Friday 28 December 2012
Saturday, 29 December 2012
Tuesday, 27 November 2012
One Man, Two Guvnors; Theatre Royal
Present: Gill, Pierre-Yves, Luuk, Nicola DL, Barbara
Date: November 26, 2012
I long resisted seeing this as I thought it would be too slapstick for me.
How wrong I was.
A brilliant night's entertainment with an hilarious script and some brilliant audience "plants". I could watch this time and time again. Hmm, an alternate career beckons ... I wonder what you can get paid to sit in the audience every night and offer up a hummus sandwich?
Date: November 26, 2012
I long resisted seeing this as I thought it would be too slapstick for me. How wrong I was.
A brilliant night's entertainment with an hilarious script and some brilliant audience "plants". I could watch this time and time again. Hmm, an alternate career beckons ... I wonder what you can get paid to sit in the audience every night and offer up a hummus sandwich?
Tuesday, 6 November 2012
Belvedere, White Bear Theatre Club
Present: Nic, Kate
Date: November 6, 2012
This was a great production by GunPowder Theatre with a pared-down set. An playwright and hospitalised psychiatric patient is visited by a woman from his past. Physical evidence of their encounters never remains for the doctor to see, albeit always for logical reasons. What is real and not real merge into one.
I remember we were impressed by the acting and engaged by the plot.
Date: November 6, 2012
This was a great production by GunPowder Theatre with a pared-down set. An playwright and hospitalised psychiatric patient is visited by a woman from his past. Physical evidence of their encounters never remains for the doctor to see, albeit always for logical reasons. What is real and not real merge into one.
I remember we were impressed by the acting and engaged by the plot.
Thursday, 18 October 2012
Jumpy, Duke of York Theatre
Present: Nic, Brian, Pierre-Yves, Luuk, Barbara, Nicola DL, Gill, Dorianne
Date: October 17, 2012
Tamsin Greig starred (and excelled) as a 50 year old woman on the edge of a nervous breakdown, whose best friend and one-time rampant feminist is now performing burlesque (cue the play's most cringe-worthy but hilarious scene). This was funny, sad and heart-warming. A brilliant play with excellent performances all round.
Date: October 17, 2012
Tamsin Greig starred (and excelled) as a 50 year old woman on the edge of a nervous breakdown, whose best friend and one-time rampant feminist is now performing burlesque (cue the play's most cringe-worthy but hilarious scene). This was funny, sad and heart-warming. A brilliant play with excellent performances all round.
Wednesday, 5 September 2012
Last of the Haussmans, The National Theatre (Lyttelton)
Present: Nic, Kate, Helen and Pierre-Yves, Luuk, Barbara and Nicola DL
Date: September 4, 2012
As I write now in July 2013, aside from the tour de force that was Julie Walters as an ageing hippie, living on the south coast in a crumbling art deco home, flashing her genitals at Richard Dimbleby who lived nearby (!), I have sketchy memories of this tale of a dysfunctional but ultimately loving family gathering as their mother recovers from skin cancer.
In brief those memories are: I enjoyed it, I think we all did, and a lady in our row had to be taken out quite noisily (whether the cancer death story hit too raw a nerve or whether it was something else, we'll never know).
In fact-checking the above, I discover the son was played by Rory Kinnear (see Othello, July 2013).
Date: September 4, 2012
As I write now in July 2013, aside from the tour de force that was Julie Walters as an ageing hippie, living on the south coast in a crumbling art deco home, flashing her genitals at Richard Dimbleby who lived nearby (!), I have sketchy memories of this tale of a dysfunctional but ultimately loving family gathering as their mother recovers from skin cancer.
In brief those memories are: I enjoyed it, I think we all did, and a lady in our row had to be taken out quite noisily (whether the cancer death story hit too raw a nerve or whether it was something else, we'll never know).
In fact-checking the above, I discover the son was played by Rory Kinnear (see Othello, July 2013).
Friday, 17 August 2012
The Doctor's Dilemma, The National theatre (Lyttelton)
Present: Kate, Nic, Helen
Date: August 16, 2012
This was a GBS play.
An arrogant doctor has a revolutionary treatment for TB but limited numbers he can deploy it for. A young woman, with whom he falls in love, visits and begs him to treat her husband (who is a visionary artist but not very nice). He arranges an "interview" by a panel of doctors over dinner at a swanky restaurant. There they find out that a fellow doctor, humble, caring, poor, nice, mediocre also needs the same treatment. Will he save the artist of the woman he loves or his friend?
I can't really recall what happened to the friend. I do recall GBS was fairly damning of doctors in this time of somewhat primitive medicine and I know the woman became a widow and turned down the doctors advances. I also recall enjoying this but, perhaps, not loving it?
Date: August 16, 2012
This was a GBS play. An arrogant doctor has a revolutionary treatment for TB but limited numbers he can deploy it for. A young woman, with whom he falls in love, visits and begs him to treat her husband (who is a visionary artist but not very nice). He arranges an "interview" by a panel of doctors over dinner at a swanky restaurant. There they find out that a fellow doctor, humble, caring, poor, nice, mediocre also needs the same treatment. Will he save the artist of the woman he loves or his friend?
I can't really recall what happened to the friend. I do recall GBS was fairly damning of doctors in this time of somewhat primitive medicine and I know the woman became a widow and turned down the doctors advances. I also recall enjoying this but, perhaps, not loving it?
Tuesday, 10 July 2012
Thursday, 28 June 2012
Detroit, The National (Cottesloe)
Present: Nic, Helen
Date: June 27, 2012
Drinks: Post-theatre at the Propstore.
Kate was sadly too jet-lagged from her transatlantic travels to join us for this one and missed a treat. Although the reviews were mediocre, we enjoyed it immensely. Perhaps it didn't dig deep into the American psyche or seek to find reasons for, and answers to, societal malaise but it presented two differently dysfunctional couples and their catastrophic effect on each other through great acting and an astonishing set, with humour and pathos.
Entertaining theatre and that's what we go for.
Date: June 27, 2012
Drinks: Post-theatre at the Propstore.
Kate was sadly too jet-lagged from her transatlantic travels to join us for this one and missed a treat. Although the reviews were mediocre, we enjoyed it immensely. Perhaps it didn't dig deep into the American psyche or seek to find reasons for, and answers to, societal malaise but it presented two differently dysfunctional couples and their catastrophic effect on each other through great acting and an astonishing set, with humour and pathos.
Entertaining theatre and that's what we go for.
Thursday, 21 June 2012
Yes, Prime Minister; Trafalgar Studios
Present: Nic, Brian, Pierre-Yves, Luuk, Nicola DL, Barbara
Date: June 20, 2012
Dinner: Pre-theatre at Jom Makan, Trafalgar Square (Nic, Gill, Brian, Nicola)
Decent, not exceptional, food in quiet surrounds that suggested the restaurant wouldn't last, despite some dishes and rinks that we declared most authentic.
Yes, Prime Minister was funny but this was decent-ish, not exceptional theatre. The star of the show was Sir Humphrey Appleby, of course, with some great lines that really did echo the classic TV show - a couple of brilliant, verbose monologues - verbal sleight of hand. It was natural that this wouldn't live up to the classic TV series and it didn't and, sadly, when many of the cast of this production transferred to a new version of the TV show later the same year, it fell flat, feeling more two-dimensional and false than this stage version.
Date: June 20, 2012
Dinner: Pre-theatre at Jom Makan, Trafalgar Square (Nic, Gill, Brian, Nicola)
Decent, not exceptional, food in quiet surrounds that suggested the restaurant wouldn't last, despite some dishes and rinks that we declared most authentic.
Yes, Prime Minister was funny but this was decent-ish, not exceptional theatre. The star of the show was Sir Humphrey Appleby, of course, with some great lines that really did echo the classic TV show - a couple of brilliant, verbose monologues - verbal sleight of hand. It was natural that this wouldn't live up to the classic TV series and it didn't and, sadly, when many of the cast of this production transferred to a new version of the TV show later the same year, it fell flat, feeling more two-dimensional and false than this stage version.
Friday, 1 June 2012
Thursday, 22 March 2012
Bingo, The Young Vic
Present: Brian, Nic, Gill, Luuk, Pierre-Yves, Barbara
Date: March 21st, 2012
Dinner: Post-theatre at Meson Don Felipe
Patrick Stewart as Shakespeare and not all that endearing, as I recall. There was a great scene in a pub with Ben Johnson, I think (Richard McCabe, the reviews tell me). I vaguely think we saw Shakespeare dying alone because his wife and daughter were too scared to attend him (?) but I don't recall being much moved by his plight. Vaguer recollections include being much more moved by the plight of a young, itinerant, mentally disturbed woman who was executed, showing the brutality of the times quite forcefully.
I have a very clear recollection of Brian's parking ticket - not the only one to have increased the cost of a night's theatre visit! I also recall good tapas and a man playing guitar on the false roof of the ladies toilets, who had to use a step-ladder to descend for breaks.
Date: March 21st, 2012
Dinner: Post-theatre at Meson Don Felipe
Patrick Stewart as Shakespeare and not all that endearing, as I recall. There was a great scene in a pub with Ben Johnson, I think (Richard McCabe, the reviews tell me). I vaguely think we saw Shakespeare dying alone because his wife and daughter were too scared to attend him (?) but I don't recall being much moved by his plight. Vaguer recollections include being much more moved by the plight of a young, itinerant, mentally disturbed woman who was executed, showing the brutality of the times quite forcefully.
I have a very clear recollection of Brian's parking ticket - not the only one to have increased the cost of a night's theatre visit! I also recall good tapas and a man playing guitar on the false roof of the ladies toilets, who had to use a step-ladder to descend for breaks.
Wednesday, 15 February 2012
The Ladykillers, Gielgud Theatre
Present: Brian, Nic, Pierre-Yves, Luuk, Gill, Barbara, Nicola DL
Date: February 15, 2012
All I remember of this one is the "too-long-scarf" gag (which wasn't funny) and that the rest of it ... well, wasn't funny. Ah well, you can't win them all. Oddly at time of writing this (July 2013) the production seems to be having a revival. I don't know why.
Date: February 15, 2012
Thursday, 26 January 2012
Cirque du Soleil, Royal Albert Hall
Present: Luuk, Pierre-Yves, Nicola DL, Barbara and (first-timers at "theatre club") Nic and Brian
Date: January 25, 2012
The show we saw was Totem. What can we say? Splendid acrobatics; a slow trapeze "dance" stood out as particularly beautiful and mesmerising though there were many more high octane performances.
Pics courtesy of The Guardian.
Date: January 25, 2012
The show we saw was Totem. What can we say? Splendid acrobatics; a slow trapeze "dance" stood out as particularly beautiful and mesmerising though there were many more high octane performances.
Pics courtesy of The Guardian.
Wednesday, 25 January 2012
Grief, The National Theatre (Cottesloe)
Present: Helen, Nic, Kate
Date: January 24, 2012
This was the Mike Leigh and, of course, aptly named: there was humour to the production but over all this was depressing but engaging. A war widow in the 50s, is incapable both of getting over her loss and of expressing her emotions. Her brother approaches retirement sadly; they have a ritual of evening drinks and sing little songs together. Her daughter approaches her 16th birthday; the generation gap between mother and daughter grows and threatens to engulf them. The end is shocking.
Date: January 24, 2012
This was the Mike Leigh and, of course, aptly named: there was humour to the production but over all this was depressing but engaging. A war widow in the 50s, is incapable both of getting over her loss and of expressing her emotions. Her brother approaches retirement sadly; they have a ritual of evening drinks and sing little songs together. Her daughter approaches her 16th birthday; the generation gap between mother and daughter grows and threatens to engulf them. The end is shocking.
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