Travel, Theatre, Music, Cricket, Tennis, Writing, Life
We quite liked this play, although I think we were more taken by the excellent production and cast than the play itself.
I think that means that we basically agreed with Michael Billington’s take on it – click here.
British Theatre Guide was luke warm – here.
London Theatre summarises the other, mixed reviews.
We really enjoyed this play. I think it was the first Bruce Norris play we saw and it certainly motivated us to look out for his plays.
We were due to see it on Saturday 23 June, but then realised that the only Saturday that made sense for a Worm family birthday celebration was that Saturday. The Royal Court very kindly swapped the seats for us at no charge, despite my insistence that the booking error was my fault. “That’s what friends are for,” was the response. I wish more arts organisations treated the term “friend” thus.
Excellent cast, with Matthew Macfadyen, Andrea Riseborough and Amanda Boxer perhaps the most memorable.
Friday night at the Hampstead Theatre was our more regular habit, but the Carlos Perez concert had enticed us to the SBC the night before, so we plugged for the Saturday night for this play.
Probably just as well, because this was a truly troubling play that would not have worn well rushing to the theatre at the end of a stressful week. It poses as a documentary drama about Donna McAuliffe, a woman convicted of murdering her infant children. The story resembles in many ways the tragic Sally Clark case.
It was extremely well done and I am very glad we saw it. We had enjoyed Dennis Kelly’s writing before, which was the main reason we booked it. Hampstead was patchy to say the least in that era but the Dennis Kelly stuff was a rare exception and this one proved no exception to the exception.
Lyn Gardner spoke highly of it in the Guardian – click here.
As did Ian Shuttleworth for the FT – click here.
Philip Fisher in British Theatre Guide was less sure – click here.
Everyone agreed that Abigail Davies was marvellous.
I have the playtext for this one; unusual for the Hampstead but might well be worth a re-read, there was a lot going on in this play.
This turned out to be one of the hottest tickets in town for a while. We didn’t realise it when we booked it. We see a lot of productions upstairs and often enjoy plays there by young/as yet unknown playwrights.
Indeed, we normally see them early in a run, but nephew Paul had arranged to stay and said he’d like to go to the theatre with us, so we chose this play as “youthfully suitable” and so booked for a few weeks into the run. Thus, by the time Paul came down to stay, he knew we’d got him a surprisingly hot ticket.
That Face – for Royal Court stub including several reviews click here – really is a super play and this was an excellent production.
Polly Stenham is a very talented young writer, although we now have the hindsight to wish that she had moved on from this “chamber play about dysfunctional families and damaged youngsters” genre – her subsequent plays so far (several years on) have all been echoes of similar. Still, this one subsequently transferred to the West End making Polly, at 21 by then, the youngest West End debutant since…maybe ever. Michael Billington gushed – click here.
The whole cast was brilliant, but Lindsay Duncan stole the show, as you might expect.
Nephew Paul was very taken by the whole thing. We had to explain that we don’t always pick quite such winners, especially when we go for the smaller stages and unknown writers.
We rounded off a real culture vulture week by going to the Almeida Theatre to see Big White Fog.
The play is about Garveyism in the 1920s and 1930s, a subject about which I knew little and was pleased to learn more.
The Almeida Archive stub, linked above and here, summarises several of the excellent reviews this production justifiably received. This is Michael Billington’s type of play, so no surprises he loved it, click here.
Michael Attenborough did a great job at the Almeida. We probably saw at least half of the main theatre productions there during his tenure.
Very Orange Tree, this one.
Written in the Edwardian era. Set 100 years or so before that.
Janie is usually unenthusiastic about these period pieces, but we have been supporters of the Orange Tree for a long time and tend to get withdrawal symptoms if we reject all of the period stuff.
Mostly Orange Tree regulars in the cast. Auriol Smith directing, Sam Walters hovering around like an expectant father (we were there very early in the run).
Here’s the Orange Tree Archive to tell you all about it – click here. Didn’t realise the archive went back this far – pleasant surprise to find this. Even some headlines from the reviews – well done Orange Tree.
It was a very good production, this. One of the better ones there. Kate McGuiness was especially good in the lead.
This was special. We liked the sound of it. We hadn’t heard of anyone to do with it. As it happens, John Simm was well known, but for TV and therefore not to us.
Paul Miller has gone on to be the head honcho at the Orange Tree Theatre, where he is working wonders now (as I write in the mid teenies).
This is a great play and was a great production – click here for Bush archive.
The Stage loved it – click here.
Guardian loved it – click here.
Observer loved it – click here.
We loved it.
This was a revival of a play from the 1990s which we hadn’t seen and which we fancied seeing.
The subject matter is a bit gruelling and the somewhat sentimental treatment could seem mawkish, but actually we found this a good play and a well-balanced production.
Reviews (and some comparisons with earlier and subsequent productions) can be found through this search term – click here.
One of our better Friday evenings at the Hampstead Theatre back then.
A very powerful play this – a two hander set in a Latin American jail – one prisoner is a political prisoner, the other is in jail for homosexuality.
Very well acted by Will Kean and Rupert Evans in a high-quality Donmar production.
The critics suggested a lack of intimacy and power to this production, but it did the business for us as I recall it.
Click here for a link to reviews and other resources for this production.
One of those resources is an excellent Donmar “Behind The Scenes/Study Guide” – which I have also scraped to here so you can for sure see it even if the Donmar moves it or closes down!
A rare (perhaps unique) visit to the Donmar Warehouse on a Friday, perhaps because we had arranged to see John and Mandy on the Saturday. I don’t think we quite rated this play as powerful as Death And the Maiden, which we had seen with John and Mandy years earlier…
…but it had echoes of that play with the South American style and the human rights abuses.
A rare visit to the theatre on a Thursday on my own. Janie hates Restoration comedy but I had (and at the time of writing, more than 10 years later, still have) an idea for a very thorough updating of one of those Restoration plays, so I very much wanted to see this modern production of a Restoration classic.
I thought it was very well done. Rory Kinnear was exceptional, as was most of the cast, including Alleyn’s alumna Nancy Carroll.
This was before Nick Hytner found his way off my Christmas card list by forgetting where his loyal audience comes from and becoming far too much of a jobsworth cum corporate lick-spittle when running the National. So hats off to him in this regard – Hytner can direct.
I rated this production very good indeed at the time, but it was not the sort of modernisation of a Restoration play which I have in mind…
…which is a good thing…
…if I ever get around to implementing my own cunning plan. But I digress.
Click here for a link to a search term that finds the reviews, which were mostly good but not great.
Below is the trailer, which is really quite snazzy without giving away much about the show. It has a fair smattering of Nancy Carroll, which might please my fellow Alleyn’s alums…or indeed anyone who watches the vid: