Maggie O’Brien – Ian Louis Harris

This was Paul Miller’s first production having assume the reins at the Orange Tree.

We were pretty impressed, although we were looking forward a bit more to the modern works we had booked to see later in the season.

This was a very slick production; well directed, well produced and skillfully acted.

It is a grim play, though. mercifully not too long for its period – or perhaps Paul Miller was prepared to cut a bit, whereas Sam Walters was always orthodox as far as the text was concerned.

Here is a link to the Orange Tree resource on this production.

Below is a vid in which Paul Miller explains himself:

The reviews were good – deservedly so – click here for a link to them.

Did we chow down at Don Fernando after the show? By ‘eck we did.

We were tending to book RNT things in preview or very early in runs, so this was an unusually late visit to see this one – perhaps we couldn’t get the seats we wanted until later or perhaps we missed it in the first block of dates.

Anyway, we thought this was “very good”.

One of our favourite troupes, Théâtre de Complicité, was responsible for this one. Juliet Stevenson played the lead along with Simon McBurney who also directed. The Theatricalia entry can be found here.

This was the first of those “in the round” productions that the RNT did at The Olivier while it was being refurbished.

Nicholas de Jongh in The Standard was not too keen on it: