If my memory serves me correctly, we saw this play as a matinee on the Saturday and then Twelfth Night in the evening. It might have been the other way around.
Janie and I are fans of Ibsen for the moral dramas; this play is very different – a fantasy poem of sorts, although grounded in Ibsen’s family experience. Wikipedia explains the play well here.
But who needs experts? Janie and I thought it was a very good production, so it was just that. Alex Jennings memorable in the lea but well supported by the whole cast.
In amongst the heave of getting Z/Yen started that autumn, Janie and I did make the time for a solitary long weekend in Stratford-Upon-Avon, during which we saw three plays.
Not exactly a rest cure…
…said Janie, when I latterly (c25 years later, October 2019) showed her the evidence of that weekend.
The evidence shows that we stayed at The Shakespeare Hotel that time; I think for the second and possibly the last time. We found the room a bit pokey.
Anyway, we saw this David Edgar play on the Friday evening and thought it superb. I’ve always been a fan of Edgar’s plays and this is a good example of his work.
Anyway, we loved this play/production, that’s for sure. The notion of art and culture fusing/transferring both from west to east and from east to west is more or less received wisdom now, but the debate in the play, especially while the southern slavic region of Europe was still in turmoil, felt very topical and of the moment in 1994.
Did we eat in Fatty Arbuckle’s that evening? Quite possibly, but unless more evidence turns up we’ll not know for sure.
Some rare long intervals between visits to theatre and concert hall that summer, all down to the dawning of my business Z/Yen, which took up ludicrous amounts of time including weekends.
Janie and I rated it “very good indeed” at the time. I do recall it being a very interesting play and the RNT production was top notch, as RNT productions were wont to be at that time.
We do like a bit of Pinter. I was especially keen to see this one. I’d never seen the play performed live; this 1994 production was the first London production since the West End production in the 1960s. But I had seen the wonderful 1980s TV version with Pinter himself as Goldberg.
I’d also previously seen excerpts from the play performed live; not least by my own school mates in the late 1970’s when Dan O’Neill was selected for the role of Goldberg ahead of me because he could do a much better Goldberg accent than me. I don’t bear grudges but I do retain a sense of unjust cultural appropriation to this day, not least because I still cannot do a Goldberg-style accent. I played Aston in The Caretaker instead, but I digress.
In theory this National theatre production should have been amazing. Alan Howard, Frances de la Tour, Sheila Gish, a young as yet little known Jude Law…
…but my log reads, “not bad. Not the greatest either”. That means we didn’t like it all that much.
I cannot find much about this one. My log claims that we thought the piece was very good.
I have managed to find an obituary post for Rod Beacham, the playwright – click here. Interesting to learnt hat his biggest success was Lies Have Been Told, a play about Robert Maxwell, which, like NoBig Deal, also starred Philip York.
Also interesting to learn that No Big Deal toured under then name Friends Like This with Barbara Dickson and Roy Hudd.
Also interesting to learn that Rod Beacham was instrumental in the oorigins of the Orange Tree Theatre. Sounds like a good bloke.
We’ll have dined at Don Fernando after the play, even in those days.
We would occasionally take The Duchess with us to the Orange Tree back then, but the log suggests not on this occasion. Small mercies. No big deal.
What a cast! Daniel Craig, Susan Engel, Clare Holman, Stephen Dillane, Harry Towd…directed by Declan Donnellan too.
I insisted that Janie go alone to see Perestroika and she told me at the time that it was not as good as Millenium Approaches. But was she saying that just to be kind or was she saying that because she got less enjoyment without me or was she saying that because actually the first part is the better part?
A strange play, this. Here is a link to its Wikipedia entry. Writing about it 25 yrars later, it seems in some ways more relevant now than it did then, as evidenced by the several revivals of it in recent years.
And there was Janie and I thinking that we’d spent an evening seeing an interesting play by Caryl Churchill performed exceptionally well. What simple souls we were/are.
Janie and I see a lot of theatre and on the whole go to see productions that we find good or very good. But just occasionally we see something that is a cut above and is truly memorable as one of the best productions we have ever seen.
That is how my memory (25 years later) recalls this adaptation/production of The Life Of Galileo and my log from the time registers the simple phrase, “excellent production”.
Billington On Peer Gynt Fri, May 6, 1994 – 45 · The Guardian (London, Greater London, England) · Newspapers.com
