We really enjoyed this play. I think it was the first Bruce Norris play we saw and it certainly motivated us to look out for his plays.
We were due to see it on Saturday 23 June, but then realised that the only Saturday that made sense for a Worm family birthday celebration was that Saturday. The Royal Court very kindly swapped the seats for us at no charge, despite my insistence that the booking error was my fault. “That’s what friends are for,” was the response. I wish more arts organisations treated the term “friend” thus.
Excellent cast, with Matthew Macfadyen, Andrea Riseborough and Amanda Boxer perhaps the most memorable.
We saw a preview of this play/production. My log note:
very good indeed.
What else could there possibly be to say?
Steven Mackintosh, Tom Wilkinson and Julia Ormond were the superb cast. I think David Hare directed it himself…the formal reviews will probably cover that point. Let’s tale a look at those.
Janie and I were very taken with this creepy three-hander at the Royal Court. I remember us agreeing that it was Pinteresque at the time – without the influence of reviews I hasten to add.
I think this was our first sighting of a Martin Crimp play and for sure we were intrigued enough to seek out his work several times subsequently.
Owen Teale, Juliet Stevenson and Indira Varma, directed by Katie Mitchell. All people who had impressed us before and/or since.
My friend Michael Billington in the Guardian shared our fascination with this piece and also saw the Pinter parallels:
…and were very keen to see Conor McPherson’s next one.
Further, as members who had been loyal through the years of “exile” while The Royal Court was being redone, we were invited that Friday afternoon to a “guided tour” of the revamped building. Janie and I were both motivated to take a Friday afternoon off work and “go see” before the show.
It was on that tour that Janie and I spotted the little nook seat in a recess of the stairway just before you get to the upstairs bar…latterly the library. We took a shine to that nook and for many years took great pleasure in having a pre-show or interval drink in there.
As for Dublin Carol, we really liked it and it cemented our view that Conor McPherson was a writer to watch. It didn’t quite pack the punch of The Weir, but that play was always going to be a tough act to follow.
Brian Cox played the lead in Dublin Carol, with great charisma. Andrew Scott, & Bronagh Gallagher were also excellent in support. Ian Rickson directed.
I’m not sure what the critics made of it at the time…let’s find out.
I’d forgotten this bit, but because of delays to the finishing of The Royal Court, Dublin Carol previewed at The Old Vic for a while. Susannah Clapp reviewed it, with great enthusiasm, there…
But most of the subsequent reviews seemed to want to talk about the grand opening of the newly refurbished Royal Court than the play/production that graced it, doing McPherson, Cox et. al. no favours. Please note, the grand opening was two or three weeks before the hoi polloi tour that we enjoyed in March.
With the Royal Court in exile, we missed the original “Upstairs” version of this at the Ambassadors. With all the stuff we had been dealing with in 1998, this one almost passed us by completely when it transferred “downstairs” to The Duke of York’s. So when the Duke of York’s production returned to that Royal Court “home in exile”, at the start of 1999, to kick off a major tour, we booked early and were there at the outset.
Excellent play and production
I wrote.
That was to say the least. It was truly memorable and awe-inspiring drama. No wonder many critics had fawned over it when it first came out in 1997.
We saw a great cast and crew – most if not all the originals – Kieran Ahern, Brendan Coyle, Dermot Crowley, Michelle Fairley and Jim Norton acting, Ian Rickson directing. Here is a link to the Theatricalia entry for the production we saw. It was a privilege to have seen that production.
Janie and I thought this piece and performance was simply superb. In fact, I wrote:
Superb!!
…in my log and I am not normally the double-exclamation-mark type.
This was David Hare’s brave dive into performing a one-man-show on one of the thorniest topics he might possibly choose – the Israeli/Palestinian conflict. Talk about high risk, but we thought Hare pulled off a blinder with this piece/performance.
That suggests that we didn’t get a great deal out of this one, unusually for Mamet. Possibly we just felt that we’d seen a lot of material like this before.
Was it three short plays or one play with three somewhat disconnected scene?. I wrote down
The Disappearance of the Jews, Jolly and Deeny.
Splendid cast: Linal Haft, Colin Stinton, Zoe Wanamaker, Vincent Marzello and Diana Quick, directed by Patrick Marber.
I guess neither of us quite got our heads around The Chairs. You need to be in the mood for Ionesco and perhaps we weren’t.
This version was Martin Crimp’s adaptation and Simon McBurney/Théâtre de Complicité’s production, so weirdness was probably very much the order of the evening. Richard Briers and Geraldine McEwan led the cast. Here is the Theatricalia entry for the production.
“What did the papers say about it?” I hear you cry.
Charles Spencer in The Telegraph liked it, while denying that we should read too much into the piece – darned right!
Interesting (weird) evening. Programme missing – only insert sheet.
Actually the programme might turn out to be a play text which might turn up somewhere on my bookshelves.
I wouldn’t mind reading these plays again. This was Caryl Churchill in impenetrable mood.
Gabrielle Blunt, Jacqueline Defferary, Karina Fernandez, Bernard Gallagher, Valerie Lilley, Mary Macleod and Jason Watkins, directed by Max Stafford-Clark.
Then on to Old Park Lane Nobu for dinner. That place was the latest “in place to dine” back then, so we were keen to try it. Who’d have thought that, 25 years later, the signature black cod in miso dish would be something we can obtain from our local (Japanese) fishmonger and serve at home?
That was a lot of sensory stimulation for one evening – Caryl Churchill followed by Nobu. My guess is that Janie was very keen to try the place but could only get a late evening booking, so it sort of made sense to go after theatre.
To add to the excitement, we did it all again (in terms of theatre followed by dinner out) the very next day:
We rounded off our evening with Chinese food from The Park Inn. Quite right too.
The diary suggests that we planned to have Marianne and Anil over for dinner the next evening, the Saturday, but Anil doesn’t get beyond a question mark and Janie is sure she has never met him, so my guess is that the whole idea fell though.
