Travel, Theatre, Music, Cricket, Tennis, Writing, Life
The programmes hadn’t arrived, so (most unusually for the Donmar) we got a simple black and white printed A4 foldy. Standards.
The play was very good indeed, though, as was the cast. The usual high production values for the Donmar too.
A bit slow, but then this IS a 19th century Russian story and it IS Brian Friel, whom we like very much, btw.
The critics on the whole shared our enjoyment of it – click here for a link to reviews.
In short, this was a good’n.
Janie and I have tended to have a soft spot for anything Complicité, not least because our first proper date was Théâtre De Complicité’s Street Of Crocodiles:
But Mnemonic didn’t need our soft spot – it was excellent in its own right.
Superb
…I said in my log and meant it.
Strangely, writing 25 years later, this piece has recently been revived (or rather, reimagined) by Complicité in London at the National.
This original production was at the more utilitarian Riverside Studios, a venue we have always liked.
Excellent cast, including Simon McBurney himself, the wonderful Katrin Cartlidge (who died tragically young) and Richard Katz, who had previously worked wonders with my material in NewsRevue – for example the Woody Allen role in Mama Mia Farrow:
…but I digress.
Here is the Theatricalia entry for this play/production.
Anyway, Mnemonic really was superb and we were lucky to have seen the original production of it.
Nick Curtis wrote it up at length in The Standard:
Mnemonic Curtis Standard 03 Dec 1999, Fri Evening Standard (London, Greater London, England) Newspapers.com
The local rag loved it:
Mnemonic Tear Hammersmith 24 Dec 1999, Fri Hammersmith and Shepherds Bush Gazette (Hammersmith, London, England) Newspapers.com
I think a lot of the usual suspects ignored it until it transferred to the National a couple of year’s later…and then was reimagined more than 20 years after that.
But we saw the original production…at The Riverside…have I mentioned that before?
We were tending to book RNT things in preview or very early in runs, so this was an unusually late visit to see this one – perhaps we couldn’t get the seats we wanted until later or perhaps we missed it in the first block of dates.
Anyway, we thought this was “very good”.
One of our favourite troupes, Théâtre de Complicité, was responsible for this one. Juliet Stevenson played the lead along with Simon McBurney who also directed. The Theatricalia entry can be found here.
This was the first of those “in the round” productions that the RNT did at The Olivier while it was being refurbished.
Nicholas de Jongh in The Standard was not too keen on it:
Caucasian de Jongh Standard 22 Apr 1997, Tue Evening Standard (London, Greater London, England) Newspapers.com
Charles Spencer in the Telegraph imagined that his cordial loathing of this show would be a minority view:
Caucasian Spencer Telegraph 23 Apr 1997, Wed The Daily Telegraph (London, Greater London, England) Newspapers.com
Predictably, then, our friend Michael Billington loved it:
Caucasian Billington Guardian 23 Apr 1997, Wed The Guardian (London, Greater London, England) Newspapers.com
But Robert Butlet in The Independent didn’t much like it either:
Caucasian Butler Indy 27 Apr 1997, Sun The Independent (London, Greater London, England) Newspapers.com
Oh well.
Two visits to the Olivier Theatre with Bobbie in 48 hours. Just fancy. Must have been an availability thing and both of us wanting to see both plays.
In my log I wrote,
Good, but not as good as I had hoped it would be.
I seem to recall finding the play a bit wordy, a bit worthy and also some of the legal aspects a little unconvincing. I think the feedback from Bobbie’s legal entourage was similar on that last point when we ended up comparing notes.
Here is the Theatricalia entry for this production.
Here is a link to the Wikipedia entry for this play.
Below is Michael Billington’s Guardian review:
Billington Judges Judges Sat, Oct 12, 1991 – 21 · The Guardian (London, Greater London, England) · Newspapers.com
Below is Michael Coveney’s Observer review:
Coveney Judges Judges Sun, Oct 13, 1991 – 56 · The Observer (London, Greater London, England) · Newspapers.com
