…this evening at the theatre seemed remarkably sedate and incident free.
We are fans of Joe Penhall’s writing – in particular we thought Blue/Orange was a cracking good play. This one, with a stellar cast at the Royal Court, sounded intriguing.
The conceit of the play is the idea that there is a new procedure that enables the man, rather than the woman, to carry a baby through pregnancy and birth.
Below you can see the trailer:
The idea does have lots of room for comedy, but in truth we found it rather obvious comedy and thought the piece was a little underwhelming.
It was well received by the audience our night, not least my friend John from the gym who was sitting near us.
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.
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 also both remeber it quite well, 25 years later. That might have a fair bit to do with the superb cast: Mark Rylance, Harriet Walter, Imelda Staunton and Oliver Cotton. The production was directed by Matthew Warchus. We didn’t recogognise his name then but we certainly do now. Here is the Theatricalia entry for this one.
Yasmina Reza (as translated by Christopher Hampton) was all the rage in the English speaking world back then. This was our fourth go at one of hers – Art having been the piece that kicked off the Reza fashion…
Anyway, apart from Art, with thought Life x 3 to be the most interesting and memorable of Reza’s works.
Again we went to a preview, so we were ahead of the critics. What did they think? Here’s Charles Spencer who seemed pretty impressed with it, at least as entertainment if not as profound drama:
We booked this preview, leaping in ahead of the reviews, for a Friday evening, at the start of a big weekend of “show-going” for us. We were all booked up for Saturdays and I would have been very keen indeed to see this.
I had seen the play before – on a school trip in 1977 at The Greenwich Theatre, with Max Wall playing Davies, Anthony Higgins playing Mick and Peter Guinness as Aston. I’ll write that up in the fulness of time. Meanwhile, here’s the Theatricalia entry for that production.
Undocumented (although it will be Ogblogged at some point) is my own performance as Aston for AO-level drama at School in 1979.
But returning to 2000, let’s have a look at how Janie and I got on at The Comedy Theatre – now renamed the Pinter Theatre, as it happens.
Nicholas de Jongh wrote very highly of it, wondering only about Gambon not quite ringing true:
You get the idea. I did the right thing booking a preview on a Friday. You wouldn’t have been able to get a ticket for love nor money once the reviews came out.
Janie’s diary tells me that we were in Row C. Mine tells me that I parted company with £60, which I suppose was sort-of real money back then.
Oh, but worth it. I will return to the topic of Gambon’s drifty accents when i write up my own Pinter acting experience from 1979. Watch that space.
Well if you thought that Reza’s work was Chekhovian, Michael, just wait until you see The Cherry Orchard.
Another Saturday night at the theatre which didn’t raise a comment in my log at the time. Perhaps we were overdoing at bit at that time.
Amazing cast: Maxine Peake, Roger Allam, Michael Bryant, Vanessa Redgrave, Eve Best, Corin Redgrave (yes, that was two Redgraves for the price of one), and many other fine acting folk, directed by Trevor Nunn.
No comment on this one in my log. Not necessarily a bad thing but also not necessarily a good thing.
Fabulous cast – including Tim Pigott-Smith, Lizzy McInnerny, Gina McKee & Linda Bassett. Ian Brown directed. But in truth I remember little about this one – even after looking at some of the reviews.
Janie is especially partial to a bit of Tennessee Williams. Although I suspected that I would not be seeing a better production that the one I saw in 1988. the lure of Helen Mirren and Saskia Reeves was enough for me. Also involved, a young Stuart Townsend in the male lead, a yet-to-fall-foul-of-my-displeasure Nick Hytner directing, ably assisted by a young Josie Rourke.
Our friend, Michael Billington, was quite impressed:
This play/production was hugely hyped and got rave reviews when it opened a few week’s before we attended. I think we applied for our tickets before the show opened, opting to wait until good seats were available. Even then, we needed to opt for a Friday rather than a Saturday to get what we wanted. Such was the pull of the West End, not least Maggie Smith…or rather “Dame Maggie”…in those days.
Despite Janie’s reservations about Dame Maggie, we were drawn in and actually rather enjoyed this production. The play is a little contrived and mawkish, but the performances, especially Dame Maggie’s, were excellent, as was the intriguing van-themed set.
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.)
