We’re big fans of David Edgar’s plays. Indeed, this was our second David Edgar premier in the past few weeks – his plays seem to come along with the regularity of London buses these days (nothing for ages, then two together):
But in truth I cannot rave about The New Real the way I raved about Here In America.
There was a lot to like about The New Real. Terrific cast who all acted superbly well. Excellent production using the traverse stage and screen effects well. But the overall effect of this rather long play was a sense of over-stimulation by the end of it. So many ideas about politics. So many screen and stage effects. And relatively little human drama to illustrate rather than declaim the points David Edgar wanted to make.
Anyway, despite both coming out of the experience with headaches of over-stimulation, we’re both glad that we have seen this play.
Janie and I really enjoyed this play/production, which we saw in preview. The acting was superb. The direction and design very high quality, as we have come to expect at The Royal Court over the decades.
This play was seemingly superficial, yet beneath its slight surface are some fascinating issues of our times. The “joke” that this family is spending its together time with each individual surfing their own virtual world quickly became tiresome – especially as some of audience members nearby were finding it hilarious. But that humorous conceit was soon revealed as a foreshadowing of some darker elements of the characters’ inner/virtual worlds.
Yes, as some of the critics have said, not a lot happens, but this particular “not a lot” is both amusing and highly thought-provoking.
OK, I have a confession to make.
When I booked this, my main criterion for booking it was a recollection that one of Michael Wynne’s previous plays, The People Are Friendly, had pleased us both a lot.
2002, we saw this at The Royal Court (not yet Ogblogged)
Soon after the start of Cuckoo, which shares a couple of the lead actresses and Royal Court production aspects with The People Are Friendly, I realised that we had not liked The People Are Friendly; we found it soap-opera-ish and not to our taste. I was confusing The People Are Friendly with Richard Bean’s England People Very Nice:
I shall revisit the play text of The People Are Friendly before writing up our 2002 experience, as it is possible that I will read more into that play now than we did 20 years ago.
Anyway, apologies to Messrs Wynne and Bean for the confusion. The word “People” in the title shouldn’t be enough for such a muddle really. I just jumped to a conclusion…
…and talking of conclusions, Janie and I both thought the ending of Cuckoo was really rather wonderful, both as a coup de theatre and also as a piece of stage design.
I don’t suppose we booked a play named “Anatomy Of A Suicide” expecting to go to the theatre for a jolly time. Which is just as well.
In any case, the Vicky Featherstone regime at the Royal Court specialises in miserablist theatre, as I have discussed elsewhere, so we knew what to expect.
The play is about three generations of women. As the story starts to unfold, each scene in effect depicts three scenes, one for each of those generations, being shown to the audience at the same time.
If that sounds like information and sensory overload to you, then you are spot on; that is exactly what it is. In truth, most of the time there are two active, dialogue scenes and one less active, minimal or no dialogue scene. But still, a heavy sensory load, if not overload.
Further, the play is two hours long without an interval, which is a heck of a long time for drama without a break, even in the easiest of scenarios. Which this isn’t.
Janie described the experience immediately afterwards as feeling like we’d been put through a mental ringer.
And yet it worked as a play and we were both really pleased we’d seen it.
At first, I’m sure both of us were thinking “what on earth is going on here?”, but as the play pans out, the central device becomes apparent and you do get a good sense of what is happening in each of the three generations and how the earlier generations’ events impact on the later generations and how the later generations’ events echo those of the earlier ones.
Paul Hilton is a fine actor who we’ve seen several times – he does a grand job in this play. As does Kate O’Flynn – indeed all of the cast were very good.
It must be fiendishly complicated to direct and perform – like a dramatic symphony with so many different parts which have to time and sound in harmony with each other. In fact, we were at the first preview and Katie Mitchell stood up before the show to address the audience. She warned us that the piece was so complex to perform that they might have to stop and start in places on this first performance – but apart from a couple of stutters which might have passed for deliberate, the whole thing was done with aplomb that night.
So, despite the play being a grim portrayal of depression and suicide, it was gripping and superbly unusual drama. We’ll remember this one for a long time. For people with sufficient attention span and a sense of dramatic adventure, we’d highly recommend this play/production.
Janie and I certainly both enjoyed a glass or two of white wine with our light smoked salmon and salad supper when we got home; we’d recommend that too.
A different recent supper on a different continent, but I’m sure you get the drift
Shocking, as in, it left us feeling really quite shaken and discombobulated.
In a way, this was immersive theatre. The Almeida was reconfigured, such that the audience was divided into sections in sort-of booths, from which you could see some of the action live and the rest on screens. You have to wear headphones to hear everything, which increases the confusion between the real and the virtual.
The conceit of the play is that some people who cannot afford good housing choose to live in an attractive-looking home, but the price is that they are spied upon by sadistic paying customers who are allowed to shoot stun darts at the residents “for fun”.
It is a horrible thought. The story plays out in interesting ways, not all predictable. The experience is disconcerting, because, as an audience member, you feel somewhat complicit in the voyeurism and sadism playing out before your eyes and on the screen. Occasionally some of the action takes place within your booth itself.
It made us think about the housing crisis, the ways that computer games and so-called reality television are encroaching on people’s lives and more besides.
A strangely sinister play this one, about a young couple of expats in Dubai who get themselves into difficulties and fall foul of some older, exploitative expats.
The story seemed somewhat extreme, although apparently it is possible to get into extreme difficulties in Dubai and similar places and some young people do thus get exploited.
Well, by this time the Ed Hall era had started at Hampstead Theatre, but this one didn’t really work for us.
It felt to us like an “everything including the kitchen sink” gay saga. Angels in America without the sparkling wit, The Normal Heart without the heart-wrenching pathos. It spanned the decades from 1962 (a fine year IMHO) to the present day.
We really wanted to like it. We didn’t really dislike it. It just didn’t grip and/or move us.
Good troupe from the Liverpool Everyman – it was a shame really.
