We’re big fans of Ian McDiarmid. We think he worked wonders running the Almeida with Jonathan Kent and he is a fine actor to boot. He is also a nodding acquaintance of mine in Notting Hill Gate (although, writing in April 2017, it is a while since I have seen him around).
But in truth I don’t think this play/production did much for us. It all felt a bit grim. It sounded like it might be a bit like a Bergman movie, but ended up a rather drab stage equivalent.
Janie and I are both very partial to a bit of Strindberg.
Creditors is a top drawer Strindberg play and this was a top draw production of same at the Donmar.
I had seen a smaller scale production of this before – at The Gate back in the 1980s – I’ll review that too in the fullness of time. But this version of Creditors, in David Greig’s edgy hands, was even more gripping than I remembered the play.
I’m not too sure why we booked this. to be honest.
We had not enjoyed Cardiff East at the National 10+ years earlier, despite the presence of the wonderful (ex NewsRevue) Di Botcher in that play/production.
Small Change is a revival of one of Peter Gill’s earlier plays around similar subject matter. So why we thought we might like another of Peter Gill’s working class Welsh drab-fests I cannot imagine.
Anyway, we didn’t much like it, although it was a less bleak and more lyrical piece than the relentlessly miserable Cardiff East.
Karen Fricker in Variety – click here – speaks highly of it and explains how Michael Grandage at the Sheffield Crucible rescued Peter Gill’s writing from obscurity;
We are both very keen on Arthur Miller and thought we would probably enjoy one of his rarely performed early works.
We went to the second preview of this production, so possibly didn’t get it at its absolute best.
While we enjoyed the play and production, with some of its parable qualities reminding us of great Miller plays, I would suggest that the play is not a great Miller play and the production was not one of the Donmar’s greatest productions. The acting was superb, as we pretty much expect at the Donmar, the cast mostly unfamiliar folk to us.
We’re very fussy when it comes to the Donmar these days, as we find that Covent Garden location so awkward, but on balance we certainly felt that this was a worthwhile trip.
I’m not sure we were quite in the mood for a triple-bill of British Absurdist comedies. I’m not sure we’d have been in the mood for these plays even if we had been in a more appropriate mood.
Billed as being a precursor to Pythonesque comedy, the only python-like thing in the 1960s N.F. Simpson material was talk about a neighbours snake. His plays were certainly more English whimsy than European absurdism.
The Michael Frayn was a modern piece, but lesser Frayn in my view.
Great cast; it would probably seem worthwhile watching Peter Capaldi paint the ceiling. Douglas Hodge directed this production – he seems to have a good eye and ear for this sort of stuff. It’s just not really our sort of stuff.
One of those resources is an excellent Donmar “Behind The Scenes/Study Guide” – which I have also scraped to here so you can for sure see it even if the Donmar moves it or closes down!
Janie and I were really taken with this play/production. On my log I gave it a one word review:
superb.
Peter Morgan writes these historical/biographical plays really well and Michael Sheen seems well fitted to the lead roles in them, be the role Tony Blair or David Frost.
Actually the whole cast was excellent, with especially memorable performances by Frank Langella, Kelly Shale, Lydia Leonard and Corey Johnson.
Michael Grandage was doing great work at the Donmar at that time.
There is a superb Donmar educational resource available for this production, now in the public domain but not well publicised, which I have scraped to here and/or the image link below:
Taken from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Frostnixonposter.png with the same attribution and for the same fair use reasons as stated on Wikipedia.
We saw the original Donmar run quite early in its life – perhaps even still in preview or just after the press night. The play/production was extremely well received, deservedly so. A link to reviews can be found here.
The piece transferred big time and also was made into a film. Janie and I were delighted to have seen the original production before the big fuss broke out.
By gosh there was a fuss in the UK press about this one, with theatre journalists falling over themselves to heap praise, in particular on Nicole Kidman, essentially for looking the part and being able to act.
We had tickets for the first Saturday, because back then, as members of the Donmar, that was the sort of thing we did, especially if someone as grand as David Hare was credited with writing a whole new version of a play.
The play, originally known as La Ronde by Arthur Schnitzler, was highly controversial when it was written at the turn of the 20th century. There are 10 characters. David Hare’s version at Sam Mendes’s request at The Donmar (subsequently transferred to the Cort Theatre in New York) was not the first time the play was staged as a two-hander. It starred Iain Glen and Nicole Kidman.
Janie and I thoroughly enjoyed our evening, but probably for all the wrong reasons. My log comment speaks volumes:
Nice bodies, shame about the play.
Having been wowed by David Hare’s wonderful solo performance piece Via Dolorosa the week before…
…Janie and I found The Blue Room to be comparatively thin dramatic gruel.
Still, nice bodies as I (and the fawning journalists) said, plus a bizarre moment for me personally. Janie and I were sitting right at the front at one of the sides of the stage, as oft we did at the Donmar. As the stars took their final bow and departed the stage, Nicole Kidman seemed to look straight at me and wave at me with her fingers. One of Janie’s patients was in the audience that night and came up to us as we were leaving the theatre in a state of great excitement, because she had seen Nicole Kidman waving at me. The patient wondered whether I knew Nicole Kidman personally, to which my answer was, “not until this evening”.
25 years later, all I can say is that me and Nicole, we go back a long way.
Here are some of the fawning newspaper pieces. The Standard, seemingly without irony, devoted its Page 3 to the news & review. Frankly some of the language used in this Standard page would not be acceptable 25 years later:
In the Guardian, there is a gushing piece in The Arts Diary which, like the other papers, probably would get heavily edited or spiked today, while our friend Michael Billington did the worthy thing and reviewed Our Country’s Good at The Young Vic instead. (Janie and I went to see that the following spring when it came back from its tour.)
This was one heck of a good evening at the theatre. A triple-bill of Pinter. I think it was Janie’s and my first visit to the Donmar Warehouse, not least judging by the detailed notes Janie wrote down while booking this, including the full address etc.
Janie paid £15 a ticket for Row C centre stalls. Not bad to say the least, even if £15 was real money in 1998. In those days, the Donmar was still regarded (and priced) as fringe. Janie noted the following timings:
A Kind Of Alaska 7.00 to 7.50;
Interval 25 minutes;
The Collection 8.15 to 9.10;
Interval 25 minutes;
The Lover 9.30 to 10.25.
What a cast…or should I say, what casts – as this triple bill had a separate cast for the first play and then one cast for both the second and third.
A Kind of Alaska starred Penelope Wilton, Bill Nighy & Brid Brennan.
The Collection starred Harold himself (always good value as an actor as well as a playwright & director), Douglas Hodge, Lia Williams & Colin McFarlane. The latter three also starred in the Lover.
We thought all three plays excellent and the whole production top notch.
Nicholas de Jongh in The Standard only really liked the first play:
Our friend Michael Billington clearly liked all three, although he did share de Jongh’s view that three Pinters in one night was possibly a Pinter too many:
