There’s just something about fin-de-siecle Austrian plays that doesn’t quite float our boat, however well done they are.
Still, we were pleased to have seen this one – it was one of the best things we had seen so far that year…but then we were having a poor year for theatre up to that point.
I must say I concur with this view. I remember the production where the Young Vic was turned into a watery stage, but I couldn’t hand on heart have told you anything about it from memory, until after I flicked through the script just now.
Perhaps Janie’s memory will do better – I’ll test that a bit later but only report back if she surprises me with profound recall.
The Young Vic published a short vid showing how they made the watery stage happen – see below.
My log says that this was a transfer from The Other Place in Stratford and that I (possibly we – Bobbie was with me) was/were not 100% sure about it.
What was there not to be sure about? Splendid cast: Willard White as Othello, Ian McKellen as Iago, Imogen Stubbs as Desdemona, Zoe Wannamaker as Emilia…Trevor Nunn directing.
I also have a feeling that the 1989 RSC production felt a little over-theatrical to me. There is a certain Trevor Nunn style. Little did I know then that Janie and I would meet Trevor and Imogen – strangely around about the time we saw the 1997 RNT Othello.
What a super production this was. I remember being much taken with it, although, strangely, while I clearly recall seeing this with Bobbie, I did not recall Ashley joining us for this one. But the diary is clear:
I’m pretty sure this production was in the round and I remember feeling a sense of claustrophobia being so close to the action and the intense dilemmas and pain of the central characters.
This play, its morality and injustices came to my mind so many years later, in the late teenies, when the British gutter press started to brand anti-Brexit folk as “Enemies of the People”. Although I had seen a good production of the play subsequent to this 1988 production, it is Tom Wilkinson’s agonies, witnessed at close quarters so long ago, that sprang into my mind.
We three won’t simply have parted company at the doors of the Young Vic, that’s for sure. I’m guessing we might have taken a late meal at the Archduke or perhaps RSJs at that time. Anyone remember?
Postscript: Ashley Fletcher has chimed in to deny all involvement in this particular evening. The Ashley mention must have been Ashley Michaels, my (by then former) colleague from Newman Harris. I’ll pick Bobbie’s brain if/when I get the chance, but I suspect she’ll do that, “I can’t even remember what I did last week” routine.
Fortunately my subscription to the clippings service yields some retained memory – here is Michael ratcliffe’s Observer review:
I started to keep a diary in January 1974. The 23 January entry is my first record of visiting the theatre, although I went with my parents to see pantomimes and children’s shows before then.
This visit I’m sure was my first school trip to the theatre, an Alleyn’s School outing. I think just for my class; 1S, probably Ian Sandbrook’s initiative. It was a revival of the first production at the Young Vic Theatre, which I think therefore makes it the Young Vic’s first production as an independent theatre company. It seems the revival was a precursor to a glittering US transfer.
All the 11 year old “critic” wrote at the time was:
“Scapino v good indeed. Jim Dale good. Got to bed very late.”
Yet the evening stays quite clearly in my memory. I remember liking the patter song about Italian food and I also recall catching a plastic facsimile of a glass of wine and keeping it in a bottom drawer for years and years. It survived many clear outs, but I think it came a cropper in the end. Who knows, it might turn up in one of my junk boxes some day.