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:
Similarly Suzannah Clapp in The Observer, whose review reminds me that the critics main reservation about this play is that they didn’t like it as much as they liked Elyot’s (also wonderful) My Night With Reg.
I liked this more than Janie did. I thought it was a very good production and I have long had an affection for the play.
Janie sees this as an example of Tom Stoppard being “a bit too clever for his own good”, a view I can understand but with which I don’t agree. Let’s just say that Janie does not remember this fondly.
Janie and I were very keen on Pinter and also very keen on Complicite, so we took the opportunity to see both on one Saturday during that crazy autumn during which Z/Yen was born.
According to my contemporary log:
Landscape is a short play, seen late afternoon/early evening before seeing “Out of a House Walked a Man”. Very good.
Ian Holm and Penelope Wilton. Top notch performers both,with great Pinter pedigrees too.
I think Bobbie had a problem with that October weekend and we arranged to swap with a friend of hers to see this production midweek, on 30 September.
My production log says:
Went with Bobbie. Very good.
So what else is there to say? I remember it being a very big, busy play, with an enormous cast of courtiers attending to the protagonists. I remember laughing quite a lot. I suspect I would find it a bit cheesy if I saw it again now.
Nigel Hawthorne was very impressive and I suppose it is “quite a thing” that I saw him perform live.
I was probably quite tired that evening, as the diary shows I spent a long day flying up to West Lothian the day before on business – that will have been Sky with Michael – a memorable working day.
I suspect that this was the last time I went to the theatre with Bobbie. We probably had a post theatre meal, perhaps at the RNT itself or perhaps somewhere like RSJs or the Archduke.
I do recall Bobbie telling me about her imaginary friend, some time before this production. But as far as I know that didn’t all go horribly wrong for her. I certainly don’t remember this production generating additional revelations from Bobbie.
I said in the log, which is almost to be expected with a cast as fine as this under Deborah Warner.
This was an evening at The National with Bobbie. I have subsequently seen a good “Good Person” at The Orange Tree with Janie too, but this Olivier production was especially fine in my view.
I have very limited recollection of this one, other than finding it shocking and hard to watch.
My diary is ludicrously light on detail and I got confused between this one and another production I failed to get a programme for. In this case, I think we saw a preview and the programmes weren’t ready.
I dined with (presumably) Bobbie at the Archduke before the theatre and we then went on to Jilly’s place, presumably for a birthday party. The diary suggests we had lunch on Sunday also.
Fortunately for the theatre element of the weekend, there are Theatricalia entries and reviews to help me out. Here is the former – click here.
Below is Michael Billington’s top notch review of this production:
…but for sure I got back to London in time to see this preview at the Cottesloe.
Bobbie might say, “more’s the pity”, as my log notes that Bobbie absolutely hated it. I merely found it long and hard to follow. That’s how I remember it and that is exactly what I wrote in my log.
Super cast – Tilda Swinton is always very watchable but does often do weird stuff. Also Aidan Gillen, latterly very well known indeed. David Bamber was in it too – thirty years on I tend to watch his son, Ethan, bowling for Middlesex instead.
The play is described as a dramatic poem in the English language text and/but it was basically a family drama.
I wrote the above piece on 14 February 2019, basically because it had been on my mind after writing up Music At Oxford a few days earlier. By strange coincidence, Bobbie Scully turned up at the Gresham Society Dinner that evening, as Iain Sutherland’s guest.
I mentioned the coincidence. Bobbie started to quiver with indignation:
I’d forgotten the name of that darned thing, but it was surely the very worst thing I have ever seen at the theatre…I think we walked out at half time…
…she said. Actually I don’t think we did walk out at half time. I’m sure I would have recorded that fact in my log whereas instead I recorded that the play was long and impenetrable.
I think we stuck it out tho the bitter end…
…I said. I also volunteered to dig deeper into the programme to see if there were in fact two halves.
Yes, there were two halves and they added up to a whopping three hours of hurt for Bobbie.
I’m not sure why we did stick it out. Perhaps I was still wet enough behind the ears to imagine t hat such a piece might yield in the second half all the answers it withheld in the first. I know not to do that now. Perhaps I was so tired and hungover from the joys of Oxford the night before I was reluctant to move on yet.
More likely, we had booked a late night eatery and jointly thought we might as well see the thing through rather than kick our heels somewhere.
Anyway, the whole experience clearly had a profound effect on Bobbie who was shaking with the trauma of recalling that evening and remembered it so well she even said…
…I seem to recall it was only on for a short run…
…which indeed it was.
Nearly 30 years on, Bobbie might wish to read the short essay from the programme too. The least I can do, upload the material, after all I put poor Bobbie through with regard to this play/production.
Postscript Two: Bobbie Chimes In With A Recovered Memory
An e-mail from Bobbie 24 hours after our encounter at the Gresham Society:
I was casting my mind back to that dreadful so-called play (it wasn’t, it was a string of tedious monologues) and had a recollection of being there after the interval in a (suddenly) half empty theatre. So I reckon that, although we did not leave at half time, about half the audience did.
And, indeed, I think that is why we stayed. We came out at the interval, intending to leave, but had pre-booked interval drinks to consume. As we did so, we watched more than half the audience exit the building. I think we went back out of sympathy/solidarity/courtesy towards the cast.
Does this ring any bells with you? Did we really watch the second half because we felt sorry for the actors? Personally, I can think of no other reason …
My response to Bobbie’s considered recollection was as follows:
Yes, we were young and foolish back then. We might well have stayed on for compassionate reasons. There’d be no such snowflake nonsense from this quarter these days. I do recall the second half seeming to drag to an even greater extent than the first half. I also remember an incredible sense of relief when the ordeal ended.
Postscript Three: Here’s a professional view…I don’t think Nicholas de Jongh in the Guardian exactly liked it either:
Rose de Jongh Standard 25 Jun 1999, Fri Evening Standard (London, Greater London, England) Newspapers.com
Rose Billington Guardian 26 Jun 1999, Sat The Guardian (London, Greater London, England) Newspapers.com
Rose Spencer Telegraph 28 Jun 1999, Mon The Daily Telegraph (London, Greater London, England) Newspapers.com
