Tag: Paul Arditti

Brace Brace by Oli Forsyth, Royal Court Theatre Upstairs, 26 October 2024

Janie and I were really taken with this one.

Here is a link to the Royal Court resources on this play/production. The advance description pretty much tells you all you need to know/ought to know before you see the play.

We didn’t see any reviews of the play/production before we went. Here is a link that should find most/all of the reviews.

The piece seems to have divided the critics/reviewers. The conventional press focuses on valid criticism that some elements of the plot seem unconvincing. It is hard to imagine a hijacker, who, only by dint of a passenger intervention, fails to kill hundreds of people in a plane crash, being allowed to walk free on the grounds of diminished responsibility.

But we saw through that to enjoy the dilemmas and interpersonal drama between the honeymooners whose life was ripped apart by the incident.

Oli Forsyth clearly has talent as a writer and should persevere; I’m sure there should be better yet to come from him.

But our praise is really for the production. Excellent acting, especially Anjana Vasan as the “have a go hero”, but also Phil Dunster and Craig Els. Also hats off to the production team, in particular director Daniel Raggett, who certainly helped get a quart of entertaining drama out of this pint-sized (70 minutes) play. Big ups also to Alex Payne & George Mann (fight and movement directors respectively), who managed to achieve some excellent effects in an unusually tight and three-dimensional performance setting.

Yes, there is violence in this play, but it isn’t gratuitous violence, as it is central to the story and the unfolding plot. Janie, who is even more allergic to stage violence than I am, didn’t spot the essence of the coup de théâtre at the end of the play…possibly just as well, given her reaction when I explained it to her afterwards. 😜.

Running only until 9 November 2024. It deserves a longer run or a transfer.

Bakkhai by Euripides, Almeida Theatre, 22 August 2015

Janie’s not normally one for classics, but this was promised as a new version of Bakkhai, so we went for it.

In truth, Bakkhai cannot modernise in the way that, say, Medea (which, as part of this Almeida Greeks season, really was modernised) can.

Still, this was a superb production so we both really enjoyed it. Ben Whishaw is exceptional, but the whole cast was good, as was the design, choreography, the lot.

Excellent Almeida stub with all the details, including links to most of the major reviews, saving me the trouble – click here. Those reviews were almost universally very good.

Nuff said.

 

 

Little Revolution by Alecky Blythe, Almeida Theatre, 30 August 2014

We so wanted to really like this one…

…and we sort-of did like it, but still felt a little let down by the piece. It could…we felt should…have been so gripping and exciting.

We loved Alecky Blythe’s verbatim piece a few years earlier, The Girlriend Experience – click here or below…

The Girlfriend Experience, Royal Court Theatre Upstairs, 20 September 2008

…so we thought a verbatim piece about the 2011 riots, complete with “community chorus”, would be a special evening of theatre.

Here is a link to the Almeida stub on the piece.

It all felt very different on arrival at the theatre, with the space transformed for this piece and entrances to the space where audiences normally fear to tread.

But the piece itself never really took off into the stratosphere as perhaps it should.

We heard a lot from the good-hearted middle class people who felt conflicted by the riots and/or tried to help those who got into difficulties during the chaos. We heard less from the rioters themselves.

To be fair on Alecky Blythe, she took the orthodox view on the play and stuck only to the verbatim material she could gather at the time, so I suppose that would be weighted towards those slightly safer situations…

…not least because people are not normally full of conversation while rioting…

…I imagine; not ever having been in the heart of a riot personally.

The reviews were a bit mixed – as Janie and I predicted when we saw the preview – click here for a search term that finds the reviews.

Below is the trailer:

King Charles III by Mike Bartlett, Almeida Theatre, 5 April 2014

Janie didn’t like this one at all.

I rather liked it in parts; far more so than Albion – Mike Bartlett’s most recent play at the time of writing (November 2017), also directed by Rupert Goold at the Almeida.

The conceit of the play is a Shakespeare pastiche, imagining a future King Charles III stumbling into a constitutional crisis with the government. (Three and a half years on, that scenario seems more likely than it did in April 2014, but I’ll leave that thought to one side).

That Shakespeare pastiche style worked in places but grated on me at times.

This was to be our last sighting of Tim Pigott-Smith, whose fine acting we enjoyed many times over the years. The whole cast was good and it was magnificently staged and produced.

Here is a link to the Almeida resource on King Charles III.

The play/production got mostly rave reviews – this search term will get you to the bulk of them.

Below is the trailer they used when it was up for a Tony:

 

In The Republic Of Happiness by Martin Crimp, Royal Court Theatre, 22 December 2012

Janie and I can do weird.

Janie and I can do Martin Crimp.

Janie and I can do Martin Crimp weird…

…but this one was just the wrong side of weird for us. Think impenetrable.

Super cast and beautifully produced, but what the blithering heck was it about?

Here is a link to the Royal Court Resource for this play/production.

Below is the trailer for the piece:

On the whole the critics didn’t get it either – here is a link to a search term that finds the reviews.

I have a copy of the play if anyone wants to seek enlightenment from reading that, let me know. I challenge you.

Tucked into my copy of the play is a short script for something else – I think it is a sample from one of Simon David’s pieces – quite impenetrable without context – clearly it was that sort of night.

In Basildon by David Eldridge, Royal Court Theatre, 3 March 2012

This was our first theatre visit after returning from Vietnam in February.

A really good one too.

Here is a link to the Royal Court stub for this piece.

We rate David Eldridge highly as a playwright. Here was a superb cast and Dominic Cooke himself directing.

We really enjoyed this play and production.

The critics on the whole loved this piece – click here for a search term that finds the reviews.

Below is a link to the trailer:

Collaborators by John Hodge, Cottesloe Theatre, 7 January 2012

I think I liked this play more than Janie did.

It was a fictionalised…somewhat fantasised account of encounters (which did occur to some extent in real life) between the writer Mikhail Bulgakov and Joseph Stalin.

We were blessed with Alex Jennings as Bulgakov and Simon Russell Beale as Stalin, with Nicholas Hytner in the director’s chair.

In truth, I don’t think it was a great play. It was a very good idea for a play with some very good scenes within it, but as a whole it didn’t quite work for me as an entire play.

But there was enough really good stuff going on to please me plenty, on  balance. Whereas I think Janie found it a little drawn out and confused/confusing.

The reviewers were more with me (on the plus side) than with Janie (on the “a bit muddled) side – click here for a search term that finds the reviews.

Below is a link to the trailer:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=972WDOQNMS0

…and the following vid is an interview with John Hodge, the playwright:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zjNmXug2D4k

The Veil by Conor McPherson, Lyttelton Theatre, 19 November 2011

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.

Jumpy by April de Angelis, Royal Court Theatre, 22 October 2011

We really enjoyed this play/production. It was witty, enjoyable and made us think too.

Here is a link to the Royal Court resource on this production.

Tamsin Greig was terrific, as was Bel Powley as the daughter. Actually the whole cast was terrific.

Here is a search term that finds the (mostly excellent) reviews.

It got a deserved West End transfer to the Duke Of York’s – here is the trailer for that:

I’m not sure the trailer does the piece justice, but there you go.

When The Rain Stops Falling by Andrew Bovell, Almeida Theatre, 30 May 2009

Very interesting play, this one.

 

Lots going on, mostly in Australia, spanning eighty years. We saw this play before the Ashes started, so did not breach our “Aussie abstinence vow” during the Ashes, I’m pleased to report.

Andrew Bovell is a very good playwright; worth looking out for. Excellent cast and production too.

Here is the OfficialLondonTheatre.co.uk stub on this play/production.