In truth I remember little about this one. It was comedy. It was set in Belfast. It was performed by young people (National Youth Theatre). I vaguely remember a joke about the students running sweepstakes on when Elisabeth The Queen Mother was going to die. I remember it being more a series of sketches than a play.
Another weekend, another preview. I’m not sure what drew us to this one. Coincidentally we had seen some of Leo Butler’s work just a few week’s earlier in the young writers’ fest Cutting Through the Carnival…
…but I’m pretty sure we must have booked Redundant prior to seeing Carnival.
Anyway, Redundant was our first sighting of Leo Butler’s full length plays and we were mighty impressed if I remember correctly. Lyndsey Marshal starred and Dominic Cooke directed. It was grim, in many ways, yet tinged with humour and hope. Very Royal Court. Dominic Cooke must have rated Butler and this piece to put it on downstairs – a rare 21st century example of a debut on the main stage of the Royal Court. There is a coup de theatre in the play that required it, I suppose. Risky writing.
The Standard previewed it (after we had seen it) thusly:
We didn’t see the shocking, late addition of an Osama Bin Laden mention, which dominated the press afterwards, by dint of seeing a preview prior to 11 September.
Patrick Marmion was seduced by the production, if not the character:
It certainly didn’t displease us in that way – we noted Leo Butler as one to watch and watch him we did as he matured into a top notch playwright. Possibly if we saw this one again, we’d spot the youthful writing in it. A bit like Chekhov’s Platonov the week before.
This was a very good production with a top notch cast, performed in that pop-up coach station of a theatre that the Almeida used while the main theatre was getting its major revamp. I’m pretty sure we saw a preview.
Helen McCrory and Aidan Gillen led the way, ably supported by solid performers such as Adrian Scarborough and Jodhi May, directed by Jonathan Kent – one of his last productions at The Almeida.
This is not the greatest Chekhov play – it is an early play that shows traces of the brilliance to come. Chekhov recycled some of the best bits of this one into his later, now classic plays. This production was based on an adaptation by David Hare.
It was a very good evening at the theatre, as I remember it, albeit rather a bum-numbing long one.
Nicholas de Jongh spoke highly of the production in The Standard:
I didn’t make any notes in my log about this one and frankly I only remember this production vaguely. I liked aspects of the play but found it rather long and wordy for its slight plot. So far, so Eugene O’Neill. I also remember wondering whether this was one of those O’Neill plays that needs an exceptional cast to pull it off.
Let’s see what the real critics said at the time.
Ah, the only formal review I can find easily is in the Standard. Rachel Halliburton liked the play more than the acting, I sense:
The Royal Court is really good at finding ways to showcase the work of young writers who are working with their various programmes. In truth, Janie and I are not so good at turning up to see those showcase performances; we do so rarely, although we were going through a bit of a phase of it at the turn of the century.
On this occasion, we braved Sloane Square on a Friday evening to see this miscellany of pieces connected with the Notting Hill Carnival. Timely, fewer than 10 days before carnival.
As you might expect, it was a mixed bag.
This will have been our first sighting of Leo Butler’s writing. In truth I don’t recall making a mental note about his material based on this showcase. We went to see his play Redundant a few weeks later, but I suspect that I had already booked that before 17 August!
Sandwiched between a short break at The White Swan in Pickering and the first Children’s Society v Tufty Stackpole cricket match, Janie and I spent an evening and night in Halifax seeing this show and then dining with Mike & Lottie Ward.
I had written the programme notes for Mike’s play – click here for said notes – and jolly good were the programme notes too…also the play, of course, also the play.
Actually I also wrote a review of the play/production, which I can reproduce in full below:
I thought this production was very good and an advance on The Elland Affair in several respects. The play itself was very interesting, with lots of character development and (almost too much) plot and intrigue. The casting and performances were good pretty much without exception. It was a most ambitious production in many respects and a great credit to cast and crew that they pulled it all off with such aplomb.
The programme notes were, once again, insurmountable and without question the highlight of the whole production!!?
Seriously, if I have any criticism of the play, it is too long and a little short on modern relevance. I know Mike Ward’s brain is already grappling with these issues for his next one. And I hope his next play arrives soon, because these Actors’ Workshop home-grown play/productions are getting stronger year on year and are a rare achievement in a small theatre such as The Actors’ Workshop.
All involved in this production should be commended and the people of Calderdale should be fighting now to get the hot tickets for the next home-grown production.
Not especially coincidentally, we saw The Elland Affair (Mike’s previous year’s piece) while on a tour which also included The White Swan in Pickering plus my first ever book signing:
Both of us had really busy weeks in the run up to this Friday night at the theatre, with Janie taking patients early and late that week. In my case, as well as many client meetings, a very late night for me the previous evening due to the traditional Children’s Society v Z/Yen cricket match in Regents Park:
I had seen Mountain Language before – a most memorable production in 1988 with Michael Gambon, Eileen Atkins, Tony Haygarth and Miranda Richardson, directed by Harold himself..
Returning to 2001, our friend Michael Billington reviewed Alive From Palestine, but not the triple bill, giving me the sense that the piece might have had a greater effect on us had it not been preceded by the two Pinter pieces.
To be fair, she reviewed the Pinter double bill ahead of the short late night run of the third play started. And at least The Standard had the good manners to trail the Alive From Palestine one:
Our friend, Michael Billington, suggested that this play was not as good as Roy Williams earlier material and that he needed to branch out a bit. I think he was probably right, as we really went for some of William’s later plays even more than this one, but it was good enough to get us hooked:
