Going to the theatre

[Eckhard]

I was fortunate that my parents took me to the theatre and the opera nearly every week for about four years in my teens. The theatre in our town does not have an own ensemble, so there came touring theatres from all over Germany.
Thus I have seen quite a lot. Unfortunately I have also seen quite a lot of crap. Especially some of the "modern" versions were pretty irritating.
I will never forget a one-man performance of "Richard III", performed by only one man that was naked about 50% of the time and the only stage probs being two buckets: One full of fake blood, the other full of hopefully fake vomit.
Fortunately the director had cut down the thing to its bare essentials: The performance only lasted about 45 minutes.

[sheva]

Curtains, the new Kander and Ebb (and others) tuner at the Al Hirschfeld Theatre is a lot of fun. It does something Steve Sondheim claimed couldn't be done, I think I'm right in saying, in that it combines good old fashioned musical comedy with a Whodunnit. David Hyde Pierce [Niles from Frasier] has become quite the Broadway song and dance man. He plays a detective who investigates backstage murder at an in-trouble-on-the-road-pre-Broadway musical in 1959. In the process, he not only solves the murders but rescues the show and gets the girl. It is pure escapism, but there's nothing the matter with that when a show is as rich with the gift of laughter as this one.

It opens tomorrow night and will be a massive hit.

Oh, that sounds fantastic. Can't go wrong with Kander and Ebb, and I could happily watch David Hyde Pierce do just about anything. Thanks for sharing this, Philip!

[Shaz]

I was fortunate that my parents took me to the theatre and the opera nearly every week for about four years in my teens. The theatre in our town does not have an own ensemble, so there came touring theatres from all over Germany.
Thus I have seen quite a lot. Unfortunately I have also seen quite a lot of crap. Especially some of the "modern" versions were pretty irritating.
I will never forget a one-man performance of "Richard III", performed by only one man that was naked about 50% of the time and the only stage probs being two buckets: One full of fake blood, the other full of hopefully fake vomit.
Fortunately the director had cut down the thing to its bare essentials: The performance only lasted about 45 minutes.

My parents weren't particularly theatre-goers, but from the age of about 14 to 21, I saw everything the RSC did at Stratford, plus all manner of fringe theatre productions in Cheltenham, which had a very thriving fringe. My favourite memory of the latter was a production of a Howard Barker play where the c-word was used about 40 times in the first ten minutes -- there was a steady stream of blue-rinse Cheltenham laydees heading for the door.

Once I moved around for work, it was a matter of what was going on it that town, or when I could get to London. My friends used to joke that the more off-the-wall and experimental it was, the more likely I was to be there!

I've never been to opera, and only a couple of times to ballet or dance. I saw Matthew Bourne's Swan Lake and am intrigued to see he'll be doing a gay version of Romeo and Juliet, which I definitely want to see.

[Christine]

the classics, comedies, dramas, what?

I am also a great fan of non-professional productions. This week I saw several short plays at my daughter's school which were fantastic. For their GCSEs they had to produce a "devised play", i.e., write and direct it themselves. Her school not being into frivolities, it was all very serious, arty, problem plays, clearly showing they had done their Brecht. Lots of enthusiasm in the acting, great ideas, with not much money to spend on stage and costumes. Obviously, not professional standard, but lots of fun.

Benno, sometimes you can get very cheap seats behind a pillar in the circle just under the skies, or a standing place. As a student I saw e.g. Tosca at Covent Garden for a fiver – ok, it's been a while, back in the dark ages when £1 was £1 – but I think the principle still holds.

[firehazard]

Benno, sometimes you can get very cheap seats behind a pillar in the circle just under the skies, or a standing place. As a student I saw e.g. Tosca at Covent Garden for a fiver – ok, it's been a while, back in the dark ages when £1 was £1 – but I think the principle still holds.

Yes, Christine, and it certainly used to be true that theatres often held back a number of standby tickets for sale on the day of performance, and often with a student discount. Ok, they tended to be up in the gods, but I saw a lot of good productions in London in my student days on this basis. So it's worth investigating.

[Benno]

thanks you lot
i will certainly check it out
even though shostakovich is closed now...


TO just opened a brand new opera house,
which is probably why the seats are so expensive
but i imagine the sound quality must be superb

[soulfinger]

I think the history of panto and where it is now are two separate things. As I understand it, panto has traditionally attracted a number of performers who were in effect panto specialists -- you wouldn't see them on TV, for example, during the rest of the year.

Now pantos seem to be jam-packed full of C and D list celebrities from minor soap operas.

On the subject of Pantomime, but slightly off topic I found this superb clip on Youtube recently. Its one of the few remaining clips of the Rochdale born comedian Norman Evans, who was a massive star in the 40’s and 50’s and appeared many times as dame in Panto and even became a star on Broadway!

His act was a major influence on Les Dawson who reprised it for the famous ‘Cissy and Ada’ sketches with Roy Barraclough

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l_n5IuYiD3k

Thank you Mark for that. I'd never seen it before and it's fantastic. It reminds me a bit of some of Al Read's radio show stuff. God Bless BBC7!
That whole -not saying the disreputable words but mouthing them - was something Les Dawson did so well I thought he'd invented it.
On the subject of Pantomime, it is still possible to see genuine, no soapstars panto. I've taken my kids to Oldham Coliseum for the past 12 years and it's invariably top drawer. Oh yes it is.

[philipchevron]

The Lady From Dubuque by Edward Albee (Theatre Royal Haymarket, London)

Can't say I liked the play much. Apart from his masterpiece Who's Afraid Of Virginia Woolf? I think I find Albee's "game" plays oddly lacking in heart or, in its absence, creative misanthropy. The Lady tries hard to be Pirandelloesque but merely seems cute.

All that said, I never miss an opportunity to watch Maggie Smith work and here she does what Maggie Smith usually does and does it very well, as always and gets good support from Catherine MacCormack (Act One) and Peter Francis James (Act Two).

Before I left New York I saw Liev Schreiber give a kinetic performance as the talk show host in Eric Bogosian's Talk Radio (Longacre Theatre) and Brian Dennehy and Christopher Plummer 'phone in theirs in the Scopes Monkey Trial play Inherit The Wind (Lyceum Theatre). Both plays are revivals touted as having some contemporary clout but, while the 1987 Bogosian play now seems prescient about America's imminent future, Inherit The Wind now appears to almost entirely miss the depths of feeling in the present day "debate" between creationists and scientists. This is not the play's fault - it was written in 1955, when Senator McCarthy/Communism seemed a more pressing polarity than theocons versus secularists - but it can no longer bear the weight of expectations.

[TheIrishRover]

Have you ever seen Cyrano de Bergerac, Mr C?

[philipchevron]

Have you ever seen Cyrano de Bergerac, Mr C?

I've never seen an entirely satisfactory version, no. For some reason, Beckett aside, I have a problem connecting with French theatre.

[TheIrishRover]

Well, I could always take it upon myself to compose a satisfactory version cast entirely of Pogues Forum members. That's actually not a bad idea. Meet up somewhere and hold plays. Then the random guy with one post and scizophrenia can come and kill all of us while we're together.

[Frances]

Meet up somewhere and hold plays.

Aren't we already doing that? I play appreciative audience member #1,967. By the way, who died and made you director?

[TheIrishRover]

Meet up somewhere and hold plays.

Aren't we already doing that? I play appreciative audience member #1,967. By the way, who died and made you director?

Well, I have been described as a ''pompous asshole who no one likes'' before. I think that's more than enough qualifications to make myself the director!

[Frances]

Well, I have been described as a ''pompous asshole who no one likes'' before. I think that's more than enough qualifications to make myself the director!

I thought I spied another round of compliments coming my way.It's like looking in a mirror.But now I see it's always about you, you, YOU! You really are perfect for the job!

[TheIrishRover]

I think I'd be perfect for the job too!

*Looks into a mirror*