There’s just something about fin-de-siecle Austrian plays that doesn’t quite float our boat, however well done they are.
Still, we were pleased to have seen this one – it was one of the best things we had seen so far that year…but then we were having a poor year for theatre up to that point.
I must say I concur with this view. I remember the production where the Young Vic was turned into a watery stage, but I couldn’t hand on heart have told you anything about it from memory, until after I flicked through the script just now.
Perhaps Janie’s memory will do better – I’ll test that a bit later but only report back if she surprises me with profound recall.
The Young Vic published a short vid showing how they made the watery stage happen – see below.
This was a great production. I recall gently persuading Janie to see Macbeth again – she’s no fan of Shakespeare and felt that she had “done” Macbeth when seeing the 1994 Jacobi version.
It was the pull of Tony Sher and Harriet Walter that won Janie round, firstly to attending and in the end to admitting what a fabulous production this production at The Young Vic was. It was fast, it was furious, it was very memorable. Greg Doran knows a thing or two about doing Shakespeare.
The Theatricalia entry reminds me that the 2000 version was an RSC touring production that started at the Swan in late 1999 and ended up at The Young Vic in mid 2000.
The log reminds me that we ran into Rob Pay, Susan Pay & Jay Jaffe at that show. In those days, Rob & Susan lived very near to my place, but my place was a building site that autumn and I was staying with Janie in Ealing at that time.
As for the play, I recall that Mike Alfred’s Method & Madness project was a bit Complicité-like, without quite the oomph (and certainly not the longevity) of Complicité.
The piece was basically adaptations (by Mike Alfreds) of a few Isaac Basevis Singer short stories.
Nick Curtis in The Standard was not very impressed:
The diary suggests that it was a long/late-finishing show, so I suspect that we picked up shawarmas after this show on the way home. The diary also tells me that we went to Gary [Davison]’s birthday lunch the next day. The diary is silent on where we went but in those days Gary tended to hold that event at Lemonia in Primrose Hill.
…we both said. We’re both partial to a bit of Lorca in any case.
Wonderful play, excellent production.
This production had been doing and continued to do the rounds for some time, at regional theatres. A superb cast, including Sandra Duncan, Amanda Drew, Tanya Ronder & Carolyn Jones, directed by Polly Teale – here is a link to the Theatricalia entry for this production.
Our friend, Michael Billington, was also impressed by the production, once it landed at the Young Vic.
We loved Complicité, (or Théâtre de Complicité as it was then known) back then. This joint production with West Yorkshire Playhouse at the Young Vic was perhaps not their best work.
It is based on a J M Coetzee novel which is basically a sequel to Robinson Crusoe.
We found it impenetrable.
It seems we weren’t alone with that feeling. Michael Billington reviewed it thusly:
My log says that this was a transfer from The Other Place in Stratford and that I (possibly we – Bobbie was with me) was/were not 100% sure about it.
What was there not to be sure about? Splendid cast: Willard White as Othello, Ian McKellen as Iago, Imogen Stubbs as Desdemona, Zoe Wannamaker as Emilia…Trevor Nunn directing.
I also have a feeling that the 1989 RSC production felt a little over-theatrical to me. There is a certain Trevor Nunn style. Little did I know then that Janie and I would meet Trevor and Imogen – strangely around about the time we saw the 1997 RNT Othello.
What a super production this was. I remember being much taken with it, although, strangely, while I clearly recall seeing this with Bobbie, I did not recall Ashley joining us for this one. But the diary is clear:
I’m pretty sure this production was in the round and I remember feeling a sense of claustrophobia being so close to the action and the intense dilemmas and pain of the central characters.
This play, its morality and injustices came to my mind so many years later, in the late teenies, when the British gutter press started to brand anti-Brexit folk as “Enemies of the People”. Although I had seen a good production of the play subsequent to this 1988 production, it is Tom Wilkinson’s agonies, witnessed at close quarters so long ago, that sprang into my mind.
We three won’t simply have parted company at the doors of the Young Vic, that’s for sure. I’m guessing we might have taken a late meal at the Archduke or perhaps RSJs at that time. Anyone remember?
Postscript: Ashley Fletcher has chimed in to deny all involvement in this particular evening. The Ashley mention must have been Ashley Michaels, my (by then former) colleague from Newman Harris. I’ll pick Bobbie’s brain if/when I get the chance, but I suspect she’ll do that, “I can’t even remember what I did last week” routine.
Fortunately my subscription to the clippings service yields some retained memory – here is Michael ratcliffe’s Observer review:
Not one of Eugene O’Neill’s greatest plays, but my log suggests that Bobbie and I both found this production very good…
…and why shouldn’t we. Vanessa Redgrave & Timothy Dalton, with support from Amanda Boxer, Malcolm Tierney and several other good names. David Thacker directed it.
This was, in fact, a West End transfer of a much-lauded Young Vic production; the UK premier of this play. Bobbie and I couldn’t get in at the Young Vic but got in early during the transfer, so saw the original Young Vic cast/production.
