Each His Own Wilderness by Doris Lessing, Orange Tree Theatre, 18 April 2015

This one didn’t really do the business for us.

We found the bohemian older generation a bit too bohemian and the surprisingly conservative younger generation irritatingly conservative.

Perhaps it all meant more in the late 1950s, but it certainly didn’t pack a punch in the way that its contemporaries (Wesker, Delaney, Osborne and the like) did.

Good cast, well directed…here’s a link to the Orange Tree resource on the play/production…including some review quotes indicating that some reviewers really liked it…

…but others didn’t:

You get the idea. I think we might have escaped early and cut our losses at half time on this one. Janie might remember for sure but I have no recollection at all about the ending and do recall not caring.

Spanish food at Don Fernando rounded off the evening nicely nonetheless.

 

Briefing by Doris Lessing, Camden People’s Theatre, 11 April 2008

Trying to work out how we ended up in a small theatre watching this production, I spotted the director’s name, Avye Leventis, which made me realise that this event occurred because one of Janie’s client’s daughters was making her directorial debut.

The Camden New Journal wrote highly of the play/production – click here.

The piece is an adaptation of Doris Lessing’s novel “Briefing for a Descent into Hell”. It wasn’t that bad, but we were neither comfy nor inspired by the work.

As Janie said when I raised the matter with her just now (2016), “we’re too old and ugly now to allow ourselves to be bullied into seeing stuff in such circumstances any more”.

Ouch.

By all accounts, Avye’s career has progressed from here. Which is good.