The Divine Mrs S

[frankubelik]

The Divine Ms Stirling. Hugely enjoyable, very Theatrical, slightly too long but it's great fun and RS superb. A middle-aged actress facing career decisions, a difficult playwright and trauma following family death........Hmmm and not a camera in sight!

[jr]

I saw this Saturday evening and I did like it. It is funny and informative - I don't agree with some of the reviews that there is too much exposition, I didn't know anything about the real character an did not feel they were lecturing me about her.

Rachel Stirling, who was a surprise for me in Private lives, is fantastic and definitely knows what she is doing. She can be funny, angry, moving and commanding.

There are a lot of funny lines and some (intended) modern language that I think it makes the play flow better and not so periody (if that's a word).

It doesn't seem to be selling that well but honestly it is a much better play than a lot of stuff getting a lot of praise at the WE or the National.

[showgirl]

This was the 2nd play I'd seen within days which didn't live up to my expectations (the other being Underdog - The Other Bronte), yet on paper it sounded a surefire success to me: a play about my favourite subject, theatre, with a great lead actor, by a writer whose work is always interesting and at the venue in London I like best. In the event it was fine but unlike Kerry Jackson, never really engaged me as I'd hoped. I did like Dominic Rowan as the brooding brother but think the issue I had was that April de Angelis was telling a true story so wasn't in charge of the narrative, only its treatment

[tmesis]

I found this quite disappointing. It doesn’t seem to get the tone right, occupying a middle ground between straightforward biog and comic send up. It was going more for the latter and was just not funny enough. It would have benefited by being rewritten by Ben Elton.

The resulting mish-mash dragged and I was looking at my watch frequently.

[mkb]

Apr 13, 2024 17:50:14 GMT tmesis said:

I found this quite disappointing. It doesn’t seem to get the tone right, occupying a middle ground between straightforward biog and comic send up. It was going more for the latter and was just not funny enough. It would have benefited by being rewritten by Ben Elton.

The resulting mish-mash dragged and I was looking at my watch frequently.

This was exactly how I felt.  The humour was not on my wavelength so the comic aspect failed, and the historical story was not sufficiently interesting, to me at least.

The cast make the best of it, and Rachel Stirling is on her usual fine form.  The set design is well judged too, with some nicely lit moments, but the script is a misfire.

Two stars.

Act 1: 19:34-20:37
Act 2: 20:58-21:59
(Seen Saturday 20 April 2024)