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.
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.
Janie and I really like a bit of Ibsen. In some ways that is odd, in Janie’s case, as she tends to prefer modern plays and eschew classics. But she makes an exception for some classics; not least Ibsen, Strindberg and to some extent Chekhov.
Anyway, Rosmersholm is rarely performed and here was a production at one of our favourite theatres with a stellar cast and production team.
It’s hard to explain why this play is so rarely performed. In some ways Rosmersholm is über-Ibsen; it seems to throw in a lot of Ibsen’s favourite political, social and moral themes all at once. But then most of his great plays do that. Perhaps it is über-gloomy.
So although this was a superb night at the theatre, with wonderful performances and a truly top-notch production, we didn’t end up thinking that “everyone should see a great production of Rosmersholm” in the same way that we might say that about Hedda Gabler, Ghosts or A Dolls House, for example.
Still, a great theatrical event and right up our street.
We had such high hopes for this one. We love the Almeida. We loved Jesus Hopped The ‘A’ Train by the same author at the Donmar a few years ago…
…but this one didn’t really work for either of us. The acting was good, but the play left us cold and disappointed. Perhaps we were expecting too much.
There’s a good Wikipedia entry for this play and production too. It states that the original off-Broadway production was reasonably well received, whereas the Almeida production was almost universally well received. I’m not so sure about more-or-less universal:
This is a weird play. But then, it is Caryl Churchill. Indeed, by Caryl Churchill standards, it is not that weird a play.
But Janie and I had never seen the play and this, as it turned out, was a good production of this play. Thea Sharrock directed it; we’d been really impressed with her at The Gate and this production no doubt added to her rising stardom.
Enough evidence – this was good. We enjoyed ourselves and felt thoroughly sated with good theatre that weekend, having seen a super short play, Truck Stop, at the Hampstead the night before.
Janie and I are very keen on Frank McGuiness’s plays and this one is a good example of why that is so.
It sounds like the scenario for so many Irish plays – a family gathers to celebrate a birthday in a remote cottage in the West of Ireland…just take my word for it that this one is/was special.
We thought this play/production was wonderful and we both remember this particular evening at the Almeida extremely well.
I had been especially keen to book this production, as I had read the play in the late 1980s, found it very interesting and wondered whether I would ever get to see it performed.
Janie and I attended a preview, as oft we do. Wallace Shawn was there and we chatted with him for quite some while. He came across as being exactly the sort of slightly-awkward, self-effacing type that he depicted in the film My Dinner With Andre, which is a great favourite of ours. A couple of times I said to Wallace, “I’m sure you need to speak with some other people”, to allow him to move on without discomfort, but he made it quite clear that he was happy chatting with us and continued to do so.
We talked about his other plays, many of which I had read and several of which Janie and I had seen together. We also chatted about the Almeida production of Aunt Dan & Lemon. He told us how thrilled he was that Miranda Richardson was playing Aunt Dan, as he was a huge fan of hers. I remember reflecting afterwards, with Janie, that Wallace Shawn seemed more star struck about Miranda Richardson than we were star struck by chatting with him.
The production was truly excellent. I had wondered, when I read the play, how it could possibly be staged well. Director/designer Tom Cairns and the production team had a myriad of clever answers, not least the hugely effective but not overpowering use of video projections on a screen.
Glenne Headly was superb as Lemon, as was Miranda Richardson as Aunt Dan. An excellent supporting cast including Corey Johnson and Kerry Shale.
Our friend Michael Billington loved this play/production:
It’s a shame that the Guardian mis-labelled the photo as Natasha Richardson (daughter of Vanessa Redgrave, no relation to Miranda). I wonder whether Wallace Shawn laughed or cried at that mistake back then?
Charles Spencer in The Telegraph considered the piece to be pernicious and wrong-headed, which is an interesting counter-argument to those coming at the piece from a more liberal perspective:
Thinking about the play some 35 years after reading it and 25 years after seeing it, I am struck by the thought that the play would, today, seem implausible, because an academic with Aunt Dan’s views would be lucky to survive even one semester as an Oxford don. Mind you, Wallace Shawn probably wouldn’t last much longer in an elevated academic institution either. Having thought provoked in this manner is not for wimps.
One of the very best and most memorable evenings we have spent at the theatre.
