Tag: Elliot Griggs

English by Sanaz Toossi, The Other Place, 13 May 2024

We saw a preview on our first night in Stratford-Upon-Avon. The next day, we went back for a talk and discussion with several of the creatives for this production.

Janie and I really enjoyed this play/production. We had just arrived in Stratford on a four-day short break and were quite tired that evening. Nevertheless this play held our attention throughout, making us smile., laugh and think in equal measure.

It is set in an “English As A Foreign Language” class in Karaj, Iran, c2008. A class of four, each with their own reason for wanting or needing to attend this class and gain a “Test-Of-English-As-A -Foreign-Language” certificate are taught by a hugely enthusiastic Iranian woman who loves the English language and tries to instil that enthusiasm in her variously enthusiastic, reluctant and/or cognitively-conflicted students.

A recipe for some interesting drama, which is exactly what we got.

The RSC does good stubs for its productions these days – here is a link that tells you all about it, so I don’t have to.

As we saw one of the last previews, I suspect that little will have changed since we saw this production. Having said that, as we ascertained at the talk/discussion the next day, director Diyan Zoya is very hands-on in working with a cast to improve continuously throughout and beyond the preview period.

In the discussion, we saw and heard from not only Diyan Zoya but also Maria Tarokh (movement and cultural advisor) and Sara Amini (assistant director text and dialect). The discussion was led by Conrad Lynch, who has produced the show.

We thought the play and production excellent. Reviews have started to come out (he says, writing just a few days after the press night). This link is a search term that should find most or all of them. The reviews so far have been mixed, with Dominic Cavendish in The Telegraph not liking it a lot and Arifa Akbar in The Guardian slamming it. Yet it gets good or excellent reviews from Amya Ryan in the Times, Michael Davies in WhatsOnStage and Catherine Love in The Stage to name but three others.

Perhaps best to see it and judge for yourselves – Janie and I thought it was 90 minutes very well spent in the theatre.

Acceptance by Amy Ng, Hampstead Theatre Downstairs, 3 March 2018

A truly gripping and fascinating moral drama about a young musical prodigy from Hong Kong applying to an elite university in the USA.

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

As the rubric infers, all is not as it seems in this play. Our assumptions and prejudices get tested to the limits, as do those of the characters.

Below is the trailer, with short interviews with the cast and creatives:

The young prodigy obsesses about some Bach, so I was tempted to headline this Ogblog article “Baroque And Enroll”, but Janie says that such a headline would be crass for such an emotive play.

It is certainly a very thought-provoking play and it is potentially a very moving production too.

We saw the second preview of this play/production, so it is possible that one or two of the wrinkles we observed will have been ironed out by the time it gets to press night.

The main wrinkle for us was the see-through screens that divide the stage from the audience. The purpose (if any) behind this device was unclear…as was some of the sound that emanated from the stage as a result of these clear screens. More importantly than the slightly muffled sound was the sense that we, as audience, were somewhat separated from the action. This is a highly emotive piece, yet the audience seemed strangely numb to it – I think the audience would far better be able to embrace and respond to this piece without the screens.

Another wrinkle, for me, was the complete absence of the particular piece of music that seemed so central in many ways to the story; the Mercy Aria – Erbarme Dich, from Bach’s St Matthew Passion.

While I imagine that the cast and crew didn’t want the play/production to be compared too readily with Death And The Maiden, the differences between the two plays are great and the similarities are there whether you use Erbarme Dich or not.

Erbarme Dich is described in so much detail, referred to so often and is so significant to the plot. Even if they simply played the violin part of Erbarme Dich right at the end of the play, I think it would have helped.

Even as seasoned Baroque-oholocs, Janie and I had to dig out Erbarme Dich and listen to it when we got home to remember exactly what the piece sounds like – most of the audience would have been even more in the dark.

Below is a beautiful rendition of Erbarme Dich:

I really thought Acceptance was a superb play – just the second play by Amy Ng, another new playwright to watch. The disturbing issues raised by this play are covered with a confident blend of subtlety, sensitivity and visceral moments.

The acting was truly excellent.

I would thoroughly recommend seeing this play/production even if the production team doesn’t make a few changes, but I sincerely hope that they will gauge audience reaction and make the few tweaks I think it needs to turn this production into an absolute stunner.

No reviews yet at the time of writing – this search term – click here – will find them when they come.

Low Level Panic by Clare Mcintyre, Orange Tree Theatre, 25 March 2017

This made it two in a row theatre visits to see all female affairs, the previous visit being Scarlett at the Hampstead Downstairs – click here – earlier this month.

Unlike Scarlett, though, this production is a revival of a 1980’s play. Indeed, a quintessentially 1980’s play. It’s a three-hander. All three actresses performed their roles very well.

Here is a link to the excellent Orange Tree on-line resources about the production, including reviews and stuff.

Lots of excellent reviews up there, mostly four stars. Of course, the Orange Tree only puts up the best ones with stars, so I add these only for balance:

Several of the reviews discuss feminism 1988 style and debate the extent to which things have changed since then – very much the conversation Janie and I had over dinner and the next day.

Anyway, Janie and I both really enjoyed our evening at the theatre and our Don Fernando grubsie afterwards.

 

Sheppey by William Somerset Maugham, Orange Tree Theatre, 26 November 2016

I think we booked this because we had booked so little at the Orange Tree of late and because Janie said she’d never seen a Somerset Maugham play. I had to admit that I hadn’t seen one either, although I had read some years ago (and frankly had found them wanting compared with his excellent short stories).

The scenario of this play, Sheppey, Maugham’s last, is straightforward enough. Sheppey is a gentleman’s hairdresser who wins a small fortune in a lottery. The play is set when written, c1933, when the great depression was biting hard for many. Sheppey’s life doesn’t overlap much with the have-nots, but those he does encounter affect him. Sheppey has always thought himself a lucky man despite his relatively modest life; so should his charity begin at home or should he try to spread the benefits of his lucky ticket?

This simple, linear story is well summarised in the play’s Wikipedia entry – SPOILER ALERT – click here. The great Ralph Richardson played the lead in the original production in 1933. I was fortunate enough to see him perform towards the end of his career, in the Double Dealer at the National in 1978, which I shall write up on Ogblog in the fullness of time.

As always, the Orange Tree Theatre has a great resource on the production and play – without spoiler – see here. John Ramm, a fine actor, plays Sheppey in this production.

The play is unduly long, with two intervals, in the 1930s tradition of three lengthy acts. It is hard to cut such plays to one interval numbers, but this play really does labour its way through 2 hours and 50 minutes (including intervals). If Paul Miller needs to persevere with the Orange Tree tradition of early 20th century plays, perhaps he should drop the tradition of “hanging on the playwright’s every word”.

Janie and I lost patience with the piece after two acts, deciding to bail out and take our fabada and solomillos dinner at Don Fernando’s at a more civilised hour.

This is a shame, as Paul Miller deploys his excellent directorial skills on a very talented cast to bring as much life as possible out of this play. He also deftly uses Geff Francis as Sheppey’s boss and Dickie Beau as the prostitute Sheppey tries to help, without ceremony but equally without any indication in the text that the boss might be black and/or that the prostitute might be a man in drag.

Still, this is not a great play, in my view (and in Janie’s). There are reasons why Somerset Maugham’s plays don’t get revived much. They were popular pieces in their day, but tend to seem incredibly dated in style now.

In Sheppey, the characters are a bit one-dimensional and it is pretty easy to see where the story is going. Major plot shifts are foreshadowed so overtly, Somerset Maugham might as well have alerted those shifts with neon signs or tannoy announcements. So when Janie asked me at the restaurant to look up and tell her what happens in the end, there were no surprises for me in the Wikipedia synopsis – above and again – SPOILER ALERT IF YOU – click here.

Of course, the character of Sheppey made me think of my grandfather, who was a gentleman’s hairdresser at the time the play was set and written. I wonder whether Grandpa Lew ever saw the play. My grandmother (who coincidentally, like Sheppey’s wife, had been in service before they married) was dying or recently deceased around that time, so perhaps not.

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Grandpa Lew and Grandma Beatrice

But the play was set in Jermyn Street and performed at the Wyndhams, both within spitting distance of the Piccadilly Hotel where Grandpa Lew worked, so who knows? If he took my eleven-year-old mum with him, I very much doubt if her self-confessed childhood attention deficit hyperactivity disorder would have kept her in her seat for the full three acts.

The Argument by William Boyd, Hampstead Theatre Downstairs, 19 March 2016

We love the Hampstead Theatre Downstairs. We love the upstairs too, of course, but we really have seen some cracking stuff downstairs.

This piece doesn’t really make the cut as “cracking stuff”. I enjoyed it more than Janie did; she found swathes of it irritating.

There’s not a great deal of plot. Young couple, compulsive arguers about nothing, fall out proper when the shrewish intellectual snob of a wife extracts a confession from the strangely timid yet BSD husband that he has been having an affair with some trollop through work.

Then wheel in the best friend of each spouse plus both of her parents and watch every plausible pairing (and some implausible ones) argue. Some scenes were genuinely laugh-out-loud funny; others were a little “smug sitcom” for our taste. What little plot there is progresses quite slowly and predictably.

It was good to see Michael Simkins (aka Fatty Batter – one of the funniest cricket books I have ever read) on the stage. Last time I saw him in person was at a county cricket match at Lord’s 10 years or so ago; he was with Michael Billington and we three chatted very pleasantly for a brief while.

Plenty of good acting on show, as is pretty much always the case down there at Hampstead. Indeed, in some ways it was the high quality of the acting that irritated Janie. The characters were all unlikable and the actors did a terrific job of projecting that unlike-ability. It is difficult for a play to work if you really don’t care much for any of the characters.

Still, we enjoyed our evening and in some ways the slight disappointment was based on the very high expectations we have now when visiting the Hampstead Theatre – what a huge leap forward from a few years ago when the whole place was in the creative doldrums. Edward Hall has done and is doing a cracking job there. We look forward to seeing the new Neil LaBute upstairs there in a few weeks’ time. I think we saw Mr LaBute himself crossing the Finchley Road while we were on the way to the theatre; quite possible as that upstairs show is still in preview. There’s another fellow we haven’t seen in person for a decade or so.

 

Yen by Anna Jordan, Royal Court Theatre Upstairs, 23 January 2016

This extraordinary play and production completed our January hat-trick of marvellous but grim plays; the first being You For Me For You by Mia Chung, the second being The Rolling Stone by Chris Urch.

Before we set off, I looked up the details on the Royal Court website and called them out to Janie.  “It won the Bruntwood Prize for Playwriting in 2013,” I said…

…”hold on a minute, I thought The Rolling Stone was promoted as having that same prize, the same year.  What’s going on?”

Turns out, this wonderful (relatively recent) Bruntwood Prize is run biennially and is awarded to four winners each time.  So they had both won  in 2013.

Yen is in some ways even more troubling than The Rolling Stone.  It feels more “on our own doorstep” (not that proximity should make the issues and human suffering any more alarming) and had extraordinary intensity and sway of emotions.

The young cast’s acting was simply superb, Ned Bennett’s directing once again takes the breath away.  In short, this play/production deserves all the plaudits and rave reviews it has already received and more besides.  You’ll find those here in the helpful Royal Court area.

Janie found this play/production so troubling she said she didn’t sleep so well that night.  Very unusual; she is pretty robust and we’ve seen a lot of troubling plays in our time.  So this is not for “people of a nervous disposition”.  But if you like your drama strong, raw and top notch, try somehow to get hold of a ticket for this one if you can.

 

Forget Me Not by Tom Holloway, Bush Theatre, 19 December 2015

A powerful evening at the theatre, this play.  It is about the forced migration of thousands of British children to Australia in the quarter-of-a-century or so after the second world war.

Janie came away from the play feeling very angry about the Australian Government, although in truth the Church and the UK Government have just as much to answer and apologise for; which, to some extent, all these parties have done in recent years.

The play is focused on one such child’s story and the impact this ill-thought policy had on his life and the lives of those around him – explained well in the Bush Theatre rubric – click here.

It is superbly acted by all four actors and well produced at the Bush, one of our favourite places at the moment, putting on interesting work with a consistent high quality; very few misses there.

Michael Billington was full of praise in his Guardian review – click here.  Henry Hitchings in the Standard was perhaps even more keen on it – click here.

It was originally produced at the Belvoir Theatre in Sydney in 2013, where it also seems to have gone down very well – for information and reviews click here.

It is quite a short evening at the theatre, which was just as well for us, as Janie and I wanted to go on to Lisa Opie’s party afterwards and get there before most people had left, which we achieved.  The party did a jolly good job of cheering us up again after this sobering but gripping evening at the theatre.

buckets by Adam Barnard, Orange Tree Theatre, 30 May 2015

An interesting short play, this one, lots of tiny vignettes not really connected other than a general theme around bucket lists.

The title actually is “buckets” with a small “b”. Not sure if that is significant or just modern “mess with capitalisation” stuff.

There’s real “what was that all about” weirdness about this play – I’m pretty sure Janie said that as we left – but still we enjoyed some of the scenes and performances. We had plenty to talk about afterwards.

It reminded me, actually, of the sort of experimental stuff Sam Walters used to do above the pub back in the “original Orange Tree” days.

Excellent on-line resource with all the details, in the modern Orange Tree way – click here. Lots of review quotes in there but tellingly the one from the Guardian is excluded. In his gentle, pro-Orange Tree style I think Michael Billington sums it up very well – click here.

Yes, we went for Spanish food at Don Fernando afterwards, That’s normally what we do.

 

Pomona by Alistair McDowall, Orange Tree Theatre, 15 November 2014

Just occasionally we see something that is stunningly good…

…breathtaking, both Janie and I saying “wow” to each other as we leave the theatre good.

Pomona was that good.

It cemented our view that Paul Miller’s new regime at the Orange Tree really was going places, despite the dreaded Arts Council cuts.

We saw the play on the first Saturday. Had I been “real time Ogblogging” back then I’d have implored friends to drop everything and somehow get a ticket.

Here is a link to the Orange Tree resource for the production we saw in 2014.

Below is the trailer:

Here is a link to the Orange Tree online resource for the 2015 revival of the  production – after it had triumphed with a run at the RNT and elsewhere.

Finally, here is a link to a search term that finds the (mostly rave) reviews.