Tag: Simon Slater

Howzat? Missing – Going Way Down The Off-Side: TESTMATCH by Kate Attwell, Orange Tree Theatre, 4 May 2024

It looked like such a good idea in the flyer months ago…

We love The Orange Tree Theatre and try to support as much as we can, especially when it gets around to promoting new writing on topics that interest us.

We love cricket. That includes women’s cricket. We were there at Lord’s when England Women played India Women in the World Cup Final in 2017:

When Everything Went The Right Way, Women’s World Cup Final, Lord’s, 23 July 2017

TESTMATCH by Kate Attwell is described in all its detail on The Orange Tree website – click here. For those who don’t like to click, here’s the central synopsis that hooked me and Janie for two [did you see what I did there?]:

Lord’s, present day. It’s the Women’s Cricket World Cup: England versus India. There’s a rain delay. Tensions mount, ambitions are laid bare and a whole new tactical game begins. Calcutta in the eighteenth century. Two British administrators in colonial India encounter challenges on the field of play that threaten the entire regime.  

In this game of integrity and power, past and present collide. Kate Attwell’s funny and provocative play explores and explodes the mythology of fair play. 

Extracted from The Orange Tree blurb for TESTMATCH

You’ll also spot some good-looking summary reviews if you click that link, so might conclude that Janie and I are in a minority when we report that we both found this play and production a dud.

Heaven knows, I might sometimes look like a caricature of an MCC member trying to look young and hip at Lord’s…

What do you mean, TRYING to look hip?

…but I’ll have you know that Janie and I were watching women’s cricket and I was campaigning for women to be allowed into The Bowlers’ Bar at Lord’s before several of the current England and Middlesex players who play at Lord’s were even born.

The problems we had with TESTMATCH were many and varied. We thought the script repetitive, the jokes mostly unfunny and the important points, of which there were many, delivered without subtlety and often with counter-effective impact if impact at all.

In truth, the whole piece felt like an excuse to discuss a whole heap of very real issues around race, gender, commercial power and fair play, delivered like me trying to hit the cover off a cricket ball with a long-handled bat – i.e. terrible mishits such that they either missed the metaphorical ball completely or hit that metaphor up in the air for a dolly catch.

We are used to suspending belief for theatre, but the notion that such conversations and action could possibly take place in The Lord’s Pavilion during a rain interval in a major women’s international match shows ignorance of how professional the women’s game has become in the 20+ years since Janie and I started following international women’s cricket.

And don’t get me started on the notion that women cricketers might have been advocating roundarm and/or overarm bowling at the time of the Great Bengal famine.

It was hard to tell whether the cast was limited by ability, the script or some eccentric directing, but the style of delivery came across to us as more like “try hard am-dram” than professional performance.

But heck, if you are considering seeing this play, you should read the theatre reviews, which I hadn’t read before writing the above. On the whole, they support our criticisms, but come down far more favourably on this production than we did. Click here for links to reviews.

For me, the highlight of the evening was getting to bowl at one of the performers a couple of times at the end of the interval. Had I realised it was supposed to be 1770, I’d have bowled underarm. And had I realised that my 20-30 mph dobblers would seem fast in the restricted space of The Orange Tree, I’d have tried to bowl even slower than usual.

Is it possible to bowl slower than this?

A member of the audience even praised my bowling as we left. A gentleman who is easily pleased, he might well have also enjoyed the play.

Cell Mates by Simon Gray, Hampstead Theatre, 9 December 2017

There were warning signs that this production of this play might provoke thoughts of walking out part-way through and even take me and Janie to the very edge of reason…

…I had simply forgotten about them and/or ignored them.

We didn’t book the original production of the play, Cell Mates, but we read all about it when Stephen Fry walked out on the production after just a few days and disappeared – the controversy about that is well documented on the Wikipedia entry for the play – here.

Further, two of the lead performers for this production, Geoffrey Streatfeild and Cara Horgan, were in The Pains Of Youth – Ogblogged here – which Janie and I hated and from which we walked at half time.

But these reflections are terribly unfair on those fine actors, whose performances were the saving grace of this production of Cell Mates. Our problem with Cell Mates, I think, is mostly the play itself.

The story of George Blake and Sean Bourke is very interesting. I can see why Simon Gray sought to dramatise it. Yet sometimes great stories do not make great drama; or perhaps this story would have needed more dramatic licence to bring the story to dramatic life. Blake’s passion for Marxism and the Soviet Union, to the exclusion of his human relationships, is a fascinating idea but made for dreary drama to our eyes.

To us, this play was a waste of excellent talent; all of the cast are fine performers and played their parts well. Edward Hall is a director we greatly admire. We considered walking at half time, but stuck it out on the strength of the performances.

Anyway, here is the Hampstead Theatre resource on the play/production. 

Here is Ed Hall talking about the production:

Here is the trailer:

Here is a search term that will take you to reviews and stuff – the critics seem to be seeing a bit more in the play/production than we did…but only a bit.

Filthy Business by Ryan Craig, Hampstead Theatre, 15 April 2017

Another visit to the Hampstead (upstairs this time), another Ed Hall triumph.

This is a very interesting play with a superb cast, very cleverly staged and directed. All the main papers have given it rave reviews; deservedly so.

You can read all about it here on the Hampstead site, click here, including links to those excellent reviews, sparing me the trouble.

The central story, a Jewish family business dominated by a matriarch who has brought a lot of attitude with her from the old country, naturally resonated with me. Not that the Harris family was at war with itself in the manner of the tragi-comic Solomon family of this play, thank goodness.

Dad’s shop – a relatively tranquil place

Sara Kestelman as the matriarch, Yetta Solomon, was simply superb. We have seen her several times before; I especially remember her in Copenhagen at the RNT years ago and more recently in The Intelligent Homosexual’s Guide at the Hampstead – click here, but this Yetta role might have been written for her.

As the play went on and the depths of Yetta’s schemes and subterfuges come to light, her character reminded me increasingly of Shakespeare’s Richard III. Perhaps this was Ryan Craig’s intention, as Yetta confides in the audience in very “Dick the Shit” style towards the end of the play.

The ghastliness of the Solomon family and the extent of the machinations at times errs towards caricature, yet Ryan Craig (perhaps combined with Ed Hall’s skilled direction) kept us caring enough about the characters and willing to go with the flow of the plot, even at its extremes. The funny bits are mostly very funny; the confrontational bits thrilling and shocking.

The Yetta Solomon character sees keeping the family together (and in the family business) to be so important as to override pretty much all other practical and moral imperatives. This is Yetta’s flaw, her tragedy.

I recognised some of the characteristics from my own family – the story Yetta tells from her childhood in the shtetl – of chasing Cossack trouble-makers away with a stick – was almost word for word a story I remember my Grandma Ann telling me.

But I don’t believe Grandma Ann used divide and rule to try to keep the Harris family together and she was certainly willing for (indeed she encouraged) her boys to branch out into other businesses – e.g. my father’s and Uncle Alec’s photographic businesses.

Grandma Ann: Harris family business matriarch, yes, machinations, no.

But Filthy Business makes you think well beyond the family and its business. It is a play about the immigrant experience, about London in the 1960’s, 1970’s and 1980’s, about inter-generational change.

I had been impressed by Ryan Craig’s plays before – we saw The Glass Room at the Hampstead 10+ years ago and more recently The Holy Rosenbergs at the RNt – both of which will find their way to Ogblog in the fullness of time.

To my (and Janie’s) taste, Filthy Business is Ryan Craig’s best play yet and we look forward to more good stuff from him.

As for our grub after the show, we had over-catered so successfully for lunch with Kim and Micky the day before – click here – we had plenty of food for a grazing supper…or three. We chatted through the many interesting issues and great performances we’d just seen as we grazed.

Carmen Disruption by Simon Stephens, Almeida Theatre, 11 April 2015

“What was that about” said Janie after the show; proof positive that her review would not be 100% positive. “I liked bits of it but it seemed all over the place at times and I’m not really sure what it was trying to say.”

Janie has a point.

Yet it was a very entertaining play/show in many ways.

Centre stage as we walked in was a dying bull, or rather a moving facsimile of same. It remained pretty much centre stage throughout.

Men were dressed a women, women were dressed as men, it was sort of about an opera singer, sort of about a toy boy…

…read the reviews and figure it out for yourself if you wish.

Excellent Almeida resource including links to several full reviews – click here.

The reviews were more or less universally excellent. It certainly deserved the high praise for an extraordinary production.

We are big fans of Simon Stephens writing, so we delight in this play’s success, but I think we prefer it when his writing is a little more direct.

Still, we enjoyed our evening and had bragging rights for having seen this production early on.