Tag: Rebecca Pownall

Yours For The Asking by Ana Diosdado, Orange Tree Theatre, 7 September 2012

A few days after the end of our Olympic/Paralympic experiences, Janie and I returned to the scene of the (alleged but utterly refuted) crime from just before the Olympics; Richmond:

Mottled Lines by Archie W Maddocks, Orange Tree Theatre, 13 July 2012

This time we saw Yours For The Asking, a Spanish play from the late Franco era in the 1970’s.

Here is the Orange Tree resource on this play/production.

We rather liked this one. It was about a model who advertises a fragrance getting embroiled in a scandal. The themes seemed very modern and relevant in 2012; a prescient play in many ways.

The plot was a little hard to swallow and Sam Walters’ orthodoxy for not shortening scripts made it drag a bit, especially the second half.

Still, it was well performed by some of the Orange tree regulars and we thought it had been a worthwhile visit.

It didn’t go down too well with most of the critics – click here for a link to reviews.

 

Mountain Hotel & Audience by Vaclav Havel, Orange Tree Theatre, 15 November 2008

It seemed like a good idea when we booked it. Here ‘s a link to the rubric that enticed us, along with the cast and creatives information.

We’d had previous experience of Vaclav Havel’s plays, so shouldn’t have been surprised to find the absurdity a bit lame and the drama weak.

In particular, I thought Audience (about a playwright stacking beer barrels in a warehouse) tame.

So what do we know?

Still, we enjoyed our Don Fernando dinner afterwards and never feel completely let down after an evening at the Orange Tree.

Mountain Hotel and Audience by Vaclav Havel, Orange Tree Theatre, 15 November 2008

This double bill was part of a Vaclav Havel Season that autumn at the Orange Tree.  We only attended this one evening.

Vaclav Havel is one of those writers that you really want to like and there are always some very clever lines and some interestingly weird scenes in his plays.  Yet somehow Havel never quite seems to work for me or for Janie.

Still, we enjoyed the evening.  The Mountain Hotel one was a typically Havel peculiar mix of people thrown together in a hotel garden being absurd together.  I think we even considered sneaking away a half time, but stayed to see what the second play was like.  Audience is a short quasi-autobiographical piece about Vanek, who works in an absurd beer factory.  It did not motivate us to return and see the other short Vanek plays later in the season.

It was all very well acted and well directed; David Antrobus is an Orange Tree regular and is reliably good.

You can read all about it, including who played whom and stuff, here.  Someone at the Orange Tree is doing an amazing archiving job; I am grateful to them.

Michael Billington, a long term Orange Tree fan, is polite but clearly didn’t much like the evening either.

Philip Fisher in the British Theatre Guide is more upbeat about the evening.

Ian Shuttleworth’s FT piece can still be seen archived here.