March 1999 – Ian Louis Harris

Snake by Rona Munro, Hampstead Theatre, 27 March 1999

Very good indeed…

…was our judgment on this one.

Lynn Gardner in The Guardian wrote well of it:

Snake Gardner Guardian 23 Mar 1999, Tue The Guardian (London, Greater London, England) Newspapers.com

Nicholas de Jongh did not get it in The Standard:

Snake Standard de Jongh 22 Mar 1999, Mon Evening Standard (London, Greater London, England) Newspapers.com

Quite a short play, this was, so we were able to eat at Harry Morgan after the show.

Good by CP Taylor, Donmar Warehouse, Followed By Dinner At Zafferano, 20 March 1999

By gosh, we seemed to be specialising in previews of Nazi stuff that month, having been to see Speer at the Almeida a couple of weeks earlier:

Speer by Esther Vilar, Almeida Theatre, 6 March 1999

My log comment for Good was less complimentary than that for Speer:

Didn’t quite do the business for us.

Great cast, with Charles Dance, Emelia Fox, Ian Gelder, John Ramm and several other stalwarts under the direction of Michael Grandage.

It might not have done the business for us, but it sure did for Nicholas de Jongh in The Standard:

Good Standard de Jongh 24 Mar 1999, Wed Evening Standard (London, Greater London, England) Newspapers.com

Charles Spencer in The Telegraph shared our sentiments:

Good Spencer Telegraph 25 Mar 1999, Thu The Daily Telegraph (London, Greater London, England) Newspapers.com

Anthony Holden in teh Observer also seemed equivocal in his praise:

Goood Holden Observer 28 Mar 1999, Sun The Observer (London, Greater London, England) Newspapers.com

We ate at Zafferano after Good. Zaffs was very good indeed.

Speer by Esther Vilar, Almeida Theatre, Followed By Dinner At Granita, 6 March 1999

I wrote but one word in my log for this one:

Excellent

It was creepy, though.

The play is set some decades after the war, with Albert Speer somewhat rehabilitated as someone ancillary to the Nazi atrocity machine, despite his Nuremberg conviction. This play was about the unravelling of that more favourable image. David Edgar also wrote a play on this subject which was produced the following year, but this Esther Vilar one was the only one of the two we saw.

Here’s the Theatricalia entry for that production.

Excellent performances from Klaus Maria Brandauer and Sven Eric Bechtolf.

We saw a preview. Subsequently, mixed reviews abounded (mostly good) for this production. Here’s Nicholas de Jongh in The Standard: