Tag: Joe Penhall

Sunny Afternoon by Joe Penhall & Ray Davies, Hampstead Theatre, 25 April 2014

We loved this show.

Not the sort of thing we’d normally go for; we don’t really do musicals and certainly not juke box musicals.

But we’re both very fond of the Kinks, and of the Hampstead Theatre. We also trust Joe Penhall as a playwright.

Good call – this show was so enjoyable and we sensed that the Hampstead had a hit on its hands…

…which it did.

Well written, well acted & directed, superb musical performances…

…great fun too. By the end, it was more or less like being at an exciting gig. We ate at Harry Morgan before the show.

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

Here is a YouTube “behind the scenes”/trailer:

Here is a link to a search term which should find you plenty of reviews. They were mostly rave reviews; deservedly.

 

 

Birthday by Joe Penhall, Royal Court Theatre, 14 July 2012

After all the excitement of the previous evening at the Orange Tree in Richmond:

Mottled Lines by Archie W Maddocks, Orange Tree Theatre, 13 July 2012

…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.

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

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.

It got reasonable/mixed reviews – click here for a link that finds them.

Haunted Child by Joe Penhall, Royal Court Theatre, 3 December 2011

We thought this was an excellent play and production.

We booked it on the back of Joe Penhall’s superb play Blue/Orange. We also got a fantastic cast, not least Ben Daniels and Sophie Okonedo.

Here is the Royal Court resource for this play/production.

The Ben Daniels character, the father, is basically being sucked in by a cult. On reflection at the time of writing (January 2018) it has a fair bit in common with My Mum’s A Twat – click here, which we saw recently, except the cult-ista in the more recent case is the mum and the storyteller is the affected child later in life.

Anyway, Haunted Child mostly got very good reviews – click here for a link term that should find them.

Below is the trailer:

Blue / Orange by Joe Penhall, Cottesloe Theatre, 1 May 2000

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.

Paul Taylor was impressed. “Gripping”, he says:

Blue / Orange Taylor IndyBlue / Orange Taylor Indy 14 Apr 2000, Fri The Independent (London, Greater London, England) Newspapers.com

Nicholas de Jongh in The Standard also rated it highly.

Blue / Orange de Jongh StandardBlue / Orange de Jongh Standard 14 Apr 2000, Fri Evening Standard (London, Greater London, England) Newspapers.com

Charles Spencer in the Telegraph hated the play:

Blue / Orange Spencer TelegraphBlue / Orange Spencer Telegraph 17 Apr 2000, Mon The Daily Telegraph (London, Greater London, England) Newspapers.com

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:

Blue / Orange Billington GuardianBlue / Orange Billington Guardian 19 Apr 2000, Wed The Guardian (London, Greater London, England) Newspapers.com