This one turned out to be a bit of an Alleyn’s alum-fest, with Sam West directing and Nancy Carroll performing. But that won’t be the reason we booked it.
Janie and I have been Almeida members for donkeys yonks – indeed I have been going there fairly regularly since the late 1980s.
This looked like a cracking production on paper, so we’d have had no hesitation in booking it.
The Almeida is great on archiving its productions, so details of the production, some good pictures and extracts from the reviews are all there to be seen – saving me the trouble – click here.
- Our friend, Michael Billington gave this five stars in the Guardian – high praise indeed from the perennial three or four stars man – click here;
- Sarah Hemming in the FT, while praising the production to the rafters, describes the play as “wordy and knotty with argument” – click here. That was very much our view – I always tend to feel that way about Granville Barker;
- Charles Spencer in the Telegraph suggests that the audience is made to work at this play but it (or at least this production) is well worth it – click here. We’d agree with that too;
- Even the West End Whingers raved about the production – click here.
We agree with all of that lot. It was a cracking production of a rather wordy play – Harley Granville Barker was a decent playwright but Ibsen or Strindberg he ain’t.
We were very glad to have picked this production. Seeing a lesser production of this play would have been a bit of a waste.
