We thought this was a very good play/production indeed.
We have been very pleased with most of our visits to the Orange Tree since the dawn of the Paul Miller era; one of those excellent visits was a couple of years ago to see a Brad Birch play called The Brink – click here or below:
That experience was good enough to have us looking out for Brad Birch, so we very much wanted to see Black Mountain…
…so much so that we decided to make a rare trip to Richmond on a Friday…
…indeed we shall repeat the visit today (the very next evening) to see Out Of Love; the other play being shown in rep with Black Mountain at the moment…
…we are looking forward to seeing the same cast and production team again, because Black Mountain was that good.
Here is a link to the Orange Tree resource on Black Mountain.
Very suspenseful, it reminded us a lot of The Brink, in that we see the psychological disintegration of one male character and at times cannot tell the extent to which the images and sounds we are hearing are supposed to be genuine or in his head.
But Black Mountain is also about relationships and guilt and whether trust can ever be restored fully after a major breach.
Great trailer – embedded below:
I suspect that the Orange Tree’s success with these modern plays owes a great deal to the spirit of collaboration; in this case with Paines Plough and Theatr Clwyd. Long may that spirit continue.
Here is a link to the reviews Black Mountain has had – it seems to have divided the critics with some excellent reviews and some indifferent ones. None of these at the time of writing are from this Orange Tree production (which is still in preview), although I suspect that this piece is already quite well honed over the autumn by this production team.
Janie and I vote it a hit.