Tag: West End Whingers

Mrs Klein by Nicholas Wright, Almeida Theatre, 24 October 2009

We both really enjoyed this play/production about he psychoanalyst Melanie Klein.

I had seen the original production of this play at The Cottesloe back in 1988 and really liked it.

Janie and I are keen Almeida-istas;  I guessed that this would be yet another really good Almeida production and that the play would be to Janie’s taste. Add to that a superb cast – Clare Higgins and Nicola Walker are two of our favourites, plus Thea Sharrock (formerly at The Gate) directing…

…what could go wrong? Nothing. This was a great production and Janie did really like it.

As usual, there is an excellent Almeida resource about the play/production – click here – with information, pictures and reviews.

The reviews were nearly all very good and the very good ones are accessible in full from the above resource.

Waste by Harley Granville Barker, Almeida Theatre, 18 October 2008

This one turned out to be a bit of an Alleyn’s alum-fest, with Sam West directing and Nancy Carroll performing. But that won’t be the reason we booked it.

Janie and I have been Almeida members for donkeys yonks – indeed I have been going there fairly regularly since the late 1980s.

This looked like a cracking production on paper, so we’d have had no hesitation in booking it.

The Almeida is great on archiving its productions, so details of the production, some good pictures and extracts from the reviews are all there to be seen – saving me the trouble – click here.

We agree with all of that lot. It was a cracking production of a rather wordy play – Harley Granville Barker was a decent playwright but Ibsen or Strindberg he ain’t.

We were very glad to have picked this production. Seeing a lesser production of this play would have been a bit of a waste.

Creditors by August Strindberg in a new version by David Greig, Donmar Warehouse, 27 September 2008

Janie and I are both very partial to a bit of Strindberg.

Creditors is a top drawer Strindberg play and this was a top draw production of same at the Donmar.

I had seen a smaller scale production of this before – at The Gate back in the 1980s – I’ll review that too in the fullness of time. But this version of Creditors, in David Greig’s edgy hands, was even more gripping than I remembered the play.

Here is a link to the Donmar’s excellent downloadable Study Guide for this production.

Superb cast too – all three of them excellent.

Even the West End Whingers were on the case for this one and seemed broadly satisfied – click here.

An especially good night at the theatre.

Land of the Dead and Helter Skelter by Neil LaBute, Bush Theatre, 18 January 2008

Neil LaBute is good at short, punchy plays. These two, Land of the Dead and Helter Skelter – see Bush Theatre stub here,  are companion pieces.

It was a Friday evening, so it was stronger meat than we would normally choose for the end of the working week. Still, we were really taken by these plays and this production of them. The reviews we can still find tend to agree with us:

 

The Giant by Antony Sher, Hampstead Theatre, 2 November 2007

On paper, this appeared to be a seriously hot ticket. So seriously hot we booked to see the first Friday preview. Antony Sher wrote it, Greg Doran directed it, Roger Allam starred in it…

…what’s not to like?

Well, in truth we didn’t like it at all. The plot revolves around the Florentine story of Leonardo Da Vinci and Michelangelo competing for the same sculpture commission. The play might have been fine art’s equivalent of Amadeus – I suspect that’s what Sher had in mind, but we found the piece laboured, pretentious and dull.

We didn’t stick around after the interval for the second half of the play.

The reviews were not so special: