pre-war allegory with the wilful blindness that led to Nazi power.

It was an especially good evening in the theatre; Janie and I both remember it fondly well. I also recently (when we saw The Ferryman) remembered that we had seen the excellent Laura Donnelly before, but didn’t at the time connect it with this play/production.

Most of the reviews – eight to ten of them included in the Almeida resource link above and here – are very good, but:

We thought it was top notch.