Well if you thought that Reza’s work was Chekhovian, Michael, just wait until you see The Cherry Orchard.
Another Saturday night at the theatre which didn’t raise a comment in my log at the time. Perhaps we were overdoing at bit at that time.
Amazing cast: Maxine Peake, Roger Allam, Michael Bryant, Vanessa Redgrave, Eve Best, Corin Redgrave (yes, that was two Redgraves for the price of one), and many other fine acting folk, directed by Trevor Nunn.
…we ventured to the Almeida for Yazmina Reza’s much anticipated follow up to Art…except it turned out to be an earlier play, not a subsequent one.
I wrote nothing in the log about this one, and sense that we weren’t overly impressed, but nor were we especially disappointed. I remember little about it other than it being a very high-end Almeida cast and production.
Paul Higgins, Amanda Root, Clare Holman, Claire Bloom, Matthew Marsh & David Calder were the cast. Howard Davies directed it. Here is a link to the Theatricalia entry.
Let’s see what the pundits had to say.
Susannah Clapp was not impressed, other than with Claire Bloom:
Janie is especially partial to a bit of Tennessee Williams. Although I suspected that I would not be seeing a better production that the one I saw in 1988. the lure of Helen Mirren and Saskia Reeves was enough for me. Also involved, a young Stuart Townsend in the male lead, a yet-to-fall-foul-of-my-displeasure Nick Hytner directing, ably assisted by a young Josie Rourke.
Our friend, Michael Billington, was quite impressed:
…was my log note for this one. “His” referring to Stephen Poliakoff, whose best I rate very highly.
Janie and I saw this one as part of an extraordinary whistle-stop long weekend which took in three plays at Stratford (this the second of the three), a motorised hike to the Welsh Borders for lunch at The Walnut Tree before going on to Hay-On-Wye for some overnight- second-hand-book-buying on my part before stopping off for a long lunch at Raymond Blanc’s place (Le Manoir aux Quat’Saisons) in Oxfordshire and then home. Friday to Monday. The other bits have been written up separately from this piece – click here or below.
I think we stayed in the Shakespeare for this trip. Janie booked it but only wrote down “Twelfth Night Room £115 per night” which I suspect in those days was a suite or certainly a superior room. I did the rest of the trip, including The Old Black Lion in Hay.
As for Talk Of the City, Poliakoff directed this one himself, if I recall correctly, which I think might have been (and often is) a minor mistake – i.e. playwrights, even if superb directors, can usually do with an external eye as director on their own works.
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.
Yes, yes, yes! We thought this was a really, really good night at the theatre.
I’d long been a Pinter fan. Janie wasn’t really familiar with his work, but Janie made the running for this night at the Almeida, booking us the front row seats we craved for that place (still do) and jotting down all the details. 90 minutes without an interval. Seats A7 & A8.
This play/production was our first sighting of Pinter together.
I think we ran into Ivan Shakespeare again that night; volunteering for the Almeida selling programmes.
Michael Billington’s review was on the front page of the Guradian – how often does that happen? Along with a luvvie-fest piece (I’m glad we weren’t there that night and a continuation on Page 18.
Also in the Guardian, an Anna Massey interview about Moonlight. Anna Massey went on to become one of Janie’s regular clients, but Janie didn’t yet know her when we saw Moonlight.
All my notes say is that I went with Bobbie Scully and that we thought it was very good.
I remember thinking Ken Stott was superb – I don’t think I had seen him before. It might have been my first encounter with the excellent Alex Jennings. Des Barrit was also a standout performer, as usual. But in truth the whole cast was good and you can see many names on the list who went on to do bigger and bolder things.
There are no on-line reviews to be found – until now – my one right here – yay!
I’m not sure what Bobbie and I did about eating afterwards, but in those days we would sometimes eat at the RNT itself – we might well have done that – or sometimes we’d go to The Archduke or somewhere of that ilk nearby.
I wrote in my log and I remember this production as such too. In 1992 I was still going to this sort of production with Bobbie as long as she was available, which most often she was, despite her protests that mebooking stuff so far ahead meant she couldn’t/wouldn’t guarantee her availability.
Bobbie was there for this one.
I’m pretty sure I had seen Bobbie the night before as well. The diary simply says “clubbing” which, as I recall it, meant a West End evening with Bobbie and several of her law reporter friends.
I remember the evening of Friday 13 March 1992 clearly, because I almost lost my life earlier that day on the M11, driving out to see Schering, when a lorry shed its load of timber on the two-lane motorway ahead of me and I had nowhere to go (other than into a central reservation barrier to the right or into the vehicles to my left) so I slowed down as much as I could through the timber and then vehicularly limped to the hard shoulder to have my broken car and shaken me rescued.
I must have bored everyone shitless with my Friday 13th story that previous evening and for sure the events of the day and evening of 13th were small beer compared with the drama that unfolded at The Lyttelton on the Saturday Night.
Two visits to the Olivier Theatre with Bobbie in 48 hours. Just fancy. Must have been an availability thing and both of us wanting to see both plays.
In my log I wrote,
Good, but not as good as I had hoped it would be.
I seem to recall finding the play a bit wordy, a bit worthy and also some of the legal aspects a little unconvincing. I think the feedback from Bobbie’s legal entourage was similar on that last point when we ended up comparing notes.
Cherry de Jongh Standard 22 Sept 2000 Evening Standard (London, Greater London, England) Newspapers.com
Cherry Billington Guardian 23 Sept 2000 The Guardian (London, Greater London, England) Newspapers.com
