Richard Cordery – Ian Louis Harris

The Power Of Yes by David Hare, Lyttelton Theatre, 17 October 2009

We were not overly impressed with this play.

David Hare is very good at burrowing around all manner of interesting topics, but I suspect he was too far away from his spheres of knowledge and understanding with the financial crisis.

Hare almost admits as much, as the narrator of the play is a somewhat perplexed author.

So to me, Hare was making the obvious points about the financial crisis well enough, but there was little dramatic tension and no new insight in the piece.

Janie liked it a bit more than i did, but I suspect that she got more out of it, being less steeped in the financial crisis in the first place.

I’m glad we saw it, but this is second division work from a first division playwright. There was little a good cast and production could do to save it.

Waste by Harley Granville Barker, Almeida Theatre, 18 October 2008

This one turned out to be a bit of an Alleyn’s alum-fest, with Sam West directing and Nancy Carroll performing. But that won’t be the reason we booked it.

Janie and I have been Almeida members for donkeys yonks – indeed I have been going there fairly regularly since the late 1980s.

This looked like a cracking production on paper, so we’d have had no hesitation in booking it.

The Almeida is great on archiving its productions, so details of the production, some good pictures and extracts from the reviews are all there to be seen – saving me the trouble – click here.

Our friend, Michael Billington gave this five stars in the Guardian – high praise indeed from the perennial three or four stars man – click here;
Sarah Hemming in the FT, while praising the production to the rafters, describes the play as “wordy and knotty with argument” – click here. That was very much our view – I always tend to feel that way about Granville Barker;
Charles Spencer in the Telegraph suggests that the audience is made to work at this play but it (or at least this production) is well worth it – click here. We’d agree with that too;
Even the West End Whingers raved about the production – click here.

We agree with all of that lot. It was a cracking production of a rather wordy play – Harley Granville Barker was a decent playwright but Ibsen or Strindberg he ain’t.

We were very glad to have picked this production. Seeing a lesser production of this play would have been a bit of a waste.

Tis Pity She’s A Whore by John Ford, Olivier Theatre, 16 April 1988

A superb run of seeing amazing productions started to break down just a little with this one.

Again a Saturday evening, again with Bobbie. My log says the production was good. It also says:

Suzan Sylvester was indisposed that day, so we saw Michelle Evans understudy the lead

Tis pity that, as I think Suzan Sylvester must have been a very good Annabella opposite Rupert Graves as Giovanni. I do remember Bobbie and I feeling that the understudy did well, though.

My friend Michael Simkins was also in it, as Soranzo. Coincidental at the time of writing, in early 2019, as we saw Michael at the Hampstead Downstairs just a couple of weeks ago:

Eden by Hannah Patterson, Hampstead Theatre Downstairs, 16 February 2019

Here is the Theatricalia entry for this production.

Alan Ayckbourn directed the production – there is some additional information about it on his site – click here.

It’s not a happy story and matters unsurprisingly…spoiler alert…do not end well for the protagonists. The Wikipedia entry gives a good synopsis.

In those days I think we were quite partial to some Jacobean blood and gore. It’s only latterly that I’ve gone all snowflake.

Below is Michael Radcliffe’s review from The Observer:

Tis Pity Radcliffe Sun, Mar 6, 1988 – 40 · The Observer (London, Greater London, England) · Newspapers.com

Michael Billington in The Guardian found this production “too tasteful”:

Tis Pity Billimgton Sat, Mar 5, 1988 – 16 · The Guardian (London, Greater London, England) · Newspapers.com

Share this:

Share this:

Share this: