Travel, Theatre, Music, Cricket, Tennis, Writing, Life
The programmes hadn’t arrived, so (most unusually for the Donmar) we got a simple black and white printed A4 foldy. Standards.
The play was very good indeed, though, as was the cast. The usual high production values for the Donmar too.
A bit slow, but then this IS a 19th century Russian story and it IS Brian Friel, whom we like very much, btw.
The critics on the whole shared our enjoyment of it – click here for a link to reviews.
In short, this was a good’n.
We were not overly impressed with this play.
David Hare is very good at burrowing around all manner of interesting topics, but I suspect he was too far away from his spheres of knowledge and understanding with the financial crisis.
Hare almost admits as much, as the narrator of the play is a somewhat perplexed author.
So to me, Hare was making the obvious points about the financial crisis well enough, but there was little dramatic tension and no new insight in the piece.
Janie liked it a bit more than i did, but I suspect that she got more out of it, being less steeped in the financial crisis in the first place.
I’m glad we saw it, but this is second division work from a first division playwright. There was little a good cast and production could do to save it.
This one felt like a hot ticket when we booked it months before and also seemed well suited to my mind set just 48 hours after my Gresham Lecture on Commercial Ethics.
But this play was about the arguably thornier topic of political ethics and political pragmatism.
What a posse of cast and creatives for this one – click here for the Official London Theatre information stub.
I recall being most impressed by the performances and the production. Also, the play did its job of getting me and Janie talking about its big issues for the rest of the weekend. Yet this didn’t feel like premier league David Hare to me; I felt there was something lacking in the play.
It was that sort of play/production – influential people were supposed to talk about it but not all that many people got to see it. Janie and I saw a preview, so had every right to wax lyrical from an informed perspective and from the outset.
What good news for everyone that Janie and I tend to keep our counsel to ourselves on such matters.
Well worth seeing.
Janie and I both carry fond memories of this play/production, although it was a long play and is the sort of play that we sometimes dislike.
Howard Brenton has a tendency either to pull off this type of history/personality play with aplomb (as he did with this one and the Ai Wei Wei one) or leave us stone cold, as he did with his play about drawing lines across India at the time of Independence.
Jeremy Irons isn’t my favourite; he’s always sort-of Jeremy Irons. But Jeremy Irons is sort-of Harold Macmillan, so that aspect worked.
One element of the play that I recall really working for me was the notion of the young Harold, played by Pip Carter, moving the narrative on, even in the later years when Harold was becoming an old duffer.
There’s a decent Wikipedia entry for this play – here – which also provides the links to the main theatre reviews (saving me the trouble), which were very favourable on the whole.
Having said that, Wikipedia’s critics list is short and perhaps selective:
Official London Theatre kindly archived its synopsis and list of cast and creatives, saving me a lot of typing. Thanks for nothing, RNT, which, with all its funding, provides far less past production archive than most half-decent fringe theatres.
Very good.
Our verdict in the log back then.
This was a major revival of Pinter’s classic, directed by Trevor Nunn with a cracking cast including Imogen Stubbs, Douglas Hodge, Anthony Calf and several other fine actors.
Here is a link to the Theatricalia entry for this production.
Unusually, we got to this one late – it had been running at the National for a while, since November 1998, by the time we saw it, towards the end of its run.
Charles Spencer had given it a rave review in The Telegraph:
Betrayal Telegraph Spencer 26 Nov 1998, Thu The Daily Telegraph (London, Greater London, England) Newspapers.com
Our friend, Michael Billington, in The Guardian, confessed that he hadn’t “got” this play first time around but got it through this production:
Betrayal Guardian Billington 25 Nov 1998, Wed The Guardian (London, Greater London, England) Newspapers.com
Nicholas de Jongh in The Standard also liked it:
Betrayal de Jongh Standard 25 Nov 1998, Wed Evening Standard (London, Greater London, England) Newspapers.com
I believe we did a date swap for this one. It is in my diary for Saturday 17 October, but I ended up going to see Death And The Maiden with Janie, John and Mandy that night.
I think Bobbie had a problem with that October weekend and we arranged to swap with a friend of hers to see this production midweek, on 30 September.
My production log says:
Went with Bobbie. Very good.
So what else is there to say? I remember it being a very big, busy play, with an enormous cast of courtiers attending to the protagonists. I remember laughing quite a lot. I suspect I would find it a bit cheesy if I saw it again now.
Nigel Hawthorne was very impressive and I suppose it is “quite a thing” that I saw him perform live.
The Wikipedia entry links to rave reviews on both sides of the channel. The subject matter very naturally had appeal for the USA so it is no surprise that it was also a hit there and also made into a film.
I was probably quite tired that evening, as the diary shows I spent a long day flying up to West Lothian the day before on business – that will have been Sky with Michael – a memorable working day.
I suspect that this was the last time I went to the theatre with Bobbie. We probably had a post theatre meal, perhaps at the RNT itself or perhaps somewhere like RSJs or the Archduke.
Here is the Theatricalia entry for this production.
Below is Michael Coveney’s review from the Observer:
Madness of George III, Michael Coveney Sun, Nov 24, 1991 – 59 · The Observer (London, Greater London, England) · Newspapers.com
Below is Michael Billington’s review from The Guardian:
Madness of George III, Billington Sat, Nov 30, 1991 – 25 · The Guardian (London, Greater London, England) · Newspapers.com
