Tag: Richard Leaf

You For Me For You by Mia Chung, Royal Court Theatre Upstairs, 9 January 2016

We attended the last night of this quite remarkable piece at the Royal Court.  It was also the last night downstairs for Linda by Penelope Skinner , so the place was swarming with luvvies, presumably supporting their friends and/or sticking around for an end of run party.

We spotted Sam West (who I knew reasonably well at school) and Laura Wade in the bar.  We also saw Tamsin Greig and Richard Leaf, plus Benedict Wong and his date.  These latter four ended up in our upstairs show sitting close by.

Janie asked, “is that Ai Wei Wei?” just after Benedict Wong  squeezed past us, to which I said “yes,” thinking she meant “is that the bloke who played Ai Wei Wei?” rather than mistaking him for the Chinese artist himself. “Good job I didn’t congratulate him on his exhibition at the Royal Academy,” said Janie later when the confusion came to light, “he’d have taken me for a right divvy”.

As always now with the Royal Court (and many other theatres), the archive contains pretty much everything you want to know about the production including the reviews, which were universally and deservedly very good indeed.

This is not an evening of light entertainment, but it is a wonderful piece of original theatre, with superb acting, stage design, movement and all.  It deserves a transfer and sighting by a much larger and wider audience, but the bleak North Korean subject matter will, sadly, probably prevent that from happening.

Gertrude’s Secret by Benedick West, New End Theatre, 5 January 2007

Our first theatre visit of that year, to the tiny New End Theatre in Hampstead. Wicked difficult to park around there and I seem to recall a very cold, perhaps even slightly icy evening.

The evening was a bit of a “West Fest”, with roles not only for Benedick as writer but also second-cousin-by-marriage Prunella Scales and young Jerusha West performing.

The New End Theatre is a quirky place – a converted mortuary, which only seats a few dozen people.

I remember observing to Janie that Prunella Scales had seen me perform in front of far larger audiences than that of the New End. When I was in Alleyn’s School plays, the West Family (Tim, Prunella and Sam, the latter being two or three years below me at the school) would relentlessly turn up to watch. Those evenings must have been an enlightening experience for that theatrical family I am sure. But I digress.

Benedick’s play was actually a sequence of monologues. As such, I recall it lacked dramatic intensity and coherence as a single work, but the miniature stories were well written and were quite interesting performance pieces, especially Prunella’s one.

It seems the production did the rounds for some time after the New End – one or two on-line reviews from the New End itself to be found plus a few from elsewhere – click here.

Not About Nightingales by Tennessee Williams, Cottesloe Theatre, 7 March 1998

Janie and I were quite excited about this one.

In the summer of 1996 (or was it spring 1997?), we had spent a Sunday on the Thames, on Michael & Elisabeth’s Thames sailing barge, The Lady Daphne, along with, amongst others, Trevor Nunn & Imogen Stubbs. Trevor was busy reading an early Tennessee Williams script, Not About Nightingales, which had never been performed in the UK. Despite not being among Williams best work, Trevor suggested to us the play had a lot going for it. He was thinking of putting it on at the Royal National Theatre once he became Artistic Director there. I think his appointment had been announced but Trevor had not yet taken up the role when we met him.

Anyway, we were very keen to see the finished product once the production was announced and booked to see it at the start of its run.

The only critic who really matters here on Ogblog…me…wrote:

Powerful stuff – not a great play but very well executed.

I especially remember Finbar Lynch and Corin Redgrave putting in standout performances.

Charles Spencer in The Telegraph seemed to like it:

Nightingales Spencer TelegraphNightingales Spencer Telegraph 09 Mar 1998, Mon The Daily Telegraph (London, Greater London, England) Newspapers.com

Susannah Clapp in The Observer was not so convinced:

Nightingales Clapp ObserverNightingales Clapp Observer 08 Mar 1998, Sun The Observer (London, Greater London, England) Newspapers.com

John Gross in The Sunday Telegraph was quite keen:

08 Mar 1998, Sun Sunday Telegraph (London, Greater London, England) Newspapers.com

Nicholas de Jongh in The Standard seemed particularly taken with it.

Nightingales de Jongh StandardNightingales de Jongh Standard 06 Mar 1998, Fri Evening Standard (London, Greater London, England) Newspapers.com

Don’t ask me how or why we had the stomach for this violent play but not for Shopping & F***ing the week before. Perhaps the violence seemed less gratuitous. Perhaps the way it was produced/directed.

Perhaps because we were demob happy – although we had cancelled our main spring holiday plans because of Phillie’s indisposition, we had decided to take a week off an go to Majorca for some much needed rest. We flew off early the next morning.