We really don't care about theatre do we?

holy shit that was 4 hours of absolutely incredible stagecraft. i have NEVER seen an entire audience give a standing ovation for a full ten minutes but that's what happened.

just found out i won free tickets to see theatre de la ville-paris's staging of ionesco's 'rinocerose' tomorrow night!

btw I really liked the play Eazy directed, and not just cuz 40 mins is about the longest I can sit these days.

Hey, thanks. Didn't think you made it, between the two flights and the cane, and very glad you did.

I get these Theatermania discount emails that encourage you to "Go beyond Broadway..."
The first two shows offered in today's are Cougar the Musical and The Butt-cracker Suite.

I must've asked about the Steppenwolf VaWoolf? revival before , yeah? And has anyone seen Mies Julie in Brooklyn?

This I'd like to see:
http://www.thewrap.com/culture/article/fiona-shaw-returning-broadway-colm-toibins-testament-mary-72086

Haven't heard anything bad about VaWoolf all these years. Never was in the right place at the right time to see it.

This is funny:
http://www.broadway.com/buzz/166904/whos-virginia-woolf-watch-tracy-letts-and-amy-morton-endure-five-awkward-tv-questions/

^Saw it yesterday.

The state of Broadway audiences is such that the douse-your-phones announcement was made BEFORE EACH OF THE THREE ACTS. George's Who's Afraid monologue about the coming death of civilization via technology fulfilled.

Glad to hear it's worththe time and ticket (just saw the Albee thread). Did it feel like a good version of the same play you'd seen before, or new/fresh?

well since I'd never seen the full text performed, given the film cuts, yes it did seem fresh. I'm pretty sure the Act III scene where Martha tells Nick that George is the only man who's ever satisfied her was not in the movie?

I'm gonna look for that 4 x LP of the first staging now, tho I won't play it today...

I don't think I could watch that Fox interview, anymore than a snuff film.

Othello at the NT last night. It's not a play I've ever been really attached or close to, but was totally blasted by this production; nightmarish sense of plot both moving like clockwork and getting horribly out control; production as a real play of soldiery works; Lester and Kinnear brilliant, Kinnear especially, Iago w/ a kind of James Corden matiness. Wasn't sure he could pull it off - plays nice too well - but yes.

Glad I managed to score some tickets then. Going to some Punchdrunk thing tonight: a "promenade performance", there will be "areas of darkness and confined space", "haze and strobe effects", and "audiences will wear a mask for the duration of the performance". Ulp.

Apparently the standard line on Punchdrunk is "nice spectacle, shame about the narrative" - I somewhat concur but as a first timer I thought the spectacle (of "The Drowned Man: A Hollywood Fable") was fantastic, easily half a dozen genuine moments of wonder or surprise. On the level of individual performances it's closer to modern dance than theatre and the choreography was breathtaking, as were the performers. Apparently some reviewers wandered around in the dark struggling to find any action, I think they must have been idiots as there was almost always something going somewhere, we probably caught less than half of the action over the four floor venue and I'm seriously considering going back, even at £40 a ticket.

Woof otm, Othello really was all that. One of the best things I've seen at the NT. First time I've seen it, hard to imagine it done better (would like to see it done differently for comparison). Modern setting worked brilliantly. No sense of strained credulity from Iago's villainy or Othello's falling for it. Unexpected and genuine humour, loved Rodrigo's buffoonish turn as well as Iago's more darkly comic moments, and an utterly devastating climax.

keen to see that. apparently chimerica, now at the pinter, is really good.

also recently enjoyed public enemy at young vic and the night alive at the donmar.

Oh yeah, A Season in the Congo at the Young Vic was fantastic too. Definitely one of the better years for theatre - in my highly limited and doubtless unrepresentative experience.

I must check that out before it ends.

I also liked The Silence Of The Sea at Trafalgar Studios earlier in the year.

I saw The Amen Corner at the NT a couple of weeks ago. Good performances & staging but the play itself wasn't amazing. Managed to find a £10 ticket for Chimerica in Sept (one of the midweek matinees)- high hopes for that.

yeah it is meant to be amazing.

my biggest disappointment this year was mission drift at the nt shed. a lot of teachers/classmates from diploma i did were all raving about it, only time i've ever left something at the interval.

Wow, that bad!

I've done that once. It was Fiona Shaw in a Brecht. It got amazing reviews. I felt like an uncultured pinhead. Still fucked off for a pint.

It was a musical (which normally I'd hate but my teacher whom I massively respect said it was one of the best things she'd ever seen.) I didn't like the music. I found the plot convoluted and pretentious. It was repetitive and noisy. The acting was fine, no problems there, but tonally it just killed me.

I was quite benevolently watching on thinking how bad it was and my friend whom I brought was sitting their with a look of disgust behind her fingers.

Was quite a funny interval with her all "I bet you loved it" and me replying that I fucking hated it. Then a good laugh in the bar ripping it to pieces once we'd both agreed to fuck off before coming back.

It got great reviews but when I later read the comments to find some fellow haters they were full of people, seemingly reasonable people, saying they'd left or if not, that they wished they had.

Apparently a lot of the shows had huge gaps after the interval, which is bad on anyone performing in it. But as I say it wasn't the performers' fault.

sitting there* - sorry, hurried post.

That does sound fucking awful.

"quite benevolently watching on thinking how bad it was" would be a good board description

I think the performers were the writers etc of mission drift unfortunately

though corny in parts I found it entertaining enough and occasionally it hit a fair stride but its ~high concept~ kinda weak

Yeah I think that's fair. The fact I saw the closed caption show didn't help as reading all the song lyrics made it worse!

anyone got any favourite monologues?

i'm kind of making some stuff like that in my v amateur way. so far been reading friel's the faith healer, conor mcpherson, mark o'rowe, interested to try some of the beckett stuff too.

A man is not an orange. You can't eat the fruit and throw the peel away!

actually that one sucks tbh

inspirational.

Alright then, I really love the monologues (its almost all monologue) in Alan Clarke's TV film "Road" (its on youtube, great acting in it). It was originally a play by Jim Cartwright.

ah this sounds good, i'll check it out.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IA3re1Ng54k

speaking of friel, theres some good 'uns in "philadelphia here i come". at least from what i remember when i read it for the leaving cert.

yeah i love that play. also did it for the leaving.

i was thinking of entire plays that consist of monologues when i asked about this - seems to be something irish writers favour.

Saw a great monologue (one-man play) a way back in the 80s called Judgement by George Dillon. Very powerful and haunting, the memory of it has never left me.

that does sound good, hard to find though!

do ppl like Rattigan? My exposure is limited, but The Winslow Boy is getting p damn good reception on B'way

So...if you're a fledgling theatre group doing Sondheim's Assassins, and charging $20 a ticket, perhaps don't use MIDI FILES as your fucking accompaniment tracks? Also perhaps when you have a four part barbershop harmony in "Gun Song", that at least two of you are on the correct notes?

Feel so ripped off, if a friend of mine hadn't have been in it, I'd have left midway through.

What do you all think of Punchdrunk in general? I see Ledge was at The Drowned Man in London, upthread.

I saw this last night and I thought it was amazing, incredible sets, totally immersive, brilliant physical theatre. I saw Sleep No More i New York a few weeks ago and I loved that too.

My friend left early and I suspect she hated it. I just found the entire thing incredibly absorbing, it reminded me of the weirdest elements of acting class, and the same feeling of freedom that you get from that sort of deep dive into theatricality.;

Some of the David Lynch influence went from nod to rip-off, in The Drowned Man, like actually using music written by him felt a bit much, even if it was amazing seeing their incredibly costumed dancers shuffling along to The Pink Room from Fire Walk With Me... always felt this should be some alternative form of techno.

I also feel there's a slight hint of money spinning from what they do, but still love the worlds they create.

Last night I had this really odd one-on-one with one of the actresses where she led me into this room, shone a red light in my eyes and examined my face, then made me sign a form making my image "the property of Temple Studios" (the whole thing is set in a 60s film studio.)

She then put a trenchcoat and scarf on me and walked me into this pitch black corner of the room and left me for a minute or so, then these strobes started flickering and a director's voice came through directing me in this love scene whereby the actress re-entered from the darkness further away and this sort of face-off happened, it was all amazingly scripted, and the "scene" went on for a few minutes, then the lights came back on and she led me out and was like "that was wonderful - the studio will be in touch."

It's just been extended to March, I really recommend going.

I really liked it and I was a bit cynical at the outset and would actually really like to go again and have a different experience (I imagine) but it's expensive got my brother and his girlfriend tickets for his birthday and saw him a few days later and all he said was "your cowboy play was weird". I went in july (cheaper preview) and have occasionally thought since then "that's still going on night after night that's pretty cool" and now they've extended it!

Yeah I am tempted to go again, it was absolutely huge, I was on each floor but I am sure I missed bits. There were some incredibly creepy nooks and crannies around the place.

Their NY show has been going for two years.

I'd love to see this. Is there much of a narrative running through it LG?

^ pofaced way of saying tell us more about this love scene, tbh

It's all based on Woyzeck and Day Of The Locust, there is a narrative but it's quite abstract and the experience will be different wherever you decide to go, or whomever you follow. Personally after seeing the NY show, which was Macbeth meets Hitchcock, I didn't feel the need to follow all the main characters or to see the main scenes. Though it probably would be enjoyable to do that. It can be a collection of lots of little experiences.

It's mostly silent scenes expressed by physical theatrics or dance, though there is some speech. It's all quite muscular and wringy.

The love scene thing was like a one to one, which can happen you at Punchdrunk shows, but not always, is kind of luck of the draw, there are tons of different ones in each show they do, I think. (In NYC I waltzed with a witch.)

I basically walked after a sort of PA character after she'd done one of the main characters make-up and after she put me in the dark the director's voice came on and was talking about darkness and the city, and as the strobes came on it was like "in the shimmering lights a figure approaches you" and the actress kind of walked into this tiny enclosure of red curtains I was in.

There was a sort of confetti effect to the strobes and the director's voice was all this stuff about like "you never thought you'd see her again, yet here you are, you touch her face, you take her hand, you know this moment is fleeting, but it is the greatest moment of your life" and she was about to kiss me and then he's like CUT and it all ended.

It was sort of cheesy and dark in a Lynchian kind of way, but also really intense, the actress was v striking, again it reminded me of some of the more full-on things I've done in acting class, like total immersion in another person.

Obv lots of titillation involved, but that's kind of what Punchdrunk do, the shows are brimming with sex and sexual jealousy.

It's funny, the completist in me gets a bit paralysed by choice at the thought of open-ended participatory stuff in case I end up somehow missing what's 'important'. Obv I know that's not the point at all and is a stupid way to think, but it's a feeling I can never shake. Innocuous things that make you irrationally unconfident etc.

(Sounds great though!)

Speaking of caring about theatre, the four-hour Einstein on the Beach is streaming online this month, somewhere out there.

Meanwhile:
http://observer.com/2014/01/an-a-ffair-to-remember-toni-bentley-brings-her-anal-sex-memoir-to-the-stage/

I'm going to see Frank Langella in King Lear this Saturday. Don't think that one has anal sex in it, iirc.

Excited to see this Peter Brook doc at some point:

http://www.filmlinc.com/films/on-sale/the-tightrope

Medea at the Riverside (run has just ended) was v good, in parts. Medea itself was played as a vampiric sort which didn't scan with the later, powerful scenes where the logic for her actions is more fully laid out with an emotional core to them. The messenger's speech and re-telling of death was poetically and psychologically convincing and my favourite bit of acting. The score was excellent as well.

I should re-watch the Pasolini film, the play made it seem worse in my faint recollection of it.