Tag: Scott Graham

Port by Simon Stephens, Lyttelton Theatre, RNT, 26 January 2013

This was an excellent play/production.

We’re really keen on Simon Stephens work and had high hopes for this play – high hopes that were indeed met.

The play is basically about Simon Stephen’s home town – Stockport.

This was a revival of one of Simon Stephen’s early works – we didn’t realise that when we booked it, bit never mind.

Years later, when Janie and I went to Southport, I had terrible trouble convincing Janie that they are very different places in the North-West with vaguely similar names.

Unfamiliar names in the cast but all did a cracking job. Superb design too. Marianne Elliott is such a good director.

Below is a trailer vid:

The piece had very good reviews – here is a link to a search term that finds them.

Below is a vox pop audience feedback vid:

Our vox pop – both Janie and I really liked it.

We went to see Marianne Elliott & Simon Stephens talk about the play 10 days later, which was interesting and good too:

Marianne Elliott And Simon Stephens On Port, 7 February 2013

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, Mark Haddon adapted by Simon Stephens, Cottesloe Theatre, 11 August 2012

I don’t normally go for adaptations of my favourite novels, but something told me this would be well worth seeing and also that Janie would like it. I was right on both counts. It was probably down to the fact that Simon Stephens was adapting it and also the stellar-looking cast and creatives boasted.

It was a fabulous evening of theatre. This adaptation deserved the plaudits it received in the press and the many transfers and re-runs that have followed.

There is even a Wikipedia entry to document the play’s progress – click here.

…and so on.

From our point of view, this was a cracking night at the theatre. It was also darned close to the 20th anniversary of our very first date, in August 1992, which happened to be at the Cottesloe. There’s cute for you.

The Hothouse by Harold Pinter, Lyttelton Theatre, 28 July 2007

We really enjoyed this play and production. It is a rare example of a Pinter comedy, which he wrote during his heyday in the mid 1950s but I don’t think it got produced until a fair bit later.

Being Pinter, the line between comedy and tense psychodrama is a thin one. Indeed, plays like The Caretaker, The Birthday Party and The Dumb Waiter are sinister yet have plenty of humour in them. The Hothouse has plenty of humour yet is sinister; it is set in an anonymous government run mental institution. Say no more.

This was a superb cast and production. Stephen Moore, Finbar Lynch, Leo Bill and Lia Williams the standouts. Here is a link to the Theatricalia entry. For once, the awkward depth/shape of the Lyttelton stage could be used to good effect for an institutional look.

It was pretty well received by the critics on the whole: