My log suggests that we thought this production was good. I’m not a huge fan of Wesker’s plays; in fact this one sticks in my memory as probably the most interesting of all those I have seen and read.
This was the famous (or perhaps infamous) National Theatre production of Hamlet which took Daniel Day-Lewis to the very edge of reason and from which he quit part way through the run.
I went very early in the run – in fact it might even have been a preview – with Annalisa. I suspect that I had booked the thing with Bobbie in mind, but so long before the appointed date that Bobbie could no longer make it.
Let’s just say that, back then, I thought of Shakespeare as more Bobbie’s thing than Annalisa’s thing. Annalisa has latterly assured me that theatre, including Shakespeare, was very much her thing.
Anyway, I recall that we sat right at the front of one of those side wedges in the Olivier – you are very close to the action there, especially when the action is on your side of the stage.
I also recall that Daniel Day Lewis was a very wet Hamlet – by which I mean sweating and spitting his lines. Annalisa remarked afterwards that we should have taken umbrellas with us had we known.
It was a superb production, with a great many big names and several names that weren’t big then but went on to be big. National productions were a bit like that in those days – some still are I suspect.
I was motivated to write up this theatre visit while sitting at Lord’s in September 2018 watching, for the first time, Ethan Bamber bowl live. His father, David, was Horatio in this Hamlet production, nearly 30 years earlier.
Other big names/fine performances included Judi Dench, John Castle, Michael Bryant, Oliver Ford Davies & Stella Gonet. A young Jeremy Northam had a small part in the version we saw but stepped up to the plate when Daniel Day-Lewis walked out. Later in the run, Ian Charleson took on the role to much acclaim, just before he died.
I think this was still quite early in Richard Eyre’s tenure at the National and he directed this one himself, extremely well.
My only other recollection is a quote that Annalisa picked up from an American visitor to the National, who told his wife that he didn’t think all that much of the play – “too many of the lines were clichés”. I guess you can’t please everybody.
Postscript: An Enthusiast From Across The Pond Sought Help…
…in March 2024 I received some unusual correspondence from a gentleman in the USA, wondering whether I still had the programme (or playbill in his terms) as he was keen to see Daniel Day-Lewis’s biography notes from that production.
I have mentioned before that Ogblog serves as a fifth emergency service on occasions and this felt like such an occasion. No sirens or speeding vehicles through the streets of London needed, but I fortuitously was able to lay my hands on this particular programme with relative ease, having not yet returned that batch to deep storage.
I went to see this production at the Almeida with Kate (previously and latterly Susan) Fricker. I rated it as very good and I’m pretty sure that Kate really enjoyed this production too.
It was an adaptation of a short Pushkin play about the interaction/rivalry between the two composers. This play inspired Peter Shaffer to write Amadeus on the same topic but the pieces are quite different other than the core topic. Here is the Wikipedia entry about the play.
The dates on these reviews imply that Kate and I attended a preview in March 1989.
The diary is silent about what Kate and I did before or after the show; I’m sure we will have eaten something or at least taken some refreshment and had a chat. Perhaps Kate remembers.
My memory isn’t brilliant on this one. I would have sworn that we saw Stella Gonet opposite Tilda Swinton in this, but all the evidence says we saw Lore Brunner. I can see no sign of ever having seen those two (Swinton and Gonet) on stage together, although both were prominent in the leading roles we were seeing at that time.
In any case, I believe this was only my second visit to the Almeida, the first having been some six months earlier, to see Hello And Goodbye. I do recall falling for the Almeida as a place itself on this second visit – whereas that first visit I was simply bowled over by the production and didn’t especially associate that visit with the Almeida. That was partly, I think, because Kate was especially taken with what they seemed to be doing at the Almeida in terms of restoring an old theatre for modern use.
I liked this play/production a lot. I don’t think I’d seen Alfred Molina before and was very taken with his acting. Colin Stinton was excellent too, as was Rebecca Pidgeon.
It’s a play about the movie business. As is often the case with Mamet plays about the world of work, Mamet captures the pressure-cooker atmosphere of the work place extremely well – an aspect that is often lacking in plays – perhaps because playwrights haven’t spent much of their lives in the actual hard-nosed world of work.
Theatricalia has an entry for this one – click here.
There are some #MeToo elements to this play that, obviously, weren’t perceived as #MeToo at the time because #MeToo hadn’t been invented – although movie business males belittling movie business females had been invented.
A midweek visit to the theatre with Bobbie. How on earth we ended up at the National for a major production on press night I have no idea – perhaps a couple of Bobbie’s journalist friends/colleagues had to divest themselves of a pair of tickets at short notice.
Midweek theatre was a habit we had acquired during my quieter months in late 1988 but this was not a sensible idea once my Binders career got going, as I might be deadline-ridden or out of town at the drop of a hat in my new career – so such mideweek jaunts became rare.
I don’t recall being quiet at work, though, so I must have been immersed in something or things that didn’t require meetings. I think I ran a tendering process or two, got involved with some proposal writing and helped out on a few projects staffed by people who didn’t really “get” accounting.
One thing I most certainly wasn’t doing was strutting around the office like a “paycock”. Which brings us back neatly to the matter at hand – a Wednesday evening visit to the National to see Juno and the Paycock with Bobbie.
It is hard to find any information on-line about the 1989 production, although some of the 2011 reviews hark back to the earlier production. But take my word for it that the 1989 production was good. I’m pretty sure it got good notices. Bobbie might remember yet more about it than I do. I’ll ask her.
David Hare plays have a tendency to irritate me, especially those plays that seem to come at moral and/or political issues with some preachy certainty – even if I agree with Hare’s position, which often I do.
I recall The Secret Rapture having enough moral dilemma and ambiguity about Thatcherism to keep the thought and concentration going throughout the play and for some time afterwards too.
They made a movie of this play a few years later…mostly different cast…
…I don’t really recognise the play I saw from this trailer at all:
In short, I remember thinking the play/production that we saw was very good. I went with Bobbie.
I’m not sure what we did afterwards; perhaps we ate out or perhaps I prepared some food for afterwards, as I was in the mode to do that in those early days at Clanricarde Gardens.
An after work visit to the theatre with Bobbie on a Wednesday evening. The Lyric Studio did really high quality fringe stuff back then. This cast included Adrian Dunbar, Dearbhla Molloy and Michelle Fairley would you believe?
This production was actually the Tricycle Theatre (or do I now have to say “Kiln” even when discussing productions gone by?) in exile at the Lyric Studio. Hence Nicholas Kent directing.
I don’t remember all that much about this play/production, other than it being pretty impressive for a small studio production and being very Northern Irish in tone and subject matter. The acting and directing was top notch.
This was at the old Hampstead Theatre – the portacabin-like place quite near the new Hampstead (i.e. also Swiss Cottage). The place had a proud tradition by 1989, not least in the matter of Mike Leigh plays.
What a fine cast – as always with Mike Leigh who seems to be a magnet for talent – including Timothy Spall, Saskia Reeves and Brid Brennan.
I do remember really liking this play/production. It was, in some ways, the sort of cheesy farce I tend not to like. But being Mike Leigh, it was sort-of an antidote to such farces, much as Noises Off by Michael Frayn is sort-of farce, sort-of antidote.
I went to see this one with Bobbie – I wonder whether or not she remembers much about it…
…or whether Bobbie remembers much about Jilly’s party at the latter’s Nether Street residence?
I think it was at this particular Jilly party that I had a long conversation with one of Jilly’s scientist friends about nuclear fusion technologies, which we reprised some 20-25 years later at a subsequent Jilly gathering.
Obviously I was better from my 48 hours of food poisoning by the Saturday. I’m pretty sure I went in to work on the Friday and then a full weekend of activities.
Now I have had written complaints from Jilly already about my handwriting, so the above page is only for artistic effect. Here is the entry for the Saturday:
Saturday 10 December: Driving lesson & Orpheus Descending With Jilly & Annalisa Party
There – that wasn’t so challenging, now, was it?
I remember really liking this play and production. What a fabulous cast.
They made a film based on that Peter Hall production with some (but not all) of the cast we saw in it. Here is the trailer for that movie – far more melodramatic looking than the stage production I remember, but still it should give you some idea:
For that particular evening, I’m sure that the original idea was that Bobbie would join me to see this play/production. But when she had to pull out for some reason, it made a great deal of sense for Jilly to act as sub, especially as we were both invited to Annalisa’s party and were given leave to be fashionably late arrivals.
In truth, I cannot remember specific details of this particular party at Annalisa’s place in Hinde Street, but her parties were always popular, always lavish in hospitality and always late nighters. At that time, just a couple of years after Annalisa had finished at Keele, I suspect it was a very Keeley crowd that night.
As the diary says, on the Sunday, I:
…went to G Jenny with Ma & Pa…
…the next day, quite probably a little tiredly and sore-headedly. But Grandma Jenny no doubt wanted to know all about my new flat and my new job, so I’ll guess that I was centre of attention that Sunday afternoon.
Saturday 3 December: Much sorting to do re flat – went to see Single Spies in eve – B came back to mine
My appointments diary informs me that my Zanussi washing machine was delivered to the flat that morning. I remember going for my first local shopping expedition after the machine arrived.
I am fairly sure that it was on that very first Saturday’s shopping spree that I found myself face-to-face with Van Morrison on the traffic island which divides the north from the south side of the Bayswater Road. We exchanged glances. I nodded, in as much of a “cool, nodding acquaintance” manner as I could muster.
I remember thinking that the Van encounter proved that I had really arrived in a hip, happening place – I was going to be rubbing shoulders with Van Morrison and people of that sort all the time from now on. Well, to some extent I suppose I have got to meet quite a lot of such media folk in the neighbourhood since, but that traffic island encounter with Van the Man was, sadly, a one-off. “No Van is an island”, I suppose.
Single Spies is actually two Alan Bennett plays: An Englishman Abroad and A Question Of Attribution. Both are about the Cambridge Spy Ring. The first of the two plays had been knocking around for a few years before this production – it is primarily about actress Coral Browne’s encounters with Guy Burgess. The second play was about Anthony Blunt’s role as art advisor to the Queen.
I thought the production (Single Spies, I mean, not Twelfth Night) was very good and said so in my notes. I’m pretty sure Bobbie liked the production too. I think we might have eaten at the National that evening – I can’t believe that I was geared up to cook yet at Clanricarde.
Sunday 4 December: Went to Pam & Michael’s in eve for dinner and bridge
I wonder who made the fourth for bridge that evening? It was before my irregular social group had emerged, so it wouldn’t have been Andrea on that occasion. I’ll guess it was a friend of Pam & Michael’s – perhaps one of the Setty/Gareh family or possibly it was Ralph Glasser. The diary is silent on such details – never mind.
I’ll have walked there and back, learning that Clanricarde Gardens to Pam & Michael’s place only takes around 15 minutes on foot. Cool.
de Jongh on Roots Wed, Feb 8, 1989 – 46 · The Guardian (London, Greater London, England) · Newspapers.com
