Travel, Theatre, Music, Cricket, Tennis, Writing, Life
This was our first theatre visit after returning from Vietnam in February.
A really good one too.
Here is a link to the Royal Court stub for this piece.
We rate David Eldridge highly as a playwright. Here was a superb cast and Dominic Cooke himself directing.
We really enjoyed this play and production.
The critics on the whole loved this piece – click here for a search term that finds the reviews.
Below is a link to the trailer:
David Eldridge plays are like buses – you wait ages then two come along at more or less the same time – this was two David Eldridges in a row for us.
I think this was the first production we ever saw at the Hampstead Theatre Downstairs, quite early in the era of Ed Hall using that downstairs space for experimental works.
It was the evening of Good Friday; an unusual night for a theatre visit.
…e.g. There Ought To Be Clowns Blogspot – click here.
I remember we thought this was a very good production and made a mental note to seek out subsequently the Hampstead Downstairs, which, by jingo, we have done.
This was a challenging play about addiction and the impact of those with addictions/addictive personalities on their loved ones.
Lisa Dillon was superb in the lead; it seems the lead part was pretty-much written for her. As usual at the Almeida, it was a well-chosen play, extremely well acted, directed and produced.
David Eldridge was very much on our watch list as a writer; we’d seen a few of his that we really liked, not least his adaptation of Festen at the Almeida.
I must admit though, we both found this a tough watch. Perhaps it was too soon after Phillie’s passing for us to be suitably sympathetic to a character whose misery and tragedy seemed largely self-inflicted. But it was undeniably an excellent evening’s theatre.
Here is the Almeida resource on this play/production.
Below is a good trailer with quotes David Eldridge and Michael Attenborough commenting:
The play and production were (deservedly) very well received by the critics – here is a search term that finds reviews and other relevant resources.
Extremely powerful stuff.