Janie and I love the Hampstead Downstairs and this was yet another little gem down there.
Not for the fainthearted, this play.
It is about sexual surrogacy, which is one part of a three-way therapy treatment for people who have issues with sex and/or intimacy. The other two parts are client and therapist.
It should come as no surprise that the play is a three-hander.
But this play is about a somewhat controversial, experimental use of surrogate partner therapy with offenders.
Is the result a compelling 80 minutes of drama? You bet.
This was a good play, very well acted and produced. Another feather in the cap of the Hampstead Theatre Downstairs.
Housing crisis again, but this time two couples decide to live on top of one another for a short while to save enough for the deposits that will progress both couples to the dream of their own home.
There were some plausibility issues with the economics of this scenario, especially in London. “Do the math” as our US cousins might put it.
Still, it was good thought-provoking stuff.
Janie liked it less than I did, but she was in the process of coming down with something, to such an extent that we ended up having to cancel our dinner with Gary and Margaret the next day – a very rare level of poorliness for Janie.
I have liked this play ever since I read it, hundreds of years ago…well, soon after doing Andorra by Max Frisch at school. This production at the Royal Court Theatre, performed in rep alongside Rhinoceros which we saw a few weeks earlier, promised a fresh translation and another chance to see up and coming young star Benedict Cumberbatch before he became too famous to watch.
We both really enjoyed this production. It isn’t one of Janie’s favourite plays, but the translation and production were indeed fresh. Will Keen was excellent as Biedermann.
Benedict Cumberbatch was a young actor on the “one to watch” list in those days; now (writing in 2016) one might pay good money to avoid him – simply because of extreme overexposure to his manifest talent, you understand.
On the Friday evening, we saw Feelgood. We would have eaten at Harry Morgans before the show. I remember this play having a superb cast: Jeremy Swift, Henry Goodman, Amita Dhiri, Nigel Planer, Pearce Quigley, Sian Thomas, Nigel Cooke and Jonathan Cullen (according to my log), and being lots of fun. Max Stafford-Clark directed it. It transferred to the Garrick with a slightly different cast – Peter Capaldi taking Jeremy Swift’s place. Here’s the Theatricalia entry for that one.
Nicholas de Jongh really liked it in The Standard, especially heaping praise on Henry Goodman’s performance:
Billington concludes that article with a statement that seems oh so apposite as I write 25 years later:
…theatre is a place of information as well as entertainment and the more it cuts itself off from society – and relies on a mixture of anodyne musicals and Hollywood-star casting, the more it is doomed to glamorous irrelevance.
Apart from the quintessentially US nature of the production and the left field approach to tackling racism through performance, it’s hard to see much similarity between the evenings.
Rebecca Gilman’s play was memorable through its “warts ‘n’ all” approach to anti-racism and political correctness on campus. Also memorable was a superb performance by Emma Fielding in the lead role. The supporting cast were also “Royal Court good”, as was Dominic Cooke’s directing.
Our friends David and Rachel found it interesting and we had plenty to discuss over grub after the play.
Our other friend, Michael Billington, gave it a very good review in the Guardian:
In truth I remember little about this one. Terrific cast: Justin Salinger, Samantha Edmonds, Lisa Palfrey, Jonathan Cullen, Stanley Townsend and Sheila Hancock, directed by Rufus Norris.
It got neither plaudits nor roasting in my log, which probably means that we didn’t feel strongly about it either way.
This production began its life at The Young Vic in the autumn of 1998, wending its way to several regional theatres before returning to London in 1999, when we saw it at The Richmond Theatre.
Fascinating piece about the production in the Telegraph by Charles Spencer. Joe White assisted Max Stafford-Clark directing this piece after release from Wormwood Scrubbs:
Janie might have got more out of this production had she known all that and had she known then what she knows now about rehabilitation of former prisoners…or lack thereof.
Our verdict on this piece/production at the time:
I liked it more than Janie did
Possibly it helped that I know (and like) The Recruiting Officer better than Janie does/did.
The cast no doubt changed over the year or so it toured, but we saw David Fielder, Stuart McQuarrie, David Beames, Fraser James, Ian Redford, Mali Harries, Ashley Miller, Sally Rogers and Michele Austin. Not bad.
I have no doubt that we ate at Don Fernando’s afterwards…and why not? Well, 25 years later, we couldn’t because the place has now closed down.
Janie and I remember being really impressed by Olympia Dukakis’s performance in this one woman play, while finding the play itself “a bit much”.
To be fair, we were a bit numb that weekend – we had attended Jenny Jamilly’s funeral the day before and were possibly not in the mood for high drama. Let alone uber-Jewish high drama, nach.
We saw a preview late May although the play didn’t receive its press night until some four weeks later.
The critics seem to have sided with us viz the performance and the play. Here’s Nicholas de Jongh in The Standard:
