Seven Year Twitch by David Lewis, Orange Tree Theatre, 25 May 2013

Perhaps the irritating pun in the title should have warned us off this one – but we like the Orange Tree and the cast included some excellent Orange Tree regulars so we went for it.

We found this a tame, irritating comedy on the whole. We stuck it out – it wasn’t that bad – but it wasn’t that good either and we felt it could have been so much better.

It is often a mistake for an playwright to direct their own play – especially with comedy – this one was an object lesson for that theory.

Click here for a link to the Orange Tree resource on this play/production.

Here is a link to a search term for reviews – which were middling on the whole.

Loves Comedy by Henrik Ibsen, Orange Tree Theatre, 17 November 2012

Sometimes there is a reason why a great playwright’s early works don’t see the light of day.

This early Ibsen is a cautionary tale.

Worse, in the hands of the old-style Orange Tree orthodoxy, text that doesn’t deserve such respect is given the full length treatment…

…I don’t think we stuck the two hours and forty minutes of this one.

Here is a link to the Orange Tree resource on this one.

Not all that many reviews but surprisingly good ones – this search term finds the reviews for you.

I never thought I’d see the day that Janie and I couldn’t stick an Ibsen.

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.

Yours For The Asking by Ana Diosdado, Orange Tree Theatre, 7 September 2012

A few days after the end of our Olympic/Paralympic experiences, Janie and I returned to the scene of the (alleged but utterly refuted) crime from just before the Olympics; Richmond:

Mottled Lines by Archie W Maddocks, Orange Tree Theatre, 13 July 2012

This time we saw Yours For The Asking, a Spanish play from the late Franco era in the 1970’s.

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

We rather liked this one. It was about a model who advertises a fragrance getting embroiled in a scandal. The themes seemed very modern and relevant in 2012; a prescient play in many ways.

The plot was a little hard to swallow and Sam Walters’ orthodoxy for not shortening scripts made it drag a bit, especially the second half.

Still, it was well performed by some of the Orange tree regulars and we thought it had been a worthwhile visit.

It didn’t go down too well with most of the critics – click here for a link to reviews.

 

Mottled Lines by Archie W Maddocks, Orange Tree Theatre, 13 July 2012

This was an unusual visit to Richmond and the Orange Tree Theatre in many ways.

For a start, unusually, it was on a Friday. Following one or two “close shaves” after work on Friday evenings, Janie and I normally eschewed places like Richmond for theatre on a Friday.

But this was an interesting looking play on a short run, we had already arranged a theatre visit for the Saturday, so I thought I’d take the opportunity to take the afternoon off, visit mum at Nightingale that Friday afternoon and drive on to Richmond. Janie arranged to go to Richmond by cab and kindly volunteered to drive back to the house after dinner.

It was just before the start of the 2012 London Olympics and I recall that there were lots of “cops out and running about” in London at that time. I had a police escort almost all the way from Clapham to Richmond station – I was pretty sure that cop car had decided to follow me personally when it followed me, after the south circular, along my idiosyncratic route into Richmond.

I even recall mentioning the following to Janie when she got to the Orange Tree. We decided that the whole force was on visibility alert for the Olympics with not too much real policing to do.

Here is a link to the Orange Tree resource on Mottled Lines.

Mottled Lines was about the 2011 riots – basically a piece sympathetic to the rioters as well as to those caught up in them inadvertently.

We both rather liked the play – an interesting piece by a young West London lad. I think it was the comparison with this piece that made us somewhat luke warm to the subsequent, far more ambitious verbatim piece, Little Revolution by Alecky Blythe at the Almeida on the same subject:

Little Revolution by Alecky Blythe, Almeida Theatre, 30 August 2014

Mottled Lines didn’t get much press, but what it got was positive and a link to what there is can be found by clicking here. We’re certainly keen to see more from that young writer Archie W Maddocks.

Janie and I had dinner at Don Fernandos, then went and retrieved Nobby from the Richmond Station car park.

Janie, with Nobby, at his last resting place a couple of years later, not Richmond Station

Janie hadn’t driven Nobby for a while, so started out a bit slowly/cautiously, sensibly reacquainting herself with the feel of that car.

Very soon after we set off I realised that we were being followed by police again – a different car/pairing of officers. This police car pulled Janie over on the north side of Kew Bridge.

“Why have you stopped me?” asked Janie, wondering what she might have done wrong.

“You were driving suspiciously slowly and cautiously”, said the male officer.

“I don’t drive this car all that often,” said Janie, “so naturally I was being cautious at first…I am insured to drive this car”, said Janie.

“We know that, Miss…Wormlington?” said the female officer.

Janie was then questioned as to where we were coming from and going to, then the male officer asked her if she had been drinking.

“I had one small glass of wine with my food”, said Janie, which was absolutely true.

The policeman then breathalysed Janie, pursuing a line of statements and half-questions which indicated, to me, that he was pretty much “expecting” to see a positive test.

While we were waiting, Janie tried to break the ice with the two of them by telling them about the play we had just seen. The female officer seemed interested and relatively friendly, the male officer merely seemed to be preparing himself to read Janie her rights, explaining what the different indications on the breathalyser would mean.

After what seemed like ages, the male officer announced the result of the test; it indicated that Janie had some alcohol in her breath but it was below the warning line and some way below the legal limit.

The policeman couldn’t disguise his obvious disappointment as he announced the result. He then “warned” Janie to be careful on the rest of her way home, because, if she was in fact over the limit but had merely “got lucky” because of the timing of her test, she might get stopped again and might register a positive breathalyser test later.

Janie restated the fact that she had taken a little more than half a glass of wine with her dinner more than an hour ago.

I couldn’t resist asking the officer why he was warning her, if her breathalyser was below the warning line.

The male officer then explained to me, in very convoluted terms, that he wasn’t officially warning Janie, because her reading was below the official warning level, but he was informally warning her that if she was in fact over the limit she should nevertheless not drive.

It seemed to me, on that basis, that the lines between “over the limit – you’re nicked”, “warning zone – you are dangerously close to the limit” and “below the limit – be on your way” were…to that particular policeman…to say the least…mottled.

Mottled Lines and Janie’s breathalyser trophy

Play House And Definitely the Bahamas by Martin Crimp, Orange Tree Theatre, 31 March 2012

A double bill of Martin Crimp plays, the first brand new, the second an older one.

Part of the Orange Tree’s 40th anniversary celebrations and a nod to one of its bigger achievements; championing Martin Crimp’s work in the early days.

Here is a link to the Orange Tree resource on this double bill.

I recall us liking the first, more recent play more than we liked the older play on this evening.

They were very different and we were pleased to have seen both.

We’re not normally wild about writers directing their own work, but Crimp did a good job with these pieces.

The reviews were good too – click here for a link to them.

Next Time I’ll Sing To You by James Saunders, Orange Tree Theatre, 12 November 2011

This is the sort of play/production that we like so much more in theory than we do in practice.

Here is a link to the Orange Tree’s excellent on-line resource for this production.

The idea of it is wonderful. It is an innovative 1960’s play exploring the meaning of life through the story of a successful man who decides to become a hermit.

Also, James Saunders had a long association with Sam Walters and the Orange Tree, which was being celebrated by this revival.

The play does have flashes of brilliance, humour and insight to it, but in truth we found it fairly hard going as an evening in the theatre. There is one heck of a lot of existential angst involved.

Here is a link to a search term that finds the reviews.

I remember being quite excited by the coincidence of the koi carp on the cover of the programme…

The Price Of Fish (still available at all good book outlets, including the one you can click through here and below) was first released that very same weekend, resplendent with its dollar koi imagery:

Reading Hebron by Jason Sherman, Orange Tree Theatre, 5 March 2011

I wanted to enjoy this play more than I did. It was written soon after the Baruch Goldstein atrocity in Hebron in the mid 1990s.

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

It was an excellent production and a fast moving play to be sure. David Antrobus, one of the Orange Tree regulars, was excellent as the central character Nathan.

But while the play was interesting throughout and covered many pertinent issues, it didn’t quite work for me; nor for Janie. The play is primarily about a young Canadian’s sense of collective guilt for the atrocity; for my part, I found hard to buy into the collective guilt idea.

Somewhat mixed, but most of the reviews are very good for this production – the search term linked here will find them for you.

Did we have a Spanish meal at Don Fernando’s after seeing this play? You bet.

The Company Man by Torben Betts, Orange Tree Theatre, 9 October 2010

I don’t remember a great deal about this one.

Here is the Orange Tree stub on the play/production.

I think it might have been a bit much for us at that time, with Phillie so poorly by then, so perhaps we didn’t even stick it out to the second half.

This search term suggests that the few reviews it got were quite good ones.

The Promise by Ben Brown, Orange Tree Theatre, 27 February 2010

I don’t think this one really floated our boat. We liked the idea of it but it had a rather laboured feel as a piece of drama.

We were not having a good run at the theatre in the first part of 2010 and this one was part of that poor run for us.

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

I remember guessing at the time that Michael Billington would like it; he did – click here.

This search term – click here – will find you the other main reviews, most of which were luke warm.

We went for our traditional dinner at Don Fernando afterwards; I have a feeling we even skived the second half of this one.