Of course it was wonderfully well acted and the production was excellent, but I recall not being too enamoured of the play. It was quite long and wordy. I think you are supposed to feel trapped by the play, much as the characters are trapped in their circumstances.
We don’t book many classic revivals, but we tend to make an exception for Ibsen if it is a play one or both of us hasn’t seen before. Plus, if it is the Almeida, we tend to trust the place to deliver a classic well and with a modern enough feel.
As was the case with this superb production.
We were a little concerned that it might be a luvvie-fest for Gemma Arterton. But she proved well up to her task and the universally high-quality cast worked extremely well as an ensemble.
It was a well-pacey production; an-hour-and–three-quarters straight through, the extra pace worked well with this play. An object lesson for some of the ponderously long, drawn-out productions of early 20th century plays.
The reviews were pretty much universally good and most are linked through the above resource, but this search term – click here – should find reviews independently for you.
Around the time that we booked this play, I was writing the chapter of The Price of Fish, coincidentally Chapter Six, that explains the “shrinking world” theory known as six degrees of separation.
In theory, this play is all about that concept. In practice, I struggled at times to link this social comedy with the theory.
Without the futile search for intellectual insight, it was a reasonably fun evening at the theatre but a rather lightweight one. A super cast for this revival, but I’m not sure this play is worthy of a revival within 20 years, even though the world has/had changed between times.
I recall this play/production doing less for me than I had hoped. I was expecting something quite visceral from the author of Rat In The Skull, which I had read with wide-mouthed interest back in the day.
We were keen Hampstead goers, even back then when the venue was still a portacabin down the road from the current high-class venue.
We dined at Harry Morgan’s ahead of the show, getting a fix of Jewish deli grub in St John’s Wood on our way to Swiss Cottage, as was our occasional wont back then.
The cast comprised John Gordon Sinclair, Miranda Pleasence, Andrew Woodall, Rob Spendlove, William Chubb and Kenneth Colley. The actor Denis Lawson directed the production.
I didn’t think about this play when I saw Giant by Mark Rosenblatt, but reflecting on it now, I can see how Rosenblatt managed to make similar subject matter come alive…
…whereas Burning Issues by Ron Hutchinson, a playwright who had proved that he could write good plays on tough topics, somehow couldn’t make this subject matter fizz.
