Category: Theatre

Be Near Me by Andrew O’Hagan & Ian McDiarmid, Donmar Warehouse, 24 January 2009

We’re big fans of Ian McDiarmid. We think he worked wonders running the Almeida with Jonathan Kent and he is a fine actor to boot. He is also a nodding acquaintance of mine in Notting Hill Gate (although, writing in April 2017, it is a while since I have seen him around).

But in truth I don’t think this play/production did much for us. It all felt a bit grim. It sounded like it might be a bit like a Bergman movie, but ended up a rather drab stage equivalent.

The play/production is well described on Official London Theatre – click here.

No doubt this did well when National Theatre of Scotland took it touring north of the border.

No record of what we ate afterwards, but I’ll guess we went to May’s place (Shanghai Knightsbridge) to take away some yummy Chinese grub.

 

In A Dark Dark House by Neil LaBute, Almeida Theatre, 29 November 2008

This was a very troubling play by Neil LaBute – as his plays so often are. At the Almeida, as LaBute’s plays so often are.

Here is a link to the Almeida resource on this production.

The acting was terrific but we didn’t get the same wow factor from this one as we sometimes do with LaBute.

Good LaBute but not the very best LaBute was our verdict. But we were still discussing the issues deep into the weekend.

 

Mountain Hotel & Audience by Vaclav Havel, Orange Tree Theatre, 15 November 2008

It seemed like a good idea when we booked it. Here ‘s a link to the rubric that enticed us, along with the cast and creatives information.

We’d had previous experience of Vaclav Havel’s plays, so shouldn’t have been surprised to find the absurdity a bit lame and the drama weak.

In particular, I thought Audience (about a playwright stacking beer barrels in a warehouse) tame.

So what do we know?

Still, we enjoyed our Don Fernando dinner afterwards and never feel completely let down after an evening at the Orange Tree.

Mountain Hotel and Audience by Vaclav Havel, Orange Tree Theatre, 15 November 2008

This double bill was part of a Vaclav Havel Season that autumn at the Orange Tree.  We only attended this one evening.

Vaclav Havel is one of those writers that you really want to like and there are always some very clever lines and some interestingly weird scenes in his plays.  Yet somehow Havel never quite seems to work for me or for Janie.

Still, we enjoyed the evening.  The Mountain Hotel one was a typically Havel peculiar mix of people thrown together in a hotel garden being absurd together.  I think we even considered sneaking away a half time, but stayed to see what the second play was like.  Audience is a short quasi-autobiographical piece about Vanek, who works in an absurd beer factory.  It did not motivate us to return and see the other short Vanek plays later in the season.

It was all very well acted and well directed; David Antrobus is an Orange Tree regular and is reliably good.

You can read all about it, including who played whom and stuff, here.  Someone at the Orange Tree is doing an amazing archiving job; I am grateful to them.

Michael Billington, a long term Orange Tree fan, is polite but clearly didn’t much like the evening either.

Philip Fisher in the British Theatre Guide is more upbeat about the evening.

Ian Shuttleworth’s FT piece can still be seen archived here.

Gethsemane by David Hare, Cottesloe Theatre, 8 November 2008

This one felt like a hot ticket when we booked it months before and also seemed well suited to my mind set just 48 hours after my Gresham Lecture on Commercial Ethics.

But this play was about the arguably thornier topic of political ethics and political pragmatism.

What a posse of cast and creatives for this one – click here for the Official London Theatre information stub.

I recall being most impressed by the performances and the production. Also, the play did its job of getting me and Janie talking about its big issues for the rest of the weekend. Yet this didn’t feel like premier league David Hare to me; I felt there was something lacking in the play.

It was that sort of play/production – influential people were supposed to talk about it but not all that many people got to see it. Janie and I saw a preview, so had every right to wax lyrical from an informed perspective and from the outset.

What good news for everyone that Janie and I tend to keep our counsel to ourselves on such matters.

Well worth seeing.

State of Emergency by Falk Richter, Gate Theatre, 7 November 2008

A short dystopian piece about lives in a gated community in some future or remote authoritarian place.  Here is a link to The Gate’s stub on this piece.

We have done this sort of play on a Friday evening at The Gate before (and since), because it is sometimes so convenient to see them and stay at the flat on a Friday, but heavy/dystopian drama is not my first choice of activity for a Friday night.

Anyway, beyond our temporal reasons for being unsure about it, the critics also seemed unsure:

The acting was top notch and as always we marvel at the way they manage to turn that small space above a pub into a proper space for drama. But Janie and I concurred with the reviewers about the play.

Not sure whether I cooked or whether we grabbed some Turkish food from the (now late, lamented) Manzara. As I’d delivered my Gresham lecture the night before and (it seems) gone off early on the Friday morning to see clients, I’ll guess the latter and jolly tasty it will have been too.

Faces In The Crowd by Leo Butler, Royal Court Upstairs, 25 October 2008

This was a very memorable, very intimate play.

The set was effectively a small studio apartment which we, the tiny audience, was observing from above. You really almost felt you were in the apartment with the couple. And the couple were discussing very intimate stuff.

Official London Theatre maintains a basic resource on this production – click here.

Janie and I took Charlie (Lavender) with us to this one, which I think she enjoyed very much. We’re struggling to remember what we did for grub on this occasion; we think we possibly ate at the Royal Court itself.

Definitely more plus than minus for us.

Waste by Harley Granville Barker, Almeida Theatre, 18 October 2008

This one turned out to be a bit of an Alleyn’s alum-fest, with Sam West directing and Nancy Carroll performing. But that won’t be the reason we booked it.

Janie and I have been Almeida members for donkeys yonks – indeed I have been going there fairly regularly since the late 1980s.

This looked like a cracking production on paper, so we’d have had no hesitation in booking it.

The Almeida is great on archiving its productions, so details of the production, some good pictures and extracts from the reviews are all there to be seen – saving me the trouble – click here.

We agree with all of that lot. It was a cracking production of a rather wordy play – Harley Granville Barker was a decent playwright but Ibsen or Strindberg he ain’t.

We were very glad to have picked this production. Seeing a lesser production of this play would have been a bit of a waste.

The Walworth Farce by Enda Walsh, Cottesloe Theatre, 11 October 2008

Janie and I both profoundly hated this play/production.

We normally like Irish plays, even if they are a bit silly. But this one seemed to us to be silly to the point of not having any point at all.

If you read the rubric, still available on the Official London Theatre site along with production details – click here – you can see why we booked it. Sounds interesting. Potentially really good.

Oh well.

So, as the whingers say, what do we know?

In The Red And Brown Water by Tarell Alvin McCraney, Young Vic, 4 October 2008

Of course we hadn’t heard of Tarell Alvin McCraney when we booked this. We simply booked it because it sounded like an interesting play, which it was.

But at the time of writing this up (March 2017), Tarell Alvin McCraney is a topical name, because he wrote Moonlight, which won the best picture Oscar a few weeks ago. Go figure. Here is a link to a recent Young Vic blog piece recognising this achievement.

Official London Theatre has an excellent resource on the outline of this play/production from back then, saving me time & trouble – click here.

The Young Vic published an extensive resources document for students/teachers etc. this play/production – you can click it down – here – from this link.

Reviews were mixed:

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.