Tag: Stephen Warbeck

This House by James Graham, Cottesloe Theatre, 22 September 2012

This was a bit unfortunate for us, as we were there for a preview and Phil Daniels had just been forced to pull out of the leading role, so we saw the understudy (Andrew Frame I think, although we might have had a temporary understudy our night) reading from the script.

Even so, I don’t think this was really our type of play.

The Cottesloe had been laid out like the House of Commons, with the audience on both sides forming the back benches.

The play is basically about the chaotic era of the hung parliament in the mid-to-late 1970s; not least the scheming of the whips to try to get some semblance of business done in trying times.

At the time of writing (March 2018) this seems like a hark back to halcyon days, but in 2012 I think we were supposed to be thinking, “thank goodness our 2012 coalition is so much saner and more stable – politics is just more mature now, isn’t it?”

Below is the trailer:

There were some amusing lines, but it was all a bit obvious and of course, as the case with all dramatisation of historical events, there was no suspense for us in the “what happens next” department because we lived through it all as youngsters.

As a play, it all felt a bit “tell” rather than “show”.

I have a lot of time for John Graham as a playwright but this one didn’t really do the business for us and I don’t think it was just the unfortunate understudy business – we’ve seen enough theatre to be able to adjust and allow for that.

We saw Beth (from downstairs) and her dad across the political divide; I discovered afterwards that they got more out of it than we did…

…as did most of the critics, who hailed the piece and the production – click here for a link to the reviews – so don’t listen to us.

Time At The Bar, Ignite, Wigmore Hall Bar/Restaurant, 22 June 2012

This seemed like a wonderful idea – improvised music to please lovers of jazz and contemporary music, after the Evelyn Glennie concert, in the bar/restaurant.

Of course we were up for it.

Here is the Wigmore Hall puff about it – click here.

It didn’t attract much of a crowd if I remember correctly.

We enjoyed our cold compilations and some wine…

…more than we enjoyed the music, which we found surprisingly bland – not jazzy in the way we thought it might be.

We’re all for the Wigmore Hall experimenting and the late night format is one of the more interesting experiments, although they are still struggling to find a formula that works.

But we have booked two more Wigmore Lates this year (as I write in 2018), both of which look right up our street, so we really hope the idea will find its feet eventually.

Anyway, below is the running order for the concert we heard on 22 June 2012:

Haunted Child by Joe Penhall, Royal Court Theatre, 3 December 2011

We thought this was an excellent play and production.

We booked it on the back of Joe Penhall’s superb play Blue/Orange. We also got a fantastic cast, not least Ben Daniels and Sophie Okonedo.

Here is the Royal Court resource for this play/production.

The Ben Daniels character, the father, is basically being sucked in by a cult. On reflection at the time of writing (January 2018) it has a fair bit in common with My Mum’s A Twat – click here, which we saw recently, except the cult-ista in the more recent case is the mum and the storyteller is the affected child later in life.

Anyway, Haunted Child mostly got very good reviews – click here for a link term that should find them.

Below is the trailer:

The Veil by Conor McPherson, Lyttelton Theatre, 19 November 2011

Gosh I remember how disappointed we were by this one.

We had loved Conor McPherson’s previous work whenever we had seen it – especially but not only The Weir.

But this play, set in the early 19th century, just left both of us feeling cold.

Super cast, with several of the “usual suspects” for Irish plays, not least Bríd Brennan. Plus an early sighting of Caoilfhionn Dunne.

But for us, nothing could quite save this play.

I remember saying afterwards that it was like “Chekhov had written a ghost story” and I remember smiling when I subsequently saw one of the reviews saying just that.

Here is a link to a term that finds the (mixed/indifferent) reviews.

I think we stuck it out on the strength of the performances and the hope that it would liven up in the second half.

Below is an interview with Conor McPherson about the play…

…and below this is the NT trailer for the production:

Oh well.

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.

 

When The Rain Stops Falling by Andrew Bovell, Almeida Theatre, 30 May 2009

Very interesting play, this one.

 

Lots going on, mostly in Australia, spanning eighty years. We saw this play before the Ashes started, so did not breach our “Aussie abstinence vow” during the Ashes, I’m pleased to report.

Andrew Bovell is a very good playwright; worth looking out for. Excellent cast and production too.

Here is the OfficialLondonTheatre.co.uk stub on this play/production.

Parlour Song by Jez Butterworth, Almeida Theatre, 11 April 2009

Coincidentally, at the time of writing this (early May 2017) we have just seen a new Jez Butterworth, The Ferryman, which was excellent.

While I remember Parlour Song pretty well, it hadn’t dawned on me that it was also a Jez Butterworth play.

There’s a good trailer and stuff on the Digital Theatre Plus site – click here.

It was a very good, very funny play. All three members of the cast: Amanda Drew, Toby Jones and Andrew Lincoln were terrific.

I don’t think it sent us into quite the level of ecstasy that the critics describe, but we did enjoy this one a lot, without finding much depth; it is basically a slightly quirky, sinister comedy about suburban infidelity.

But it did for sure signal Jez Butterworth on that upward trajectory to playwriting stardom.

Cloud Nine by Caryl Churchill, Almeida Theatre, 10 November 2007

This is a weird play. But then, it is Caryl Churchill. Indeed, by Caryl Churchill standards, it is not that weird a play.

But Janie and I had never seen the play and this, as it turned out, was a good production of this play. Thea Sharrock directed it; we’d been really impressed with her at The Gate and this production no doubt added to her rising stardom.

There’s a good Almeida stub for this production – here, although the reviews are just quotes.

Reviews to be found that can be read in full are as follows:

Enough evidence – this was good. We enjoyed ourselves and felt thoroughly sated with good theatre that weekend, having seen a super short play, Truck Stop, at the Hampstead the night before.

 

 

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:

Dying For It by Moira Buffini, Almeida Theatre, 31 March 2007

This was a very entertaining evening in the theatre, Sounds odd, but it was a very amusing play about suicide.

Click here for a link to the Almeida’s resource on this play/production.

We rate Tom Brooke very highly and he was superb in this piece – a free adaptation, by Moira Buffini, of a subversive Soviet era Nikolai Erdman book.

It was well received by the critics on thew whole – click here for reviews and stuff.