We have long been a fan of Shawn; in my case dating back to seeing the film My Dinner With Andre hundreds of years ago.
Janie and I by chance got to chat with him at the Almeida when he was over for Miranda Richardson’s amazing performance as Aunt Dan in Aunt Dan and Lemon (to be Ogblogged in the fullness of time no doubt)…
So here was a new Shawn play with Wallace Shawn himself and Miranda Richardson in it. Plus Andre Gregory directing it. Ahead of the piece we were a little starstruck – a rare emotion for us.
In truth, this piece didn’t hit the giddy heights of some of Shawn’s others. The notion of dystopia following scientific tinkering has (in my view) been overdone by others rather more than Shawn’s political and social frets.
The play was more than three hours long, so I suspect we settled for a shawarma supper to take home. The evening certainly kept me and Janie in conversation for the rest of that evening and indeed the rest of the weekend.
But Janie hadn’t seen it before and Clare Higgins is a cracking good actress.
Also, in the post crash times that were late 2008/early 2009 when we booked to see this production, I thought the piece might have a different, meaningful resonance.
In many ways it did.
Yet it wasn’t quite the same thing as seeing Wallace Shawn perform it himself. How could it be?
We thought this play/production was wonderful and we both remember this particular evening at the Almeida extremely well.
I had been especially keen to book this production, as I had read the play in the late 1980s, found it very interesting and wondered whether I would ever get to see it performed.
Janie and I attended a preview, as oft we do. Wallace Shawn was there and we chatted with him for quite some while. He came across as being exactly the sort of slightly-awkward, self-effacing type that he depicted in the film My Dinner With Andre, which is a great favourite of ours. A couple of times I said to Wallace, “I’m sure you need to speak with some other people”, to allow him to move on without discomfort, but he made it quite clear that he was happy chatting with us and continued to do so.
We talked about his other plays, many of which I had read and several of which Janie and I had seen together. We also chatted about the Almeida production of Aunt Dan & Lemon. He told us how thrilled he was that Miranda Richardson was playing Aunt Dan, as he was a huge fan of hers. I remember reflecting afterwards, with Janie, that Wallace Shawn seemed more star struck about Miranda Richardson than we were star struck by chatting with him.
The production was truly excellent. I had wondered, when I read the play, how it could possibly be staged well. Director/designer Tom Cairns and the production team had a myriad of clever answers, not least the hugely effective but not overpowering use of video projections on a screen.
Glenne Headly was superb as Lemon, as was Miranda Richardson as Aunt Dan. An excellent supporting cast including Corey Johnson and Kerry Shale.
Our friend Michael Billington loved this play/production:
It’s a shame that the Guardian mis-labelled the photo as Natasha Richardson (daughter of Vanessa Redgrave, no relation to Miranda). I wonder whether Wallace Shawn laughed or cried at that mistake back then?
Charles Spencer in The Telegraph considered the piece to be pernicious and wrong-headed, which is an interesting counter-argument to those coming at the piece from a more liberal perspective:
Thinking about the play some 35 years after reading it and 25 years after seeing it, I am struck by the thought that the play would, today, seem implausible, because an academic with Aunt Dan’s views would be lucky to survive even one semester as an Oxford don. Mind you, Wallace Shawn probably wouldn’t last much longer in an elevated academic institution either. Having thought provoked in this manner is not for wimps.
One of the very best and most memorable evenings we have spent at the theatre.
What an amazing piece of theatre this was. The late great Mike Nichols, better known as a director of course, acted brilliantly, with Miranda Richardson and David de Keyser, all wonderful.
David Hare, better known as a playwright but also a talented director, did a grand job with the piece.
Wallace Shawn, perhaps better known as an actor than as a playwright, although also a very talented playwright, wrote it. Not his best known; indeed possibly not his best piece, but, an excellent play.
Despite all that role rotation, it came off superbly well for us.
Janie and I recognised the unmistakable back of Wallace Shawn’s head just in front of us that night. A few years later, we chatted with Wallace Shawn at the Almeida when he turned up to see Miranda Richardson in Aunt Dan and Lemon; he waxed lyrical about how wonderful he thinks she is, seemed genuinely self-effacing about his writing and genuinely delighted that we had been inspired to seek out his plays by seeing this piece and of course My Dinner With Andre, one of my favourite films ever.
I loved this wonderful monologue, written and performed by Wallace Shawn. At the time, in my log, I declared it to be:
Excellent.
Thirty years on, writing in late January 2021, I remember it vividly and now, in the time of Covid and dysfunctional politics, it seems so apposite and prescient.
This was the first time I saw Wallace Shawn and/or his work live. I had previously enjoyed his film work, not least My Dinner With Andre, so was thrilled to see him perform.
I saw this original, authoritative performance with Bobbie Scully. It was a National Theatre/Royal Court Theatre joint production. Why don’t they do this more often? Here is a link to the RNT archive record for it. It showed at The Royal Court Theatre Upstairs and at the Cottesloe – we caught it at the latter.
Strangely, the text of the piece is in the public domain – I assume by design – so if you want to read the draw-droppingly still-relevant piece, it can be read here. Or if that link ever fails, try this scrape here.
If you click through the 2009 piece to Michael Billington’s review of that production, he confesses to having been smitten with the piece the first time. That tells us that Michael Billington goes to see stuff at the theatre even when it isn’t his turn to write the review. Now THAT’s a theatre enthusiast! Nicholas de Jongh – you’re outvoted!
