Tag: Ben Whishaw

Bluets by Maggie Nelson adapted by Margaret Perry, Royal Court Theatre, 18 May 2024

Janie and I really liked this piece. An innovative, unusual and gripping evening at the theatre.

Here is a link to the Royal Court Theatre resources on this production.

The piece is basically an adaptation of a book by Maggie Nelson, which is a narrated story, more in the form of a poetic meditation than a novel.

All of the cast were excellent: Emma D’Arcy, Kayla Meikle & Ben Whishaw – especially the former.

The use of film projections and intriguing props, which we often find a distraction when we see them used in theatrical productions, worked extremely well in this piece. I have subsequently read the book and realise that the visual devices were, in a way, a distraction from some of the words, but in a good way given the dramatic sense those devices gave to the production.

Reviews are out now, although we saw a preview. (IT has taken me a few weeks to get around to writing this up). Click here for a link that shows the reviews. The reviews are mixed. londontheatrereviews.co.uk shared our feeling that this was as an excellent example of theatrical productions using projections. But I sense that Susannah Clapp in The Observer was more intrigued by the piece than overboard about it. Time Out found it a bit obscure, as did theartsdesk.com

Click through the preceding link, read the reviews…and if you get the chance, see the show and decide for yourselves!

Against by Christopher Shinn, Almeida Theatre, 26 August 2017

Unfortunately, this one didn’t really do the business for us.

I said to Janie at the interval, “if this play manages to pull together all of its big and disparate themes in the second half, we’re in for one cracker of a second half.” I didn’t think it would. It didn’t.

Here is a link to the Almeida resource on the play/production.

Strangely, I don’t think we’d ever seen a Christopher Shinn play before. I say strangely, because he has had so many of his works performed at the Royal Court Theatre Upstairs, which we frequent a lot. Perhaps the subject matter has never appealed to us before.

This sounded interesting from the Almeida blurb and indeed it was interesting subject matter. Too much of it; violence in society, sexual politics, religion, workers’ increasing sense of powerlessness…

…but the performances were all very good. They seemed, to us, wasted on this play.

Tellingly, the Almeida resource does not link to reviews, so here are a few links:

To help rescue our evening, we ran into Jilly Black sitting, with a friend, a few rows behind us. We chatted with them after the show; indeed Janie dropped them at Baker Street giving us quite a bit of very pleasant post show chat time.

It is not very often that we bemoan the extra few minutes journey time to the Almeida; normally that place is well worth the extra few minutes each way, but this piece left us warm to the interesting topics but decidedly cold to the play,

Bakkhai by Euripides, Almeida Theatre, 22 August 2015

Janie’s not normally one for classics, but this was promised as a new version of Bakkhai, so we went for it.

In truth, Bakkhai cannot modernise in the way that, say, Medea (which, as part of this Almeida Greeks season, really was modernised) can.

Still, this was a superb production so we both really enjoyed it. Ben Whishaw is exceptional, but the whole cast was good, as was the design, choreography, the lot.

Excellent Almeida stub with all the details, including links to most of the major reviews, saving me the trouble – click here. Those reviews were almost universally very good.

Nuff said.

 

 

Cock by Mike Bartlett, Royal Court Theatre Upstairs, 14 November 2009

So we saw a young Ben Whishaw as far back as 2009 in this thing – who knew?

Mike Bartlett has also gone on to bigger and bolder pieces than this since.

I seem to recall that it was a fairly slight piece about someone who is confused about his sexuality; I think the modern term is “fluid”.

The Royal Court link is very slight for an archive of this age – click here.

As usual, high quality production and performances upstairs at the Royal; Court – we love that place.