Bluets by Maggie Nelson adapted by Margaret Perry, Royal Court Theatre, 18 May 2024

Janie and I really liked this piece. An innovative, unusual and gripping evening at the theatre.

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

The piece is basically an adaptation of a book by Maggie Nelson, which is a narrated story, more in the form of a poetic meditation than a novel.

All of the cast were excellent: Emma D’Arcy, Kayla Meikle & Ben Whishaw – especially the former.

The use of film projections and intriguing props, which we often find a distraction when we see them used in theatrical productions, worked extremely well in this piece. I have subsequently read the book and realise that the visual devices were, in a way, a distraction from some of the words, but in a good way given the dramatic sense those devices gave to the production.

Reviews are out now, although we saw a preview. (IT has taken me a few weeks to get around to writing this up). Click here for a link that shows the reviews. The reviews are mixed. londontheatrereviews.co.uk shared our feeling that this was as an excellent example of theatrical productions using projections. But I sense that Susannah Clapp in The Observer was more intrigued by the piece than overboard about it. Time Out found it a bit obscure, as did theartsdesk.com

Click through the preceding link, read the reviews…and if you get the chance, see the show and decide for yourselves!

Anatomy Of A Suicide, Alice Birch, Royal Court Theatre, 3 June 2017

I don’t suppose we booked a play named “Anatomy Of A Suicide” expecting to go to the theatre for a jolly time. Which is just as well.

In any case, the Vicky Featherstone regime at the Royal Court specialises in miserablist theatre, as I have discussed elsewhere, so we knew what to expect.

We chose this play because the synopsis sounded very interesting and because we enjoyed Alice Birch’s play, Little Light, a couple of years ago at the Orange Tree. We also tend to like Katie Mitchell’s work as a director. Rarely conventional, almost always interesting. This piece was no exception.

The play is about three generations of women. As the story starts to unfold, each scene in effect depicts three scenes, one for each of those generations, being shown to the audience at the same time.

If that sounds like information and sensory overload to you, then you are spot on; that is exactly what it is. In truth, most of the time there are two active, dialogue scenes and one less active, minimal or no dialogue scene. But still, a heavy sensory load, if not overload.

Further, the play is two hours long without an interval, which is a heck of a long time for drama without a break, even in the easiest of scenarios. Which this isn’t.

Janie described the experience immediately afterwards as feeling like we’d been put through a mental ringer.

And yet it worked as a play and we were both really pleased we’d seen it.

At first, I’m sure both of us were thinking “what on earth is going on here?”, but as the play pans out, the central device becomes apparent and you do get a good sense of what is happening in each of the three generations and how the earlier generations’ events impact on the later generations and how the later generations’ events echo those of the earlier ones.

The acting is superb. Hattie Morahan we’d seen before – in The City by Martin Crimp alongside Benedict Cumberbatch – that’s two weeks in a row the ubiquitous Cumberbatch has had a mention on Ogblog – I told you he’s everywhere. Mind you, that’s two weeks in a row for Martin Crimp as well.

Paul Hilton is a fine actor who we’ve seen several times – he does a grand job in this play. As does Kate O’Flynn – indeed all of the cast were very good.

It must be fiendishly complicated to direct and perform – like a dramatic symphony with so many different parts which have to time and sound in harmony with each other. In fact, we were at the first preview and Katie Mitchell stood up before the show to address the audience. She warned us that the piece was so complex to perform that they might have to stop and start in places on this first performance – but apart from a couple of stutters which might have passed for deliberate, the whole thing was done with aplomb that night.

So, despite the play being a grim portrayal of depression and suicide, it was gripping and superbly unusual drama. We’ll remember this one for a long time. For people with sufficient attention span and a sense of dramatic adventure, we’d highly recommend this play/production.

Janie and I certainly both enjoyed a glass or two of white wine with our light smoked salmon and salad supper when we got home; we’d recommend that too.

A different recent supper on a different continent, but I’m sure you get the drift

The Trial Of Ubu by Simon Stephens, Hampstead Theatre, 20 January 2012

We normally love Simon Stephens stuff…

…but this was a stinker.

Alfred Jarry’s Ubu Roi re-imagined as an International Human Rights trial.

Technically it was very clever – the video/special effects were very innovative. Good cast too.

Great writer but this piece just didn’t work.

The subject matter is so grave that the arty, post-modern “trial of the fictional character” idea just didn’t work for us.

Nor did it work for the critics – click here for a term that finds the reviews. Don’t click if you were involved in this play/production.

The trailer is embedded below:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YqI744m0Wws

Pains Of Youth by Ferdinand Bruckner, Cottesloe Theatre, 7 November 2009

What a grim evening of theatre this turned out to be.

The only ungrim thing about the evening was bumping into George Littlejohn and his good lady in the foyer before the show and then again in the interval. I have known George since 1994 when we met, for reasons that will only be explained to you if you click here, at the 1994 inaugural Accountancy Awards. Only click if you find pompous awards funny; don’t click if you take them seriously.

The play is about young upwardly mobile Viennese trainee doctors in the 1920’s, who should have been among the most happening people on earth were it not for their unfortunate juxtaposition with time and space (i.e. 1920’s Vienna) and their existential angst.

Janie and I hated the first half of the play and resolved not to stay for the second half. I’m not saying that it was either going to be members of the cast, or us, or a mixture of those two cohorts, but suicide was clearly on the cards during the second half. We made absolutely certain it wasn’t going to be us.

Unfortunately for George and his good lady, they had some sort of connection with someone involved in the production, so they stayed for the second half. We wished them luck as we waved them goodbye.

The irony of the bad straplining of that last piece will not be wasted on George Littlejohn, who was at one time the editor of Accountancy Age, no less, but has since managed to exceed even those giddy heights.

Despite their ordeal, sticking out the whole evening, I am pleasantly surprised, indeed delighted, to report that both the Littlejohns seem hale and hearty at the time of writing (January 2017).  Janie and I ran into them both again at the Curzon Bloomsbury on New Year’s Day 2017 – click here, which triggered this memory and hence this write up.