Unreachable by Anthony Neilson, Royal Court Theatre, 9 July 2016

I’ve heard it said that jazz is the only form of live music where the players seem to be having more fun than the audience. That was certainly so last night at the Wigmore Hall in Janie’s case; she certainly did not enjoy Christian McBride and Chick Corea as much as they enjoyed themselves.

Unfortunately for Janie, Unreachable by Anthony Neilson might be described as a theatrical equivalent of jazz. Neilson’s writing technique is to start with no more than an outline and to work up a piece through workshops, rehearsals, trial and error.

So much so that, rarely for the Royal Court, there was no play text available for this piece. Simon David at the bookstall told us proudly that the piece is still being devised even beyond press night (which was the previous night). Simon also commended the piece to us.

I got a heck of a lot more out of it than Janie did. She hated the piece so much she even wanted to abandon me and the car at half time; then reluctantly relented and agreed to stay for the remaining 45 minutes, suggesting that she might sleep a bit during that second half. But it wasn’t a relaxing enough piece to fall asleep in much, according to Janie. I agree with that last point.

The play opens with a scene showing Natasha (a very confident young actress named Tamara Lawrance) auditioning for a role in a movie. We hear the dismembered voice of auteur/director Max (played by Matt Smith) describing the film. It is set in a dystopian near future after a virus has wiped out most of the population etc. etc.

Some members of the audience laugh at this horrifying scenario; presumably they have been told that the play is basically a comedy. But Natasha then acts out a quite lengthy gruelling monologue as a mother who believes that a malevolent militia is about to inflict terrible cruelties upon her and her child.

So far, so Vicky Featherstone’s Royal Court. I have written before about the relentlessly dystopian theme of the new regime on Sloane Square, where the ubiquitous grimy kitchen sink has been replaced by the apocalyptic landscape.  But perhaps this time the dystopian opening is a tongue-in-cheek nod to the new norm in SW1’s corner of theatre-land…

…because, beyond that early monologue, Unreachable is basically a lightweight, albeit black comedy, looking behind the scenes at the world of movies and movie-making people. They are a grotesque, dysfunctional lot, if this play is to be believed. Probably the play shouldn’t entirely be believed.

Another element you might find hard to believe (but this bit is true) is that Janie and I live in such a limited-TV-viewing bubble that we had no idea that Matt Smith was Doctor Who. We just thought of him as the fine young actor we saw in That Face by Polly Stenham a few years ago. But it was clear from the business he was given to perform and the audience reaction to it that Matt’s performance was the centre-piece of the play…

…until the arrival of the craziest character of all; Jonjo O’Neill’s Ivan “The Brute”.

Even Janie agreed that all of the performances were very good. She just struggled to get her head around the play. The plot was perhaps so superficial Janie was looking for “more in it” when there was no more to be had.

But I laughed a lot and enjoyed the sheer nonsensical intrigue of it. Indeed, in our troubled post-referendum times, the preposterous back-stabbing, feigned walk-outs and the politically-motivated engagement of an uncontrollable anarchic element in the interests of some unattainable “light at the end of the tunnel”… it seemed to me to be quite an appropriate tonic for the live-arts-supporting troops at the moment.

As for the jazz analogy, well clearly the cast seemed to be enjoying themselves enormously. In particular, once Jonjo O’Neill got going with Ivan’s foul tongue and ludicrous boasts, you could tell that not only the audience but also the other members of the cast didn’t quite know where his verbal cadenzas might go. The other actors needed to react quickly to those crazy outbursts without corpsing; which they were able to most but not all of the time.

To be fair, although Janie didn’t enjoy herself and some audience members left at half time, the vast majority stayed and were clearly enjoying themselves at least as much, if not more than the cast.

Here’s a link to the plentiful Royal Court resources on this play.

The Royal Court will no doubt post some reviews eventually, but they are only starting to come out, as the press night was the night before our visit. So far:

Janie would say “take my word for it, don’t bother” whereas I would say, “decide for yourself  – go see it!”.

The Flying Lovers of Vitebsk by Daniel Jamieson, Sam Wanamaker Playhouse, 18 June 2016

The Flying Lovers of Vitebsk was a really super production – click here for The Globe’s information on the piece, which includes extracts from and links to the excellent reviews.

Just as well, really, because Janie had been really looking forward to this for months, which might have been a recipe for disappointment. She loves Chagall.

We had whet our appetites for this piece a few days before, by visiting The Globe for our complimentary members’ tour.  But we hadn’t seen the inside of the Sam Wanamaker, as the playhouse was too busy getting ready for the start of our production.

Anyway, it all went right on the night. We got to the neighbourhood ridiculously early, wanting to make sure we allowed time for the relatively long journey and time to park up without time pressure. As we had mistakenly written down 7:30 when in fact the play started at 8:00, we had plenty of time to anticipate the production.

A lady came and sat with us for a while, then in the interval did the same again, bringing her husband with her that time. Unusual.

The Playhouse is not all that comfy; we noted where we might prefer to sit for next time – only some rows have back support for example.

Lots of candlelight for this production, which pleased Janie. I liked the cockamamie set. It was a charming play – quite straightforwardly linear in telling the story of Marc and Bella Chagall. But the two leads, Marc Antolin and Audrey Brisson who really made the show; super talented and delightful to watch.

We’d had a terrific weekend of theatre; this one and Wild on Friday both really excellent. We celebrated with a take away from Mohsen’s – probably the best of the Persian places we have tried for Persian-style kebabs at least. Probably Jewish food would have been more fitting, but where can you get that at 22:30 on your way from Bankside to W3?

Wild by Mike Bartlett, Hampstead Theatre, 17 June 2016

Wow, this was great.

Funnily enough, the day before our visit, I had run into Vince Leigh (most recently of Orange Tree/The Brink fame) at the health club. I congratulated him on The Brink and we discussed theatre generally. When I mentioned our impending visit to see Wild, he said he was going to see it that very day. He also told me that the production had experienced some technical problems with the set, so although the press night was supposed to be that very day (the Thursday), press night had actually been put back to Monday.

When Janie and I got to the Hampstead on the Friday, I asked the front of house staff whether the technical problems had been resolved for this evening. Two of them exchanged glances and one said, “we’ll find out”!

Well, the coup de théâtre that had (very understandably) had some teething problems came off with aplomb. But it would be a shame if this play and production is remembered only for that.

The play is basically about a character, based on Edward Snowden, disoriented in a “hotel room” in Russia. The dialogue is fast paced and whizzes around a myriad of big, important issues like a maelstrom.

In short, we loved it.

Here’s a link to the Hampstead’s area on this production, which provides plenty of detail, including (we subsequently learn) headlines and extracts from the excellent reviews this play/production deservedly received.

Coincidentally, I ran into Vince Leigh again the morning after the referendum result, this time on the street in Notting Hill Gate. He asked me how we found Wild. I told him and we agreed how good it was. Vince and I then also agreed what a strange day it was, everyone we had spoken to wandering around in a zombie-like state, trying not to cry about the result. I didn’t make the connection at the time, but our disorientation had something in common with that of the Snowden-like character. It felt like several of our walls had come down.

 

 

Giving by Hannah Patterson, Hampstead Theatre Downstairs, 4 June 2016

Janie wasn’t sure that she was in the mood for the theatre when we set off for Swiss Cottage that evening, especially when I said that the subject matter was big donor philanthropy. “More your sort of subject than mine,” she said.

Still, there was the promise of a different oriental restaurant to try afterwards, Singapore Garden, a result of Janie’s research. Plus the fact that the play was billed as a short one; 90 minutes without an interval.

Janie’s spirits were further dampened when we took our seats, as a group of four people asked us to budge along our row to the end. At first Janie simply said no, so they split their group around us. Frankly, I couldn’t understand why they hadn’t gone to the other side where there were at least two blocks big enough for their group. Still, I told Janie that I thought she had responded rather abruptly, so Janie relented and we ended up tucked in the corner. “They didn’t even say thank you and I’m stuck with a lousy view,” fumed Janie.

After a while, I turned to the gentleman next to me and arranged for us to sit more centrally while they took the four corner seats, which seemed fairer in the circumstances. One woman in front of us turned round and said to Janie,  “good on you; I hate it when people badger me like that.”  Oh for the relative simplicity of allocated seats.

Anyway, it turned out that this was a really good play/production. The set is simple but clever, as furniture representing different locations get tucked away into the walls of other locations; not original but well done in this play. The acting from all four was excellent.

The plot satisfying enough. We aren’t really made to dig too deep into the moral dilemmas around conscience-salving donors, but there is enough intrigue, love interest and moral uncertainty to keep you guessing and to make you think. Well worth the 90 minutes and the modest price for tickets downstairs. We continue to see the Hampstead Downstairs as a gem of a place with a terrific hit rate from our point of view.

Downstairs productions don’t get formal reviews, of course, but it is covered well on monkeymatterstheatre.com, also on the oughttobeclowns blogspot. The latter points out how very special  Sinéad Matthews is as an up and coming actress. We first spotted her more than 10 years ago, in The Wild Duck at the Donmar, when she was but a nipper.

Later, to add compliment to remedy, we thoroughly enjoyed our Singapore Garden dinner. Where has that place been all our lives? Well, it’s been in Swiss Cottage/South Hampstead for some while I gather.

Lawrence After Arabia by Howard Brenton, Hampstead Theatre, 21 May 2016

Feisal_I_of_Iraq
It has been said that his majesty and I bear some slight resemblance… https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Feisal_I_of_Iraq.jpg

Oh dear.

It sounded like a good idea when we booked it. Such an interesting period of Middle-Eastern history. Howard Brenton, who did such an interesting job on Ai Weiwei, taking on an interesting character in T. E. Lawrence. Timely, as it is the 100th anniversary of the Sykes-Picot Agreement this year…

The problem is, that period was also a period when English theatre was in its dull Edwardian through 1920s drawing room drama doldrums. Howard Brenton seems to think it a good idea to parody the very worst of that period’s drama for this play. Director John Dove takes the idea further with a staid, static style to the piece. There are some good actors in this play but frankly we couldn’t care less what happened to any of the characters, which doesn’t give the cast much room for manoevre.

Neither Janie nor I could tell you too much detail about the first half; we both slept through much of it. It was a deathly dull hour, even when sleep spares you much of it. It would have been a deathly dull two hours, but we agreed to cut our losses and leave at the interval. So we can’t tell you anything about the second half. I am reliably informed by Grant (someone I know from the gym who did suffer the whole thing) that it gets no better in the second half.

The Hampstead Theatre area for this play has lots of good reviews – here , so it has clearly received good reviews, not least in both of the Telegraphs. The audience certainly looked like they had all been bussed in from Telegraph reader central casting. However:

Congratulations to all of you critics for managing to stay awake sufficiently to review the piece, or alternatively for covering up your lack of wakefulness deftly in your columns.

I did wake up for the bit where Lawrence shows off the thawb, bisht and igal, the garments of a bedouin leader, gifted to him by Prince (later King) Faisal. I liked that bit. Firstly, I am said by some to resemble Faisal (see picture above); I certainly resemble him far more than the actor who plays him in this play.

Secondly I have a fine collection of natty thawbs, bestowed upon me by one of Janie’s wealthy Saudi clients. Indeed I do much of my writing at the flat wearing a thawb; especially in the summer when it is a very sensible way to dress when writing.

But I digress. The play is deathly dull. Did I mention that before? Is irritating when people waste your time simply repeating stuff they have said before? Or is it a quirky, whimsical touch, that could maintain your interest and tickle your sense of humour for a couple of hours.

On a positive note, the programme is a really interesting read. We highly recommend it. The programme is well worth the trip to Swiss Cottage and its £3.50 cover price. Just don’t waste your time and money on this turkey of a play.

The Invisible Hand by Ayad Akhtar, Tricycle Theatre, 14 May 2016

Wow.

Last week, Janie and I were trying to figure out when we had booked this piece and why. The rubric just didn’t sound like our sort of thing: “thriller…American banker…a cell in rural Pakistan…every second counts…”

We even wondered whether we’d booked it by accident.

Then it started to dawn on me, slowly. Back in October, we agreed that we hadn’t been to the Tricycle in ages and wanted to go. We spotted that this play was by Ayad Akhtar. We had booked ahead at the Bush a few years ago “on the off chance” to see his play, Disgraced, and had been thrilled by it. So we decided to take a punt on seeing a preview of this play, The Invisible Hand at The Tricycle.

As a City trader might put it, we’d made a very good speculative punt back in October 2015 and cashed in on 14 May 2016.

The play is not for people of a nervous disposition. It is full of suspense. Just in case the scenario didn’t remind you of the tragic case of Daniel Pearl, the play reminds you of that terrible story early on.

Ayad Akhtar understands finance and the markets pretty well; he proved that in Disgraced. Whether or not it would effectively be possible to day trade with millions of dollars on the Karachi exchanges from a makeshift cell in rural Pakistan is neither here nor there. Even I was able to suspend belief for that conceit.

Indeed, I think Ayad Akhtar is, to some extent,  “having a laugh” with us by making the hero’s protégé a young man from Hounslow. That echoes the peculiar case of Navinder Sarao, the Hounslow chap who is believed to have made up to £30M day-trading from a semi in Hounslow and who is accused of causing the 2010 Wall Street flash crash. Finance doesn’t lend itself to laugh-out-loud in jokes, folks, but I suspect that the linkage is deliberate.

Indeed most of Ayad Akhtar’s writing seems incredibly tight and deliberate, making the audience think about complex issues from several sides while at the same time moving the plot along at pace.

The notion of the invisible hand is of course taken from Adam Smith’s Theory of Moral Sentiments and also, more famously, The Wealth of Nations. It is not novel to bring the fundamental economic idea of the invisible hand into drama. But where others, such as Bruce Norris in The Low Road, for example, managed to irritate the living shit out of me with inept handling of this complex concept, this play by Ayad Akhtar provides a suitably profound and conflicted setting for ideas around the ethics of commerce, finance and money. These subjects are close to my heart, hence my Gresham lectures on Commercial Ethics and The Future of Money, so I was pleasantly surprised at Ayad Akhtar’s deft handling of these tricky subjects.

It would be unfair to say too much about how the play pans out, as thrillers aren’t so thrilling once you know what is going to happen. I am prepared to say that Janie and I both left the theatre quivering from the experience, but in a good way. I guess we’re just about on the right side of the nervous disposition line.

It probably is fair to say that the plot hinges on the uses and abuses of advanced (or inside) information. Now I’m not wanting to get anyone into trouble for insider trading, but actually Janie and I did have advanced warning that this production is a cracker. I got an e-mail from cousin Hilary the day before our visit, which said:

Saw mum yesterday .. & Michael .. took them to 1st performance of Invisible Hand at Tricycle.  Really enjoyed it.  Looking fwd to reading reviews when they come out.

Come to think of it, the reviews aren’t out yet (on writing this posting 15 May), so I suppose this Ogblog post is also advanced information. Is that the sound of drones overhead?…

Cyprus Avenue by David Ireland, Royal Court Theatre Upstairs, 30 April 2016

Many months ago, when I read the sparse Royal Court promotional synopsis of this play, to Janie, she said, “surely not?” But I said, “it sounds weird and intriguing, I’d really like to give this one a go”.

Eric Miller, a Belfast loyalist, believes that his new born granddaughter is Gerry Adams.

I was also attracted by the fact that this was to be a joint production with the Abbey Theatre in Dublin and that the magnificent Stephen Rea was going to be in it.

Several months later, when (as is often the case) we have both forgotten what we booked and why, Janie asked me again what the play we were due to see that evening was about. I told her. “I can’t believe we booked that,” said Janie. “It was my idea; my bad if it’s no good. But I have a feeling it’s going to be something special”, I replied.

It really is something special.

When we got to the Royal Court, we went to see Simon David in the bookstall to buy our programme and find out what he thinks. Simon is often quite critical and we don’t always agree with him. “It’s marvellous”, said Simon, “I’ve seen it twice and am hoping to sneak in again this evening to see it for a third time.” He did.

When we sat down, the lady sitting next to me said, “you’re in for a treat this evening. I don’t often come back to see a play a second time, but I’ve come back to see this one again. The acting is just marvellous.”

Frankly, I might look at the script to get my head around some of the incredible dialogue again, but having experienced this extraordinary piece as a member of the audience, once is enough. It is unusual and special and a very clever piece; it is superbly acted, provoking laughter, thought and horror in equal measure. But once is enough.

From the very first scene, when Eric (Stephen Rea) calmly asks his psychiatrist, “why are you a nigger?”, through the flashbacks where we learn of Eric’s delusion about his granddaughter and his back story from the troubles, the piece is funny and yet chilling.

Perhaps the funniest scene is the watershed (scene six) which starts as a long soliloquy by Eric and ends as a frantic scene between Eric and Slim, the loyalist paramilitary, played wonderfully by Chris Corrigan. You know you shouldn’t be laughing at the rantings of these crazed extremists, yet there is something inherently funny about them. Heck, my NewsRevue friends and I wrote enough songs and sketches about it back in the day – one example linked here.

When the play pans out to its inevitably horrific conclusion, of course you know that discrimination, extremism, prejudice and terrorism are no jokes. This play/production works the audience’s cognitive dissonance like a maestro conductor with a great orchestra and a fine symphony.

Highly recommended, but (as they used to say on the telly when I was a child) not for people of a nervous disposition.

Cypress Avenue by David Ireland – click for Royal Court Information Here,

The play and production has understandably been very well received by the critics:

Ken by Terry Johnson, Hampstead Theatre Downstairs, 23 April 2016

I had been looking forward to this one since we booked it. I am a big fan of the late Ken Campbell, an interest going back to the 1990s. I/we saw several of his shows. Soon after he died, in 2008, we went to see a tribute to him at the Royal Court. Etc.

This piece sounded interesting, written and performed by Terry Johnson, who worked with Ken Campbell when he (Terry) was very young. Terry’s material tends to be much more structured than Ken Campbell’s stuff, but there’s usually a suggestion of that Campbellian anarchy in Terry Johnson’s writing. In short, the piece promised to be a bit different. It was.

From the moment you walked in to the theatre downstairs, now littered with comfy sofas, armchairs, suspended egg chairs and the like, you knew it was different.

“Come and sit at the front – there’s no audience participation,” entreated the ushers. Up to a point, they were telling the truth. But beyond that point things could take a strange turn.

Actually it had been a slightly strange afternoon for me. The 400th anniversary of Shakespeare’s death, I felt motivated by some incoming correspondence to put something up on Facebook about “me and the Bard”, which got quite a few friends going. If physiognomy were all it is cracked up to be, I’d have quite a few hit plays in the west end right now. But enough about me.

Ken is a short piece of some 80 minutes without an interval. The main part of the piece is about Terry Johnson’s youthful involvement in Ken Campbell’s bold The Warp project in 1979; in particular the infamous “squat transfer” to Edinburgh for the festival that year. More than half the piece is about that. The remainder picks up on Terry Johnson’s subsequent involvement with Ken. The ill-fated stage version of Hitchhiker’s Guide at the Rainbow Theatre in 1980, plus a few later overlappings.

Jeremy Stockwell does a magnificent turn as Ken Campbell (and a few other seriously good impersonations too; Stockwell’s Trevor Nunn body language is great). Terry Johnson does a reasonably good turn as himself; but I suspect that Jeremy Stockwell might have been able to do Terry Johnson better than Terry Johnson. Jeremy Stockwell in particular moves among the audience a lot, making unnerving eye contact at times.

Some of the crazy stories we’ve heard several times before, although I never tire of the “Royal Dickens Company” practical joke on Trevor Nunn, for example. Actually, it was the crazy material about The Warp that held the most interest for me; partly because that project was clearly such an anarchic, enormous overstretch, partly because I hadn’t heard the detail about that crazy production before.

Daisy didn’t enjoy the show as much as I did, but she did enjoy the show. You can sense that Terry Johnson feels that his time and relationship with Ken Campbell was hugely formative for him, so deep affection as well as the desire to tell the crazy stories pervades the script and the production.

At the end of the show, Jeremy Stockwell, still in character as Ken, together with a slightly timid young woman in a diaphanous wrap which left precious little to the imagination, invite the audience to join them backstage in a re-enactment of the nude body painting scene from The Warp.

“If you are curious, you come through this door, to my left, take off all your clothes and join in the body painting scene. If you want to go straight home, you go out the way you came through the door to my right,” said Ken/Jeremy.

“You may keep your undies on if you wish,” added the diaphanous young woman, almost apologetically.

I shall now draw a veil over the proceedings; a far more opaque veil than that of the diaphanous young lady’s wrap. So it is up to your imagination, dear reader, to wonder what Daisy and I chose to do in these circumstances. The curious door to the left, or the safety of the exit door to the right?

To borrow from that ghastly Las Vegas adage: what happens in The Hampstead, stays in The Hampstead.

 

 

 

 

Boy by Leo Butler, Almeida Theatre, 16 April 2016

Oh boy, this is a good one.

We’ve enjoyed Leo Butler’s work before, at the Royal Court. We booked this basically on the back of remembering that we like his writing. We didn’t realise that this production also brought back the imaginative team, which brought us Game at the Almeida early last year; Sacha Wares as director and Miriam Buether as designer.

The Almeida’s website has lots of information about the production and also collates the good reviews. As a glance at the review headlines suggests that they have been more or less universally good, this Almeida link should be pretty much definitive. 

We knew that the Almeida had done something funky with the set and seating, because we had a call from the theatre last weekend, asking if we minded that that a rejig of the set and seating meant that there would be an aisle between our front row seats. We could either put up with that or sit together further back.

We politely suggested that it ought to be possible for them to shift people around such that we can still sit together in the front row; we asked the gentleman at least to try. A few minutes later, the nice gentleman called back with the good news that he had achieved our wish.

Just as well, as we observed on entry to the theatre that the aisle in question was more like a chasm than a small gap.

But soon enough we also observed that the characters on the set, who were going around on an industrial conveyor belt like human sushi in one of those sushi bars, were sitting in perfect sitting posture without seats. I worked out that they each must have a support in one of their trouser legs, but the effect was very eye-catching and warmed us up for a short evening of theatre with a difference.

It is hard to do this piece justice in the description. It is 70 minutes of edge-of-your-seat theatre in which nothing much really happens. We are simply following a young 17 year-old lad, Liam, around London on one of his interminable, listless days. Yet all around him (and therefore us) we see glimpses of London life that resonate wonderfully. We are also made all-too aware of the hopeless of such a lad’s circumstances.

In one telling scene, Liam goes to register at the job centre or some such, only to be told that he should return when he is 18 and find himself something useful to do in the meantime. “That’s nearly a year,” Liam yells, despairingly.

The mostly very young cast do a brilliant job, but Frankie Fox as Liam really does stand out. I recognised Wendy Kweh from our recent visit to North Korea as depicted in the Royal Court Theatre Upstairs – the irony of being reminded of North Korean hopelessness while being shown London hopelessness was not wasted on me.

But for us the star performance really is the extraordinary set and direction. The cast have to navigate some tightly choreographed scene changes and movements across the conveyor belt, plus those extraordinary “seats of their pants”, as it were. The wonderful movement elements of the production reminded us a little of Complicite; that’s a complement coming from us.

Lots to think about and talk about after the show, which is what good theatre is all about as far as we are concerned. As only tends to happen after really unusual and excellent pieces, that conversation started with strangers in the audience and some of the Almeida ushers before we’d even left the theatre.

One of the ushers told us that this production has not yet sold out – so if you are reading this fairly soon after the date in the headline, get on to the Almeida and snap up some of those remaining tickets.

This really is a hot ticket.

 

 

 

The Brink by Brad Birch, Orange Tree Theatre, 9 April 2016

Wow. This was great.

Despite our unexpectedly disappointing evening at the Hampstead the day before in the hands of old favourites Neil Labute and Michael Attenborough, we still had high hopes for this play by new playwright Brad Birch and emerging director Mel Hillyard.

Our high hopes were well founded. A young teacher descending into psychotic madness does not sound like an entertaining, even amusing subject. Yet somehow this extraordinary play and production indeed entertained and amused, while also bemusing and shocking us.

The cast were all excellent, with especially strong performances by Ciarán Owens as the unfortunate young teacher, Nick, and Vince Leigh in several roles, as Nick’s headmaster and other tormentors.

Vince Leigh I recognised as soon as he came onto the stage, as a nice fellow I chat with sometimes at the health club. I was delighted and relieved when he and the production turned out to be so good. At dinner afterwards, one of Janie’s first, unprompted and highly-positive comments was about Vince’s performance, at which point I told her about the small but pleasing connection.

We’re big fans of the Orange Tree and think that Paul Miller is doing great things there since taking over eighteen months or so ago. Pomona, for example, was simply superb.  

We attended the last preview – so press night is this Monday. We really hope that The Brink is well received by the critics and does well for the Orange Tree – it deserves to.

Details about The Brink, including the reviews once they have been published, are/will be gathered here on the Orange Tree site.