Going to the theatre

**Wed Sep 12, 2007 9:53 am**

I saw "Cats"

on Saturday at the Birmingham Hippodrome, it was very good.

**Wed Sep 12, 2007 9:56 am**

moose wrote:I saw "Cats" on Saturday at the Birmingham Hippodrome, it was very good.

And that's not a sentence you'll read too often in your lifetime. Savour it. Glad you enjoyed the show!

So, how shall I put this.....um...it's back, is it? "Cats"? On tour, like? Now and forever?

:shock:

**Wed Sep 12, 2007 11:28 am**

philipchevron wrote:
moose wrote:I saw "Cats" on Saturday at the Birmingham Hippodrome, it was very good.

And that's not a sentence you'll read too often in your lifetime. Savour it. Glad you enjoyed the show!

So, how shall I put this.....um...it's back, is it? "Cats"? On tour, like? Now and forever?

Amen

**Wed Sep 12, 2007 1:58 pm**

philipchevron wrote:
Shaz wrote:That's an enticing collection. I like the sound of the O'Neill. I remember seeing a five and a half hour National Theatre version of The Iceman Cometh some years ago. And because me and my friends were impoverished students at the time, we paid a quid for a seat with no back to it. I think they call it character-forming.

Sounds like our trip to see John Simm in Elling is off.

Well, I like it that Spacey's not having O'Neill all his own way, excellent though that often is. Garry Hynes has made the most epic commitments to Irish writers over the years - Synge, Keane, McDonagh most notably. If "Long Day's" works and she embarks on an O'Neill journey, well, the drools are upon me already.

Is "Elling" canceled? I was seeing it October 4.

[Yes, peasants of pedantry, I know O'Neill's not "Irish". Neither is McDonagh. Nor Synge, if you look through the telescope a certain way.]

I'd love to see Hynes do O'Neill. I've only ever seen her work on Irish plays. Although didn't she have a guest season at the RSC some years ago? I'm blanking on what she directed then, though.

Elling's still on -- it was the group I was going with who have managed to cock up.

Four of us meet up in London periodically to go to the theatre (when we can get our visas from the sticks arranged :wink:

) But one of our number is at medical school and about to embark on her final year and is having both accommodation and placement issues to sort out. I am wondering if I can, erm, manufacture a trip to the British Library where I'll *have* to stay overnight and just happen to find myself at a loose end during the evening. :wink:

**Thu Sep 20, 2007 7:08 am**

Off to see Mark Rylance's latest production tonight...

**Mon Oct 08, 2007 1:21 pm**

Once again, I am able to offer Medusans the following SINGLE tickets for theatre productions I am unable to attend on the dates specified. I require no monetary compensation for getting my calendar/diary involuntarily muddled. They are best seats in the house or close to it. As always, whoever asks first, gets.

Saturday 10 November 2007 14:30 RHINOCEROS by Eugene Ionesco

Royal Court Stalls (Front Row)

Saturday 10 November 2007 19:30 THE ARSONISTS by Max Frisch

Royal Court Stalls (Third Row)

**Mon Oct 08, 2007 10:19 pm**

philipchevron wrote:Saturday 10 November 2007 19:30 THE ARSONISTS by Max Frisch

Philip, if that offer is still not taken up, I'd love the chance to see this. As I have benefited from your generosity so much before, perhaps you can put me SECOND on the list, in case nobody else wants it?

I hate to think that this is bad news and your hearing is recovering more slowly than you had expected - hope you have a more pleasant reason for foregoing your ticket.

Did you make it to Elling the other day?

**Tue Oct 09, 2007 10:35 am**

Christine wrote:
philipchevron wrote:Saturday 10 November 2007 19:30 THE ARSONISTS by Max Frisch

Philip, if that offer is still not taken up, I'd love the chance to see this. As I have benefited from your generosity so much before, perhaps you can put me SECOND on the list, in case nobody else wants it?

I hate to think that this is bad news and your hearing is recovering more slowly than you had expected - hope you have a more pleasant reason for foregoing your ticket.

Did you make it to Elling the other day?

As is my custom now, I go the play, grasp as much as I can and then immediately read the text of the play. In this way, I have been able to deduce that the Sebastian Barry (The Pride Of Parnell Street) [Tivoli Theatre, Dublin] rings slightly less than true than I'd hoped for and that Elling [Trafalgar Studios, London] is a bizarre piece made great by John Simm giving the performance of the year. We all know Simm is a talented TV actor with a wry edge, but this play puts him over the top and into a completely different league. He may now be considered Britain's best comic actor, by which I don't mean in the rip-roaring stand-up goes legit sense. He has the greatness of (presumably) a Will Kempe or a Charles Hawtrey (the original), playing comedy and tragedy at a knife's edge to each other. Superb.

Sometimes the performances just transcend my ability to hear them anyway. Marie Mullen as Mary Tyrone in Long Day's Journey Into Night [Gaiety, Dublin] is the best I've ever seen. No nonsense here, a wonderful 4 and a half hour tour-de-force. I heard not a word of it, but some actors just perform with their faces, and you become acutely aware of how brilliant this can be when you cannot depend on their words because you are 90% deaf. Same with Fiddler On The Roof [Savoy Theatre, London]. About 20 minutes in you're thinking maybe it really is time Fiddler was quietly consigned to Broadway history, but then Henry Goodman delivers a performance as Tevye that erases the memory of all previous attempts, Harvey Feirstein, Alfred Molina, Topol, yes even the great Zero Mostel. And Beverley Klein is every inch his equal as Golde. On this occasion, you ignore the text and buy the "New London Cast Recording" CD on your way out of the Savoy, trusting in your expensive new headphones to do the rest.

So, no truly unhappy experiences, except to say that Dress Circle ROW A, Seat 45, while it is without doubt the BEST seat in the Coliseum, is just not good enough for The Magic Flute, not THIS great Nick Hytner reading, seen for what looks like the last time, when you cannot hear it. I'm afraid I had to leave at intermission, a bundle of misery. And finally, I'm not at all sure the new RSC Twelfth Night [Courtyard, Stratford Upon Avon], with John Lithgow in his yellow stockings cross-garter'd, is quite as deserving of the raves it's had. I've seen Lithgow tear up Broadway stages in the musicals Dirty Rotten Scoundrels and Sweet Smell Of Success, even if the shows left a little to be desired. But he is so easy to picture as Malvolio, and delivers that imagined performance so faithfully, that not even the yellow stockings draw laughter when they appear. Odd. The rest of the production is actually a bit too clever for its own good. Neil Bartlett is well known for his cross-gendered tomfoolery and rightly feted for it, but his attempts here to ADD to Shakespeare's own scheme really don't achieve anything, nor do they beg any more interesting questions about gender politics than Mark Rylance's recent Globe production did, more entertainingly and more shrewdly.

**Tue Oct 09, 2007 10:59 am**

Tom Crean - Antarctic Explorer 15 UK Dates 26/10/07 to 11/12/07

(including Salford Quays, Swansea, Darlo, Alnwick, Croydon Clocktower, Shoreham , Eastleigh etc)

Written and performed by Aidan Dooley. Saw this in Brighton in the summer, superb stuff

Crean was from Annascaul, Kerry and was the only man to have been on 3 expeditions to the Antarctic with Scott & Shackleton

http://www.tomcrean.co.uk

**Tue Oct 09, 2007 12:28 pm**

The ARSONISTS ticket has a good home. RHINOCEROS still available.

Saturday 10 November 2007 14:30 RHINOCEROS by Eugene Ionesco

Royal Court Stalls (Front Row)

**Wed Oct 10, 2007 12:45 am**

If you want a laugh a second out loud go and see Brendan O'Carrol's Mrs Brownes last wedding. Saw it at the Sunderland empire last Friday and it was brilliant. Great Friday night after a long week at work. I wouldn't take your granny though.. or probably not even your mam :lol:

**Mon Oct 15, 2007 9:55 am**

philipchevron wrote:Dress Circle ROW A, Seat 45, while it is without doubt the BEST seat in the Coliseum, is just not good enough for The Magic Flute, not THIS great Nick Hytner reading, seen for what looks like the last time, when you cannot hear it. I'm afraid I had to leave at intermission, a bundle of misery.

Very sorry to hear, that would have been so enjoyable.

We went to see Rough Crossings at the Lyric Hammersmith. Epic and moving; even my boys who voluntarily only go to football matches thought it was a compelling story about the fight against slavery. Which it is, to say the least.

**Tue Oct 16, 2007 9:01 pm**

Jasus!

Philip or anyone

did you manage to get tickets for Othello / Ewan McGregor / Donmar?

Tickets went on sale yesterday morning and all 100 shows sold out yesterday morning. I got to the box office today.

Apparently Jude Law is playing Hamlet there in 2009. I better start queuing...

**Tue Oct 16, 2007 9:50 pm**

http://www.donmarwarehouse.com/pl62.html

'day tickets will be available'

GET WELL PHILIP

**Wed Oct 17, 2007 9:39 am**

CM wrote:Jasus!

Philip or anyone

did you manage to get tickets for Othello / Ewan McGregor / Donmar?

Tickets went on sale yesterday morning and all 100 shows sold out yesterday morning. I got to the box office today.

Apparently Jude Law is playing Hamlet there in 2009. I better start queuing...

Yes, I did. It's worth paying the £30 per annum "Backstage Crew" membership to a tiny place like the Donmar just to steal a march (if only by a few days) on the "general public". Anyway, I'm sure this'll move to Wyndhams if the actors are up for it.

Going to the theatre

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