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We went to see this play about 10 days before attending this talk/discussion:
Port by Simon Stephens, Lyttelton Theatre, RNT, 26 January 2013
The “platform” (as the RNT calls such talks) was held in the Lyttelton.
I think I asked an incisive question – Janie might even remember what it was about…I don’t.
Below is a short on-line interview with Elliott & Stephens – not as good as attending the platform, but still good.
This was an excellent play/production.
We’re really keen on Simon Stephens work and had high hopes for this play – high hopes that were indeed met.
The play is basically about Simon Stephen’s home town – Stockport.
This was a revival of one of Simon Stephen’s early works – we didn’t realise that when we booked it, bit never mind.
Years later, when Janie and I went to Southport, I had terrible trouble convincing Janie that they are very different places in the North-West with vaguely similar names.
Unfamiliar names in the cast but all did a cracking job. Superb design too. Marianne Elliott is such a good director.
Below is a trailer vid:
The piece had very good reviews – here is a link to a search term that finds them.
Below is a vox pop audience feedback vid:
Our vox pop – both Janie and I really liked it.
We went to see Marianne Elliott & Simon Stephens talk about the play 10 days later, which was interesting and good too:
Marianne Elliott And Simon Stephens On Port, 7 February 2013
This play was good fun, as I recall it and well received by most critics.
But it was not, in truth, a great play, nor an ideal outlet for the immense talent on show, both cast and creatives.
Still, we had a fun evening at the theatre and the National had somewhat of a hit on its hands.
Here is a link to a search term that finds reviews and stuff – click here.
Below is a trailer:
Below is an interview with the playwright:
Below is a vid with cast and author interviews:
Verbatim Theatre and Physical Theatre don’t seem, on the face of it, to be complementary genres.
But this piece, conceived by Lloyd Newson and performed by physical theatre company DV8, tries to combine the two, around the tricky subject of Islamic extremism, Islamophobia, multiculturalism, censorship, freedom of speech and hate crimes.
It sort-of worked, in that it got me and Janie talking about those subjects afterwards, but it didn’t really work for us, in itself, as a piece talking about those tricky subjects.
In truth, verbatim theatre about such tricky subjects would need more words and less dance.
I think the critics pretty much concurred with our view – here is a link to a search term for the reviews.
The vid link below gives you a reasonable idea of what this production looked and sounded like:
I remember surprisingly little about this evening. I do remember it being short, physical and interesting, but nothing tangible about it really sticks. I’m not sure that the complex subject matter and verbatim style lends itself to this sort of physical theatre – the issues get buried or confused in the performance and visuals.
Still, you can read all about it here, the RNT resources on the production.
It seems that the Daily Mail got it and liked it; perhaps that explains my confusion.
Charles Spencer in n the Telegraph liked it too.
Michael Billington gives the show a fair review, I think. I’m starting to remember it a bit better.
I might chat it through with Janie, see what she remembers and edit in some more thoughts. If you are reading this paragraph, then I haven’t yet done that or drew a blank from Janie too.
We both found this piece charming and entertaining. It is about the birth of the cinema in the late 19th early 20th century shtetl.
It doesn’t get full marks for historical authenticity and it is a very sentimental piece, but that’s not always so terrible.
Superb cast, very well directed and some wonderful effects with the use of film.
Nicholas Wright has previous on these history-based imaginings. We loved Vincent in Brixton for example. Also Mrs Klein – click here or below for that one:
Mrs Klein by Nicholas Wright, Almeida Theatre, 24 October 2009
Travelling Light got mixed reviews – click here for a search term that finds them. Several critics really liked it. Others felt the sentimentality and stereotypes were not for them.
We very much enjoyed our evening, while recognising that this is an entertaining play, not a great play.
Below is the trailer…
…and the following vid has mini interviews with the key cast and creatives.
Gosh I remember how disappointed we were by this one.
We had loved Conor McPherson’s previous work whenever we had seen it – especially but not only The Weir.
But this play, set in the early 19th century, just left both of us feeling cold.
Super cast, with several of the “usual suspects” for Irish plays, not least Bríd Brennan. Plus an early sighting of Caoilfhionn Dunne.
But for us, nothing could quite save this play.
I remember saying afterwards that it was like “Chekhov had written a ghost story” and I remember smiling when I subsequently saw one of the reviews saying just that.
Here is a link to a term that finds the (mixed/indifferent) reviews.
I think we stuck it out on the strength of the performances and the hope that it would liven up in the second half.
Below is an interview with Conor McPherson about the play…
…and below this is the NT trailer for the production:
Oh well.
We were not overly impressed with this play.
David Hare is very good at burrowing around all manner of interesting topics, but I suspect he was too far away from his spheres of knowledge and understanding with the financial crisis.
Hare almost admits as much, as the narrator of the play is a somewhat perplexed author.
So to me, Hare was making the obvious points about the financial crisis well enough, but there was little dramatic tension and no new insight in the piece.
Janie liked it a bit more than i did, but I suspect that she got more out of it, being less steeped in the financial crisis in the first place.
I’m glad we saw it, but this is second division work from a first division playwright. There was little a good cast and production could do to save it.
This was a rehearsed reading by David Hare, which was only performed for a few nights at The Lyttelton.
The only day we could go to Berlin was the Monday; it’s 18:00 start time encouraged us to take a day off that Monday in fact.
Berlin is basically a short (less than one hour) highly personal monologue about the city, its history and in particular the Berlin Wall.
Kate Kellaway wrote it up in the Observer thus.
It is a companion piece for the Wall, which we went to see a few days later at the Royal Court. I think I preferred Berlin, finding it more interesting and less preachy.
Writing this up in May 2017, I realise that Trump should be made to sit through both pieces.
This one didn’t really float our boat, although it should have done. Michael Frayn, wrote it, Michael Blakemore directed it, Roger Allam was starring in it, the full forces of the RNT were behind it…
…but it didn’t work for us.
It is basically the story of the turn of the 20th century German/Jewish impresario Max Reinhardt, retold as a morality play.
We saw a preview and wondered whether the production was not quite ready when we saw it, but the reviews seemed to share our reservations:
…you get the idea. A real shame.
As is the RNT’s wont, no on-line archive resource (inverse correlation between organisation’s size/budget and its ability to do sensible things on-line blah blah), but there is an Official London Theatre stub – click here.