Travel, Theatre, Music, Cricket, Tennis, Writing, Life
The programmes hadn’t arrived, so (most unusually for the Donmar) we got a simple black and white printed A4 foldy. Standards.
The play was very good indeed, though, as was the cast. The usual high production values for the Donmar too.
A bit slow, but then this IS a 19th century Russian story and it IS Brian Friel, whom we like very much, btw.
The critics on the whole shared our enjoyment of it – click here for a link to reviews.
In short, this was a good’n.
This is the sort of play/production that reminds us why we like the Bush so much.
The play is set in Barbados and London; the play is a mature drama, full of insight into Bajan life and culture. Robin Soans has previous of course – not least Life After Scandal…
Life After Scandal by Robin Soans, Hampstead Theatre, 21 September 2007
…but this play is quite different as when we had seen his previous work it had been verbatim theatre before this play.
Here is a link to the Bush’s resource on this play/production.
Excellent cast, excellent production. Janie and I were discussing the issues and the relative merits (and demerits) of the characters deep into the weekend.
Below is a trailer:
More interesting, here is a short interview with Robin Soans and director Madani Younis:
Finally, here is a link to a search term that finds the (mostly excellent) reviews.
Strange play, this one. I recall us both really liking the idea of it and the style of it…
…I even recall that we enjoyed the evening…
…yet afterwards we sensed that there was less substance to the piece than we had imagined…
…a bit like the modern/conceptual art world in many ways, so perhaps the play depicts its subject cunningly well.
Here is a link to the Royal Court’s resource on this production.
Below I have embedded an interview with Tim Crouch and Karl James, who explain the play rather well.
We really didn’t like this play. I can see from the reviews that it was a “marmite” show.
The problems we had with it were many and varied.
We struggled to suspend belief for the notion that a disaster of the kind described could lead the USA into an autarkic breakdown of society. (Mind you, writing three-and-a-half-years later…)
We struggled to engage with the characters, who were a little too “everyman/no man” for us.
We struggled with the length of the play.
We (or certainly I) found every twist and change predictable and obvious…so much so, that, during the second interval, although we had not looked at a synopsis or review before our visit, I told Janie what the third part was bound to be about…and (by all accounts, we gave it a miss) got it pretty much spot on.
Here is a link to the Almeida’s ever-excellent on-line resource.
The following is the Almeida’s audience response vid:
…and here is a link to a search term that will find the reviews, good and bad.
We really liked this play/production.
We had been blown away by Nick Payne’s Constellations, so our expectations were high…
…this piece met those expectations.
It is all well explained on the Bush’s excellent on-line resource – click here.
This search term link will find you independent reviews and resources, although you shouldn’t much need them because the piece was very well received so the above Bush resource covers most of the bases.
Here is a very interesting interview/explanation from Nick Payne:
Below is a tantalising trailer which says little but looks spectacular:
A super evening of theatre. This one really deserves a revival and/or a major theatre run.
This was a fascinating piece.
It is an uber-modern play about privacy, data and all that. Some members of the audience, perhaps foolishly, left their mobile phones on and acquiesced to a request to submit a selfie – only to discover that geeks can find out a heck of a lot about you just from the simple combination of that submission and other stuff we readily transmit and is there to be found.
To some extent the piece was born of the Edward Snowden/Wikileaks saga, but in truth this play is an entertainment about the issues for ordinary people more than the geopolitical aspects or the Snowden case itself. We did subsequently see a super play that really was about a Snowden-type case, Mike Bartlett’s Wild at the Hampstead, which was cracking:
If this now sounds like a geeks night out without drama, I’m giving you the wrong idea. It was a powerful story and piece of drama to boot – a strong cast and superb production qualities as we might expect from the Donmar.
Click here for the excellent Donmar “Behind The Scenes” material for this play/production.
The first time we came across James Graham – This House, we weren’t so keen. But this one was sufficiently different and engaging to convert us to Graham’s writing…
…just as well, because Ink really was smashing:
Janie and I both really like Simon Gray’s plays and we really like the Hampstead Downstairs.
So this project; taking all four of Simon Gray’s attempts to write about a quirky pair of brothers in The Vale of Health, seemed like something we should do in full.
We saw them in this sequence/timing:
We’d often see the same faces in the audience again. One gentleman who sat next to us on the last night, we’d seen at least once before. I said to him that it would be like saying goodbye to close friends when this little season ended and he said, “that’s exactly what I was thinking”.
Very intimate plays, beautifully written (it’s Simon Gray after all) and very well acted/directed.
I’m cutting and pasting this same piece for all four evenings; the above and the links below basically apply to all four.
Here is a YouTube interview and stuff:
Janie and I both really like Simon Gray’s plays and we really like the Hampstead Downstairs.
So this project; taking all four of Simon Gray’s attempts to write about a quirky pair of brothers in The Vale of Health, seemed like something we should do in full.
We saw them in this sequence/timing:
We’d often see the same faces in the audience again. One gentleman who sat next to us on the last night, we’d seen at least once before. I said to him that it would be like saying goodbye to close friends when this little season ended and he said, “that’s exactly what I was thinking”.
Very intimate plays, beautifully written (it’s Simon Gray after all) and very well acted/directed.
I’m cutting and pasting this same piece for all four evenings; the above and the links below basically apply to all four.
Here is a YouTube interview and stuff:
We know Simon from the Royal Court bookshop. For many years he would chat with us when we got to the theatre about the show we were going to see and stuff.
Then he started to mention that he writes plays…
…then he invited us along…
…this might have been the second or third of his we saw; I think the second.
Simon’s plays are always quite short, steeped in word play, about somewhat edgy people and populated with good looking theatrical folk, with whom Simon seems more than capable of surrounding himself.
This one was on a Sunday evening which is hardly a schlep for us at the Drayton and Simon, as always, was very welcoming and seemed very grateful to us for supporting.
We liked this play/production.
We loved this show.
Not the sort of thing we’d normally go for; we don’t really do musicals and certainly not juke box musicals.
But we’re both very fond of the Kinks, and of the Hampstead Theatre. We also trust Joe Penhall as a playwright.
Good call – this show was so enjoyable and we sensed that the Hampstead had a hit on its hands…
…which it did.
Well written, well acted & directed, superb musical performances…
…great fun too. By the end, it was more or less like being at an exciting gig. We ate at Harry Morgan before the show.
Here is a link to the Hampstead resource on this production.
Here is a YouTube “behind the scenes”/trailer: