Travel, Theatre, Music, Cricket, Tennis, Writing, Life
We saw this play/production in preview and I clearly remember both of us saying immediately afterwards how much it reminded us of Arthur Miller’s style. Unsurprisingly, that was also the verdict of the bulk of the critics.
We also thought it was a very good play and an excellent production…the critics were largely still with us on that aspect too.
Here is the trailer and interesting chat about the play/production:
I wanted to enjoy this play more than I did. It was written soon after the Baruch Goldstein atrocity in Hebron in the mid 1990s.
Here is a link to the Orange Tree resource on the play & production.
It was an excellent production and a fast moving play to be sure. David Antrobus, one of the Orange Tree regulars, was excellent as the central character Nathan.
But while the play was interesting throughout and covered many pertinent issues, it didn’t quite work for me; nor for Janie. The play is primarily about a young Canadian’s sense of collective guilt for the atrocity; for my part, I found hard to buy into the collective guilt idea.
Somewhat mixed, but most of the reviews are very good for this production – the search term linked here will find them for you.
Did we have a Spanish meal at Don Fernando’s after seeing this play? You bet.
Janie and I both really enjoyed this play and production. It is an American comedy about disastrous blind dating, with enough issues in it to keep it interesting as well as amusing.
Superbly acted and beautifully directed and produced.
Here is a link to the Almeida resource on the play/production.
Here is the trailer:
Here is a link to a search term that should bring up reviews and other resources on this play/production. The reviews are a bit mixed – everyone seems to praise the production but not all of the reviewers liked the play as much as we did.
Janie really isn’t into Shakespeare, but Twelfth Night is a play close to my heart, having “done it” at Alleyn’s for the Dramatic Society in 1978.
Twelfth Night, Alleyn’s School, 12, 14, 15 & 16 December 1978
Ever since, I had been keen to see productions of Twelfth Night when they came around. Further, this production with Rebecca Hall as Viola and possibly a last chance to see a by then 80 year old Peter Hall directing…Janie said yes.
In truth, I don’t think this was the best Twelfth Night I have ever seen. It was of course very well acted, directed and produced, but it was a little old-fashioned in style for my taste; it felt like the sort of Shakespeare production I might have seen at the National 20-25 years earlier. I guess I should have expected.
It certainly didn’t do anything to improve Janie’s view on Shakespeare. I explained how much better it was done in the hands of Alleyn’s schoolkids in 1978 and Janie said she could understand exactly what I must mean.
She wasn’t humouring me, was she?
“After all,” said Janie, “you are practically a reincarnation of The Bard, are you not?”
Anyway, here is a link to a search term that finds reviews and other resources on this production. The reviews are a little mixed; mostly suggesting that it was a good, but not great production, which I think sums it up pretty well.
We don’t normally do musicals. But this one sounded interesting and different so we booked it.
Set in Nigeria in the late 1970s, it is basically a tribute to the life, music and politics of Fela Kuti.
It was at the National, so of course no on-line resource to help navigate all the whys and wherefores of the show. This search term – click here – should find the (mostly rave) reviews and other resources you might want.
I’m not sure we need a subsidised National Theatre to import this sort of hit show from Broadway and make a hit of it in London, but anyway I’m glad it was on there and I’m very glad we saw it. This was just the sort of boost we needed so soon after Phillie’s passing. A life-affirming show, but with real grit too.
Here’s the trailer vid:
We don’t book many classic revivals, but we tend to make an exception for Ibsen if it is a play one or both of us hasn’t seen before. Plus, if it is the Almeida, we tend to trust the place to deliver a classic well and with a modern enough feel.
As was the case with this superb production.
We were a little concerned that it might be a luvvie-fest for Gemma Arterton. But she proved well up to her task and the universally high-quality cast worked extremely well as an ensemble.
It was a well-pacey production; an-hour-and–three-quarters straight through, the extra pace worked well with this play. An object lesson for some of the ponderously long, drawn-out productions of early 20th century plays.
Here is a link to the Almeida resource for The Master Builder.
The reviews were pretty much universally good and most are linked through the above resource, but this search term – click here – should find reviews independently for you.
I don’t remember a great deal about this one.
Here is the Orange Tree stub on the play/production.
I think it might have been a bit much for us at that time, with Phillie so poorly by then, so perhaps we didn’t even stick it out to the second half.
This search term suggests that the few reviews it got were quite good ones.
Having missed out on War Horse (didn’t fancy it even after the rave reviews) we thought the subject matter of this one might interest us more and is very much up Neil Bartlett’s street.
This interview with Neil Bartlett explains his side of it:
To some extent it worked; the story across the decades was engaging. But the puppets didn’t really work for us. While we can recognise the incredible skill involved, it seemed, to us, to detract from the drama.
This link takes you to a short film that shows some of the major puppet scenes, to give you an idea.
I’m pretty sure this is the first Nick Payne play we saw. I remember little about it, other than the fact that the play was pretty full on about sex and that, despite its unsubtleties, we came away with the impression that we wanted to see more of this writer, which indeed we did.
Here is a link to the Royal Court resource on the play/production.
The usual praise for the Royal Court’s production qualities whether upstairs or downstairs. Super cast too.
Here is a search term that will find you the reviews and stuff if you want a deeper dive.
We are big fans of Mamet and also big fans of the Almeida, so Janie and I were really looking forward to this one.
We indeed got a fabulous production, wonderfully well acted, directed and produced. But we were less sure about the piece itself.
Of course with Mamet you get more twists and turns than a country lane. Of course you get even riper language than an expletive-filled debate at our place after Janie and I have both had a bad day. And of course, with Richard Bean in the driving seat for the play script itself, you get some lovely stage devices and coups de theatre.
But the piece itself, based on a 1980’s Mamet film script, seemed surprisingly slight and it was unusually easy to predict the twists. I suspect the film worked better, but I haven’t seen it.
Still, with Alleyn’s School alum Nancy Carroll heading up a pretty impressive cast, plus Django Bates providing the atmospheric jazz music, it was an entertaining evening to be sure. Janie enjoyed it thoroughly, but also claimed she let the plot wash over her.
Here is a link to the Almeida resource on the play/production.
Sceptics might not trust the above resource to link to all the reviews – quite rightly, as the reviews were mixed. Here’s a helpful search term for your own deep dive – click here.
If you’d like to see the trailer, click below – it’s pretty cool: