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.
This was a fascinating piece.
It is an uber-modern play about privacy, data and all that. Some members of the audience, perhaps foolishly, left their mobile phones on and acquiesced to a request to submit a selfie – only to discover that geeks can find out a heck of a lot about you just from the simple combination of that submission and other stuff we readily transmit and is there to be found.
To some extent the piece was born of the Edward Snowden/Wikileaks saga, but in truth this play is an entertainment about the issues for ordinary people more than the geopolitical aspects or the Snowden case itself. We did subsequently see a super play that really was about a Snowden-type case, Mike Bartlett’s Wild at the Hampstead, which was cracking:
If this now sounds like a geeks night out without drama, I’m giving you the wrong idea. It was a powerful story and piece of drama to boot – a strong cast and superb production qualities as we might expect from the Donmar.
Click here for the excellent Donmar “Behind The Scenes” material for this play/production.
The first time we came across James Graham – This House, we weren’t so keen. But this one was sufficiently different and engaging to convert us to Graham’s writing…
…just as well, because Ink really was smashing:
This was an excellent play/production.
We had loved Constellations by Nick Payne, so he was very much on our list of writers to watch…
…yet this one was far more down to earth, subject-wise and style wise…
…but still excellent, just differently so.
Basically about ambulance-chasing lawyers and insurance fraudsters.
It reminded me in style of Mamet plays of the Glengarry Glen Ross type.
Click here for the Donmar’s excellent “Behind The Scenes” document on this play/production.
Below is an interview with Nick Payne about this piece:
Click here for a search term that finds the reviews. This one really split the critics – we’re with the critics who got it, but some of the critics found this piece shallow after Constellations.
Janie and I are partial to a bit of Conor McPherson. We absolutely loved The Weir, but then you can’t expect a playwright to achieve such giddy heights every time.
Further, this was our second visit to the theatre that weekend, having seen the superb Dances Of Death at The Gate the night before – click here or below:
Dances Of Death by August Strindberg in a new version by Howard Brenton, Gate Theatre, 21 June 2013
So I suppose this particular evening was all set up for disappointment.
A wonderful cast, especially Ciarán Hinds and Caoilfhionn Dunne, plus a good script, provided plenty of entertainment for the evening – so in that sense we were not disappointed. It just wasn’t quite the jaw-dropping, mouth-watering night of theatre we had hoped for when we booked it. Greedy pair, we are, me and Janie.
Having been critical of the Donmar’s lack of on-line resource on many Ogblog occasions – I have now discovered (perhaps it has only recently opened up and/or was well-buried) a wonderful trove of Behind The Scenes resource guides on many productions – click here…
…including this production of The Night Alive, which I have uploaded and which you can specifically click here. Excellent resources – well done Donmar.
Below is a Donmar trailer, mostly talking about the music – interesting to hear and see Conor McPherson talking about his own work:
Click here for a search term that finds the reviews for this production. It was mostly very well received and transferred well. I’m glad. It deserved to do well, even though it didn’t bowl us over. We’ll still look out for Conor McPherson’s work, though – he’s a special talent.
What a palaver.
I was really keen to see this rarely-performed play, having absolutely loved reading it “back in the day”. Further, it was a cracking good cast, Josie Rourke directing – unquestionably one for us.
So we booked it, way in advance – as soon as tickets became available to members…
…for 2 June – which turned out to be the date of Charlotte and Chris’s wedding.
My bad? Janie’s bad? For both of us, presumably it was so obvious that the first weekend in June was the youngsters’ wedding weekend that we were both far too polite to book out the date in our diaries. I’ll write up the wedding in the fullness of time.
For The Physicists, of course, it was “impossible” for mere ordinary members like us to swap our tickets by the time we spotted our error…
…but it was not impossible for one of Janie’s high falutin’ clients who had some sort of corporate or “patron” membership to arrange a switcheroo for us. Thank you, anonymous high-falutin’ client – we were truly grateful to you – I’m sure Janie also found ways of thanking you gift-wise, foot-wise, etc.
With the benefit of hindsight, of course, perhaps we would have been better off without this one.
What a mess.
All style. All star-quality. No substance.
Perhaps it has dated badly. Perhaps it was adapted in a way that simply didn’t work for us.
This was the culmination of an especially disappointing week of special treats for me, given the unprecedented lack of cricket at Edgbaston on the preceding days:
Long To Rain Over Us, England v West Indies, Edgbaston, Days One and Two, 7 & 8 June 2012
Oh dear.
Here is a link to the excellent downloadable “Study Guide” pack from the Donmar on this production.
Here is the trailer for The Physicists:
Here is a link to reviews and such – mostly less than special.
I recall looking forward to this play/production a great deal, but not enjoying it as much as we had hoped.
Douglas Hodge was terrific in the lead; indeed all of the supporting cast did well too.
I think it is just a bit of a mess of a play. John Osborne works best for me when his angry, ranting lead has more context than their own small world. The Entertainer and this play lack that context for me, becoming almost lengthy monologue rants.
I also recall us finding the audience a bit irritating the night we went. I think Douglas Hodge and Karen Gillan had attracted a bit of a TV-star-sycophant crowd, which has a tendency to deflate our mood at the theatre.
In truth we were reaching the end of our road with the Donmar by then. For a long while it felt like a slice of fringe in the heart of Covent Garden, but it was starting to feel more like an exclusive, corporate club for West End theatre in a small house.
Here is a link to the excellent “Study Guide” pack which the Donmar has now made downloadable.
They made a movie of this play back in the 1960s, soon after it was first seen on the stage – below is a vid with a clip of that. Nicol Williamson – there is an abbreviated first name to conjure with – John Osborne considered him to be “the greatest actor since Marlon Brando”, apparently…a tough act for even Douglas Hodge to follow, I guess:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BOK4ZfpGtlw
By the time this play was announced, I had read and thoroughly enjoyed The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime.
So Mark Haddon’s name was a big draw for me.
The Curious Incident centres around autism, whereas Polar Bears centres around bipolar disorder.
Polar Bears was fabulous cast (Richard Coyle and Jodhi May in particular), beautifully produced, etc., but by gosh was it depressing and predictable to watch the inevitable tragedy unfold.
It is a short play – “just as well”, I recall Janie and I agreeing – I also recall us agreeing that we were pleased to have seen it but couldn’t exactly recommend it.
Here is a link to the Donmar Study Guide, now a downloadable resource.
This search term – click here – will lead you to reviews and stuff.
It didn’t put me off from booking the dramatisation of The Curious Incident a couple of years later, thank goodness – click here for my notes on that evening – which was cracking theatre – perhaps thanks to Simon Stephens combining with Mark Haddon that time.
But unfortunately Polar Bears was a continuation of a somewhat lacklustre six months of theatre for us at that time.
We had been big fans of the Donmar for some while; sometimes bemoaning the awkwardness of the place for parking/transport but on balance feeling that it was worth it.
Serenading Louie was one of a few less impressive productions that started to put us off the place.
Here is a link to the excellent Study Guide resource which Donmar has now made downloadable.
Of course it was well acted and well produced at the Donmar. But what a dud of a play. Why revive such a dull American play from the 1970s?
I think we stuck it out to the bitter end; I vaguely recall feeling that the second half was a mite better than the first half.
It didn’t get good reviews. This search term should find you plenty of reviews and stuff if you remain curious about it.
No doubt we supped on May’s Chinese food or Mohsen’s Persian. No doubt our moods needed lifting after a disappointing visit to the theatre.
The more cynical reader/theatre lover might imagine this play/production having been designed for a Broadway transfer from the outset.
A two-handed, short play about the artist Mark Rothko, with an all (both) star cast and Michael Grandage directing.
Indeed, had it not been for the fact that the subject matter interests us both and that the stars in question (Alfred Molina and Eddie Redmayne) are both stars we like, we might have given this one a miss. We were falling out of love with the Donmar Warehouse by then.
But this was a very interesting play and it was superbly done, so we are very glad we went to see it at the very start of its transatlantic journey.
No on-line resource from the Donmar – they are far too busy arranging West End and Broadway transfers for that…
…update – I feel bad about having said that now that the Donmar has made its educational Study Packs available for download – here is the pack for Red.
It got mostly very good reviews, but not universally so:
It did well on transatlantic transfer too – here is Ben Brantley from the New York Times the following spring.
But back to London during chilly December 2009, Janie and I were really taken with the preview we saw, which is the bit that really matters. It has also made us look at Rothko works slightly differently since. We’re still not sure about their meditative qualities though.
Finally, here is an extracts package from Playbill from the Los Angeles transfer – sadly without Eddie Redmayne by then, but still you get to see Alfred Molina as Rothko:
I’m a bit of a fan of Athol Fugard, but this one didn’t quite hit the spot the way many of his plays have done for me in the past. Daisy felt the same way.
It is a revival from 1975 – a selling point to me as I thought Fugard was writing brilliant stuff during that period.
A great line up too, with Jonathan Pryce in the lead role and Douglas Hodge having a go at directing…
…it just didn’t work for us.
As for the critics: