This year at the theatre....
- Thread starter belboid
- Start date
Virtual Blue
ready
The Motherfucker with the Hat - at the National Theatre.
Yep, at the uber-conservative NT.
Great direction, good cast and solid story line.
Would recommend.
Yep, at the uber-conservative NT.
Great direction, good cast and solid story line.
Would recommend.
Reno
The In Kraut
The NT has never been conservative with the type of the plays they put on. Mary Whitehouse famously tried to sue the director of the National in the early 80s for putting on The Roman's in Britain for featuring a scene of anal rape and Jerry Springer the Opera had Christians up in arms over blasphemy. I saw Jerry Springer at the NT and it brought in lots of teenagers who don't usually go to the theatre and who were fans of the TV show. It was great fun to see teenagers shocked at the extend of creative swearing and foul language in the play.
Virtual Blue
ready
Really? I could never would have thought that.
I've been going to the NT for years now and it definitely has a particular sort of clientele (the living dead).
Was not aware Jerry Springer was shown there...
Reno
The In Kraut
Well, that's theatre audiences in general for you but the NT has a long history of putting on controversial plays
Reno
The In Kraut
Last evening I went to see Heartbreak Hotel, which is one of these immersive theatre thingies. It was in North Greenwich on a jetty and it was shipping containers arranged into a run down hotel. The audience gets led throught its rooms for different mini plays on love and sex, but you couldn't roam around
The staging was interesting enough, but with many of these things that's the best thing about it and the play itself wasn't that great, with some episodes better than others. It was mostly saved by the acting, which was good.
I hate it when they get interactive. Occasionally the actors would ask audience members questions like "Are you looking for love?" Or "Have you ever had your heart broken?" and I just stood well out of the way and probably would have told them that it's none of their business had they ignored my spoil sport mug and asked me. Anyway, it's ok for £10 but fairly forgettable.
The staging was interesting enough, but with many of these things that's the best thing about it and the play itself wasn't that great, with some episodes better than others. It was mostly saved by the acting, which was good.
I hate it when they get interactive. Occasionally the actors would ask audience members questions like "Are you looking for love?" Or "Have you ever had your heart broken?" and I just stood well out of the way and probably would have told them that it's none of their business had they ignored my spoil sport mug and asked me. Anyway, it's ok for £10 but fairly forgettable.
Virtual Blue
ready
Thanks for letting me know. I was tempted by this but bought tickets for The Trial instead.
Did you happen to watch The Drowned Man? That was fun (though the actors did not engage directly with the audience. I went to a Secret Cinema production once and that was the worst. found the actors too intrusive).
Reno
The In Kraut
The Drowned Man was great and ive seen a few other Punch Drunk things. Their environments are so elaborate that it doesn't matter that the plays themselves never amount to that much as you can go on your own adventure.
belboid
Exasperated, not angry.
Camelot: The Shining City
An updated version of ye olde classic, in a site specific production from the always entertaining Sluing Low and Sheffield Peoples Theatre. The opening part - staged and set in the Crucible was probably the strongest section, with a just about plausible (and followable) plot about the rise of a 'revolutionary' youth army based around chivalry and just being bloody decent. After that it moved out into the streets of Sheffield, with a cast of 150 running around, waving flags and letting off big bangs.
They made some very good use of the spaces involved, and a lot of it did look spectacular. but the problem of going outside, and requiring the audience to don headphones, is that you dont know where the voices are actually coming from, quite often you'd have half the audience looking around trying to workout who was actually speaking, and from where. Also, the story started to get rather more suspect and implausible.
But it was a spectacular show, and quite a lot of fun. The final big battle did look great, and all the crew were clearly having a lot of fun.
An updated version of ye olde classic, in a site specific production from the always entertaining Sluing Low and Sheffield Peoples Theatre. The opening part - staged and set in the Crucible was probably the strongest section, with a just about plausible (and followable) plot about the rise of a 'revolutionary' youth army based around chivalry and just being bloody decent. After that it moved out into the streets of Sheffield, with a cast of 150 running around, waving flags and letting off big bangs.
They made some very good use of the spaces involved, and a lot of it did look spectacular. but the problem of going outside, and requiring the audience to don headphones, is that you dont know where the voices are actually coming from, quite often you'd have half the audience looking around trying to workout who was actually speaking, and from where. Also, the story started to get rather more suspect and implausible.
But it was a spectacular show, and quite a lot of fun. The final big battle did look great, and all the crew were clearly having a lot of fun.
belboid
Exasperated, not angry.
belboid
Exasperated, not angry.
Couple of productions from the marvelous Kneehigh coming up:
Dead Dog In A Suitcase - a new version of A Beggars Opera
Rebecca - the Daphne Du Maurier thingy.
Both should be great, the last Emma Rice productions before she buggers off to the Globe
Dead Dog In A Suitcase - a new version of A Beggars Opera
Rebecca - the Daphne Du Maurier thingy.
Both should be great, the last Emma Rice productions before she buggers off to the Globe
belboid
Exasperated, not angry.
Dead Dog was fucking brilliant, sharp, satirical, and hilarious in parts. I'm not sure if I've ever been to a show where the audience was positively whooping along in delight at some of the segments. A positively gig like atmosphere. Even the lass we took along last minute cos someone else dropped out, who was rather worried about it - 'songs? You didn't tell me there were going to be songs' was absolutely pissing herself.
There are a few days left in Leeds, then Liverpool, Bristol, Shoreditch and, uhh, Wellington NZ. Go and see it if you possibly can.
There are a few days left in Leeds, then Liverpool, Bristol, Shoreditch and, uhh, Wellington NZ. Go and see it if you possibly can.
belboid
Exasperated, not angry.
A double bill of fine dramas this week. Well, sort of.
A Raising In the Sun is a fifties classic, about a black family trying to 'better' themselves with a dead husbands inheritance. Still sharp, witty and insightful, with terrific performances from the four main characters, it's only weakness was that it was probably directed a bit too straight and naturalistic, it keeps the play firmly in the fifties rather than indicting it has anything to say about modern America. Still worth seeing tho, if you are in Ipswich, Liverpoool, Coventry, Croydon or wherever else it is going.
The followed it by seeing my mate in a performance of And Then There Were None. God, why do we do such things to ourselves? The bloke playing the copper was, at least, no worse than Burn Gorman in the beeb xmas adaptation.
A Raising In the Sun is a fifties classic, about a black family trying to 'better' themselves with a dead husbands inheritance. Still sharp, witty and insightful, with terrific performances from the four main characters, it's only weakness was that it was probably directed a bit too straight and naturalistic, it keeps the play firmly in the fifties rather than indicting it has anything to say about modern America. Still worth seeing tho, if you are in Ipswich, Liverpoool, Coventry, Croydon or wherever else it is going.
The followed it by seeing my mate in a performance of And Then There Were None. God, why do we do such things to ourselves? The bloke playing the copper was, at least, no worse than Burn Gorman in the beeb xmas adaptation.
Reno
The In Kraut
In a combination of this
How to get cheap(ish) theatre tickets
and this
How long do you give it before you give up on a bad book / film?
thread I went to see In The Heights at the Kings Cross Theatre and left during the break.
The reason why I went to see it was because I got a cheap ticket and the same playwright's latest show, the hip hop musical Hamilton is currently the hottest ticket on Broadway. This was the show he wrote before and it too was very well received. It wasn't that it was bad, just mediocre with unmenorable songs and a plot and characters I couldn't get into. Not much seemed at stake. Sometimes when a show runs for a while the cast get a little tired and I didn't feel the energy this supposed lively Latin New York community was supposed to give off. There were also four understudies in the cast and the actress who played the heroine's mother was obviously the same age as her daughter, which I found really distracting. Maybe it got brilliant in the second half, I'll never know.
Last week I saw Funny Girl at the Menier, the musical famous for making Babs Streisand a star. Not a great show because to plot seems trivial. Again, there isn't much at stake. Comedy Vaudeville star Fanny Brice gets famous real quick and handles it well enough and the only drama is that she married a lovable rogue. This show however works because the staging was great, there are a few great tunes in it and Sheridan Smith is a star and truly compelling to watch.
Otherwise I've been seeing nearly every play at The Soutwark Playhouse over the last year, the last three being Casa Valentina by Harvey Fierstein, Xanadu which was a camp delight and Grey Gardens, the musical based on the 70s documentary, all of which were fantastic. The next show I'm going to see there is an all women version of Cyrano de Bergerac, starring Kathryn Hunter, an incredible physical performer and maybe the most mesmerising actress I've ever seen on stage.
How to get cheap(ish) theatre tickets
and this
How long do you give it before you give up on a bad book / film?
thread I went to see In The Heights at the Kings Cross Theatre and left during the break.
The reason why I went to see it was because I got a cheap ticket and the same playwright's latest show, the hip hop musical Hamilton is currently the hottest ticket on Broadway. This was the show he wrote before and it too was very well received. It wasn't that it was bad, just mediocre with unmenorable songs and a plot and characters I couldn't get into. Not much seemed at stake. Sometimes when a show runs for a while the cast get a little tired and I didn't feel the energy this supposed lively Latin New York community was supposed to give off. There were also four understudies in the cast and the actress who played the heroine's mother was obviously the same age as her daughter, which I found really distracting. Maybe it got brilliant in the second half, I'll never know.
Last week I saw Funny Girl at the Menier, the musical famous for making Babs Streisand a star. Not a great show because to plot seems trivial. Again, there isn't much at stake. Comedy Vaudeville star Fanny Brice gets famous real quick and handles it well enough and the only drama is that she married a lovable rogue. This show however works because the staging was great, there are a few great tunes in it and Sheridan Smith is a star and truly compelling to watch.
Otherwise I've been seeing nearly every play at The Soutwark Playhouse over the last year, the last three being Casa Valentina by Harvey Fierstein, Xanadu which was a camp delight and Grey Gardens, the musical based on the 70s documentary, all of which were fantastic. The next show I'm going to see there is an all women version of Cyrano de Bergerac, starring Kathryn Hunter, an incredible physical performer and maybe the most mesmerising actress I've ever seen on stage.
Last edited:
bimble
floofy
I'm going to this next week- hardly ever get to the theatre me but so glad I spotted the poster for this, am really excited, cos Ma Rainey is one of my (few) heros .. 
Ma Rainey's Black Bottom
Ma Rainey's Black Bottom
purenarcotic
Conveniently Pocket Sized
Going to see single spies by Alan Bennett next week, hoping it will be good.
redsquirrel
This Machine Kills Progressives
The Village Bike by the Red Stitch company. Somewhat mixed feelings about this, at times I thought it was excellent then I'd swing completely the other way. I think this was to with the play itself rather than the performance which was very good. The fact that nearly all the characters are utter wankers while not necessarily a problem didn't help, I don't think you have to feel sympathy for a character but I do think you need to be able to empathise with them. The only character that I really connected with was Becky (brilliantly played by Ella Caldwell), and even then only half of the time. Anyway glad I went as it was definitely interesting.
belboid
Exasperated, not angry.
Not exactly at a theatre, more at a chippy...
Freedom Studios
Ayla’s a shy teenager, secretly dreaming of a grime music career. Gram’s a disillusioned, brass-loving, chip shop owner, falling out of step as the world changes around him. They’re like chalk & cheese – will they ever be fish & chips?
Join us, as we tour northern fish & chip restaurants with this brand new UK-grime-versus-Yorkshire-brass show.
#ChipShoptheMusical celebrates traditional and emerging Yorkshire and British art and culture.
A small meal of fish and chips and a drink is included with the ticket price.
Freedom Studios
Ayla’s a shy teenager, secretly dreaming of a grime music career. Gram’s a disillusioned, brass-loving, chip shop owner, falling out of step as the world changes around him. They’re like chalk & cheese – will they ever be fish & chips?
Join us, as we tour northern fish & chip restaurants with this brand new UK-grime-versus-Yorkshire-brass show.
#ChipShoptheMusical celebrates traditional and emerging Yorkshire and British art and culture.
A small meal of fish and chips and a drink is included with the ticket price.
redsquirrel
This Machine Kills Progressives
Romeo & Juliet - Bell Shakespeare Company (Aus equivalent of the RSC), not my favourite Shakespeare play but really well done, both leads good, especially Juliet. Also starred the son of a former colleague, which I didn't realise till just before it started.
Miss Julie - Melbourne Theatre Company, version of Strindberg's classic with an 'updated' script. I'm not sure how well that worked TBH and the altered ending didn't add anything, but overall play was really excellent. The set was really interesting with a two way mirror along the side parallel to the audience. There where camera's behind the glass, with their view displayed on a screen above the stage. It good have been one of those things too clever for for their own good which end up as a gimmick but it really worked well. Robin McLeavy was fantastic in the title role. Best thing I've seen at the theatre for some time.
The Glass Menagerie - Belvior, strangely I saw this the week after Miss Julie and it too made use of camera's, which while they weren't the success they were in Miss Julie worked well enough. Despite that the performance, while perfectly good in itself, did rather confirm to me that I'm not fan of Williams. I don't know what it is about his writing but it just doesn't draw me in, compared to the other two this just felt a bit flat.
Off to see a version of Double Indemnity tomorrow.
Miss Julie - Melbourne Theatre Company, version of Strindberg's classic with an 'updated' script. I'm not sure how well that worked TBH and the altered ending didn't add anything, but overall play was really excellent. The set was really interesting with a two way mirror along the side parallel to the audience. There where camera's behind the glass, with their view displayed on a screen above the stage. It good have been one of those things too clever for for their own good which end up as a gimmick but it really worked well. Robin McLeavy was fantastic in the title role. Best thing I've seen at the theatre for some time.
The Glass Menagerie - Belvior, strangely I saw this the week after Miss Julie and it too made use of camera's, which while they weren't the success they were in Miss Julie worked well enough. Despite that the performance, while perfectly good in itself, did rather confirm to me that I'm not fan of Williams. I don't know what it is about his writing but it just doesn't draw me in, compared to the other two this just felt a bit flat.
Off to see a version of Double Indemnity tomorrow.
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