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This was a really good play/production. It was only on at the Royal Court for a short while – so we felt we’d got ourselves hot tickets for this one. Unusually for a David Hare, this one had started in New York 15 months before.
The Royal Court Stub has all the details and the full text of lots of reviews.
The usual suspects all loved it. As did we; great cast, super play.
We really loved Elmina’s Kitchen and also enjoyed Fix Up, both by Kwame Kwei-Armah when we saw them at the Cottesloe, so we thought this one would be a “must see”.
In truth, Statement of Regret was nowhere near as strong as the other plays, although it was worth the trip. This one was about a black think-tank on the brink of folding. Interesting subject matter but the play was a bit all over the place.
Even Michael Billington struggled to like it, even though he wanted to, here.
Still, Ricky in NYC really enjoyed it, here, and who are we to disagree?
This turned out to be one of the hottest tickets in town for a while. We didn’t realise it when we booked it. We see a lot of productions upstairs and often enjoy plays there by young/as yet unknown playwrights.
Indeed, we normally see them early in a run, but nephew Paul had arranged to stay and said he’d like to go to the theatre with us, so we chose this play as “youthfully suitable” and so booked for a few weeks into the run. Thus, by the time Paul came down to stay, he knew we’d got him a surprisingly hot ticket.
That Face – for Royal Court stub including several reviews click here – really is a super play and this was an excellent production.
Polly Stenham is a very talented young writer, although we now have the hindsight to wish that she had moved on from this “chamber play about dysfunctional families and damaged youngsters” genre – her subsequent plays so far (several years on) have all been echoes of similar. Still, this one subsequently transferred to the West End making Polly, at 21 by then, the youngest West End debutant since…maybe ever. Michael Billington gushed – click here.
The whole cast was brilliant, but Lindsay Duncan stole the show, as you might expect.
Nephew Paul was very taken by the whole thing. We had to explain that we don’t always pick quite such winners, especially when we go for the smaller stages and unknown writers.