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This was our first theatre visit after returning from Vietnam in February.
A really good one too.
Here is a link to the Royal Court stub for this piece.
We rate David Eldridge highly as a playwright. Here was a superb cast and Dominic Cooke himself directing.
We really enjoyed this play and production.
The critics on the whole loved this piece – click here for a search term that finds the reviews.
Below is a link to the trailer:
We thought this was an excellent play and production.
We booked it on the back of Joe Penhall’s superb play Blue/Orange. We also got a fantastic cast, not least Ben Daniels and Sophie Okonedo.
Here is the Royal Court resource for this play/production.
The Ben Daniels character, the father, is basically being sucked in by a cult. On reflection at the time of writing (January 2018) it has a fair bit in common with My Mum’s A Twat – click here, which we saw recently, except the cult-ista in the more recent case is the mum and the storyteller is the affected child later in life.
Anyway, Haunted Child mostly got very good reviews – click here for a link term that should find them.
Below is the trailer:
We really enjoyed this play/production. It was witty, enjoyable and made us think too.
Here is a link to the Royal Court resource on this production.
Tamsin Greig was terrific, as was Bel Powley as the daughter. Actually the whole cast was terrific.
Here is a search term that finds the (mostly excellent) reviews.
It got a deserved West End transfer to the Duke Of York’s – here is the trailer for that:
I’m not sure the trailer does the piece justice, but there you go.
We do both like a bit of Simon Stephens. We’re also partial to Linda Basset’s acting. This piece reminded us why on both counts.
We actually thought it was brilliantly acted and produced throughout.
Here is a link to the Royal Court resource on this play/production.
Three seemingly different stories that sort-of overlap and sort-of don’t. It’s hard to explain why, but Simon Stephens has a way with drama that simply keeps you gripped and thinking throughout.
Here is a very interesting behind the scenes short film from Sky Arts, including interviews with Simon Stephens, Linda Basset and several of the other cast and creatives, about Wastwater:
Royal Court – Wastwater from daniel bougourd on Vimeo.
Here is a link to a search term for reviews and other resources. The reviews are not universally great – some rated it very good, some rated it poor and cold-hearted.
We rated it very highly.
After the previous evening’s debacle at Hampstead…
…it was a very pleasant surprise that Janie felt better and confident enough to try the theatre the very next day.
A very interesting play about climate change, questioning orthodoxies and asking awkward questions about the links between the politics, science and personal beliefs around climate change.
A search term that finds the mostly good reviews and more besides can be found by clicking here.
Not sure what we did afterwards – probably got Janie home to bed pdq.
I was really taken with this play and production by the excellent Bruce Norris, about racial tension in a Chicago neighbourhood across the generations. It is witty and thought provoking in equal measure, tackling difficult topics with clarity and sensitivity.
Superb cast and this style of play marries well with Dominic Cooke’s style of direction.
Janie liked it too, but was a little less impressed than me.
Here is the Royal Court resource on this play/production.
It got rave reviews, west end transfer, revivals and all sorts – deservedly so. So you need to look through the reviews in the following link – click here – with care and choose the ones dated around September 2010 to see reviews of the actual production we saw – but you might want to look at reviews generally – in which case dip away with reckless abandon.
I recall this one as being a bit Alan Aykbournish – a gang of thirty-somethings on retreat in the country for New Years eve. What could possibly go wrong?
A slight set of Royal Court details and links about this play/production can be found here.
We quite enjoyed it, while agreeing that we normally seek plays with a bit more oomph and have seen a lot of plays a bit like this one in our time.
Of course it was well acted and well produced – the Royal Court hardly ever misses one of those beats.
A new play by Wallace Shawn. How exciting.
We have long been a fan of Shawn; in my case dating back to seeing the film My Dinner With Andre hundreds of years ago.
Janie and I by chance got to chat with him at the Almeida when he was over for Miranda Richardson’s amazing performance as Aunt Dan in Aunt Dan and Lemon (to be Ogblogged in the fullness of time no doubt)…
…and I had seen him perform The Fever; Janie and I sat behind him at The Designated Mourner at the Cottesloe in 1996; all to be Ogblogged in time.
So here was a new Shawn play with Wallace Shawn himself and Miranda Richardson in it. Plus Andre Gregory directing it. Ahead of the piece we were a little starstruck – a rare emotion for us.
Here is the OfficialLondonTheatre.co.uk stub on the production.
In truth, this piece didn’t hit the giddy heights of some of Shawn’s others. The notion of dystopia following scientific tinkering has (in my view) been overdone by others rather more than Shawn’s political and social frets.
The play was more than three hours long, so I suspect we settled for a shawarma supper to take home. The evening certainly kept me and Janie in conversation for the rest of that evening and indeed the rest of the weekend.
I saw Wallace Shawn perform this piece in early 1991, at the Cottesloe, with Bobbie.
The Fever by Wallace Shawn, Cottesloe Theatre, 9 February 1991
But Janie hadn’t seen it before and Clare Higgins is a cracking good actress.
Also, in the post crash times that were late 2008/early 2009 when we booked to see this production, I thought the piece might have a different, meaningful resonance.
In many ways it did.
Yet it wasn’t quite the same thing as seeing Wallace Shawn perform it himself. How could it be?
Wall is a companion piece for Berlin, which we saw a few days earlier at The Lyttelton.
Wall only ran for a few nights, so we did well to catch it. I thought Via Dolorosa was a fine piece, laced with great drama as well as interesting things to say. This felt comparatively preachy, about the ghastly Israel-Palestine separation barrier.
Perhaps it is so clear to me that the barrier is a bad idea, that being lectured about it by David Hare seemed surplus to requirements.
I saw the links with Berlin of course, but enjoyed the Wall part less and certainly learnt less.
Our friend Michael Billington loved it in the Guardian – click here.
Rafael Behr wrote highly of it too in the Observer – click here.
I’m glad to have the text of both and I’m sure a re-read would be interesting, especially now (as I wrote in May 2017) that walls and barriers are back in fashion.