This cast and crew looked too good to miss as well. Gillian Barge, Cherie Lunghi, James Laurenson, Nicky Henson, Nicola Walker & Cheryl Campbell, directed by Michael Grandage. Here’s the Theatricalia entry for it.
In those days, the Donmar was one of our favourites – it didn’t feel quite so corporate/touristic back then. We were able to get decent seats for a Saturday night through a sensible type of membership scheme.
I remember this as a fine production but I also remember us finding it a little underwhelming.
John Gross in The Sunday Telegraph liked it, while finding it a lesser play than Pinter’s Betrayal or Stoppard’s The Real Thing:
I sense that the Donmar showings in April/May were actually all deemed to be a preview run ahead of a lengthy West End run with this cast throughout the summer – an experiment that clearly worked and which was part of the Donmar’s journey towards a more commercial/corporate style. Hence few reviews but several preview pieces in the press.
Nick Curtis’s Standard interview with Nichols is interesting:
But on this occasion, our friend, Michael Billington, disagreed with us, comparing The Novice unfavourably with a play at the Royal Court, Mr Kolpert, which we did not see, despite going to the theatre an infeasible number of times that May.
This was one of our “oh wow!” visits to the theatre.
Superb,
was all I write in the log, but I knew I wouldn’t need to write much down because the evening was so memorable.
It was a bank holiday Monday and Mum’s birthday. “How did you get away with that?”, I hear you readers cry.
My diary notes that we went to Mum & Dad for bank holiday lunch before going on to the RNT for Blue / Orange. Simple enough.
This is a great play, which was masterfully performed by Chiwetel Ejiofor (our first sighting of him), Andrew Lincoln and Bill Nighy. Roger Michell directed. Theatricalia tells all here.
My friend, Michael Billington, had a downer on the National at that time – it took me a dozen or so more years to acquire a similar view. Still, Michael B approved of this one:
That was my log note for this memorable evening of theatre.
Celebration was a brand new play. The Room a revival of Pinter’s first. Harold himself directing as well as writing – not always a brilliant idea but Harold could pull that trick off.
What a cast! Keith Allen, Andy de la Tour, Lindsay Duncan, Steven Pacey, Indira Varma, Lia Williams, Danny Dyer, Nina Raine, Henry Woolf, George Harris and others. Theatricalia holds chapter and verse on the cast lists etc.:
…and were very keen to see Conor McPherson’s next one.
Further, as members who had been loyal through the years of “exile” while The Royal Court was being redone, we were invited that Friday afternoon to a “guided tour” of the revamped building. Janie and I were both motivated to take a Friday afternoon off work and “go see” before the show.
It was on that tour that Janie and I spotted the little nook seat in a recess of the stairway just before you get to the upstairs bar…latterly the library. We took a shine to that nook and for many years took great pleasure in having a pre-show or interval drink in there.
As for Dublin Carol, we really liked it and it cemented our view that Conor McPherson was a writer to watch. It didn’t quite pack the punch of The Weir, but that play was always going to be a tough act to follow.
Brian Cox played the lead in Dublin Carol, with great charisma. Andrew Scott, & Bronagh Gallagher were also excellent in support. Ian Rickson directed.
I’m not sure what the critics made of it at the time…let’s find out.
I’d forgotten this bit, but because of delays to the finishing of The Royal Court, Dublin Carol previewed at The Old Vic for a while. Susannah Clapp reviewed it, with great enthusiasm, there…
But most of the subsequent reviews seemed to want to talk about the grand opening of the newly refurbished Royal Court than the play/production that graced it, doing McPherson, Cox et. al. no favours. Please note, the grand opening was two or three weeks before the hoi polloi tour that we enjoyed in March.
This production was credited as “Donmar Warehouse at the Albery” and everything about it was Donmar Warehouse, but playing away from home. This production had received glowing reviews and awards the year before at the Donmar. We missed out then but were not about to miss out on it now.
Excellent cast, Nigel Lindsay, Sarah Woodward, Stephen Dillane & Jennifer Ehle leading, with David Leveaux directing.
Our “Donmar Warehouse at The Albery” experience was a more relaxing evening and a very fine production. Janie doesn’t really warm to Stoppard, but she did warm to this one.
I won’t overdo the reviews, as they are from the original production 9 months earlier, but here’s just a couple of examples of the raving – the first from our friend Michael Billington in The Guardian…
I think Janie must have sourced these tickets, because her diary notes that we’ll be sitting in the fifth row. Great diary detail, 25 years on, that one.
This production blew us away. It was shocking and also intensely gripping drama.
We trusted the Almeida in those days, so we booked a preview of this one, “on spec”, although we were unfamiliar with Neil LaBute’s work and also unfamiliar with the imported cast and director.
We were right to trust!
Bash is a collection of short plays, rather than “a play”. All were excellent in our view. The last one was the most shocking, but all were shocking in their own way. Brilliantly well acted by Mary McCormack, Zeljko Ivanek & Matthew Lillard. Joe Mantello directed. Here is the Theatricalia entry for this production.
I’m pretty sure the critics tended to be with us in admiring this one. Let’s see.
Yup, Nicholas de Jongh in The Standard waxed lyrical:
It was the play that lacked coherence. Janie couldn’t see past the fragile conceits of the play.
Our friend, Michael Billington, in The Guardian, seems to have shared our reservations. He says that the plot “has more holes than a second-hand colander”…
…(does a new colander have fewer holes than a second-hand one, Michael?)…
We thought this play/production was wonderful and we both remember this particular evening at the Almeida extremely well.
I had been especially keen to book this production, as I had read the play in the late 1980s, found it very interesting and wondered whether I would ever get to see it performed.
Janie and I attended a preview, as oft we do. Wallace Shawn was there and we chatted with him for quite some while. He came across as being exactly the sort of slightly-awkward, self-effacing type that he depicted in the film My Dinner With Andre, which is a great favourite of ours. A couple of times I said to Wallace, “I’m sure you need to speak with some other people”, to allow him to move on without discomfort, but he made it quite clear that he was happy chatting with us and continued to do so.
We talked about his other plays, many of which I had read and several of which Janie and I had seen together. We also chatted about the Almeida production of Aunt Dan & Lemon. He told us how thrilled he was that Miranda Richardson was playing Aunt Dan, as he was a huge fan of hers. I remember reflecting afterwards, with Janie, that Wallace Shawn seemed more star struck about Miranda Richardson than we were star struck by chatting with him.
The production was truly excellent. I had wondered, when I read the play, how it could possibly be staged well. Director/designer Tom Cairns and the production team had a myriad of clever answers, not least the hugely effective but not overpowering use of video projections on a screen.
Glenne Headly was superb as Lemon, as was Miranda Richardson as Aunt Dan. An excellent supporting cast including Corey Johnson and Kerry Shale.
Our friend Michael Billington loved this play/production:
It’s a shame that the Guardian mis-labelled the photo as Natasha Richardson (daughter of Vanessa Redgrave, no relation to Miranda). I wonder whether Wallace Shawn laughed or cried at that mistake back then?
Charles Spencer in The Telegraph considered the piece to be pernicious and wrong-headed, which is an interesting counter-argument to those coming at the piece from a more liberal perspective:
Thinking about the play some 35 years after reading it and 25 years after seeing it, I am struck by the thought that the play would, today, seem implausible, because an academic with Aunt Dan’s views would be lucky to survive even one semester as an Oxford don. Mind you, Wallace Shawn probably wouldn’t last much longer in an elevated academic institution either. Having thought provoked in this manner is not for wimps.
One of the very best and most memorable evenings we have spent at the theatre.
Passion Gross Telegraph 23 Apr 2000, Sun Sunday Telegraph (London, Greater London, England) Newspapers.com
Nichols Curtis Standard 17 Apr 2000, Mon Evening Standard (London, Greater London, England) Newspapers.com
