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Post by Deleted on Aug 15, 2016 22:50:44 GMT
The thing I wondered about (can't remember if I mentioned it here as I saw it so long ago) was whether the bottle Burke's pal was drinking from, early on, was meant to topple over during their conversation. It looked to me like Burke made a desperate but ultimately unsuccessful grab at it as it went, but then, he may just have been acting...
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Post by peggs on Aug 16, 2016 11:40:03 GMT
Yes, Peggs, the big second. LOVE the belated gasp. No, jeanhunt, the bottle was upright when I saw it. It was rather good wasn't it. |
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Post by Deleted on Aug 16, 2016 11:48:59 GMT
Yes, Peggs, the big second. LOVE the belated gasp. No, jeanhunt, the bottle was upright when I saw it. We should be grateful his reactions are faster when dodging swords in The Musketeers, then. :-) (To be 100% fair, though, it wasn't his fault - I think the other bloke shifted position and the bottle tilted, it was just the other guy had his back to it and Burke happened to be facing...) |
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Post by Jon on Aug 16, 2016 17:58:17 GMT
Helen McCrory is filming Fearless a new ITV drama which rules out a West End transfer for Deep Blue Sea at least for this year.
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Post by Deleted on Aug 16, 2016 18:01:17 GMT
Helen McCrory is filming Fearless a new ITV drama which rules out a West End transfer for Deep Blue Sea at least for this year. I saw this too. Filming starts in August. They wouldn't transfer this without her so it's a shame as a transfer looks bleak now. Maybe in the new year though after No Man's Land? |
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Post by popcultureboy on Aug 17, 2016 7:16:33 GMT
People, Places & Things closed at the NT in November and didn't begin its West End run until the following March. Just because a transfer isn't immediate, doesn't mean the chances of it are bleak.
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Post by youngoffender on Sept 2, 2016 10:52:19 GMT
I saw the NT Live broadcast last night - perhaps the best way to see it, judging by some of the comments above, as you got the intimacy of facial close-ups and mics/subtitles to overcome any muffled dialogue. The camera direction was well handled, and Carrie Cracknell gave good interview in the break. Some irritating laughter at non-jokes for the first half hour, which fortunately calmed down once the audience realised they had not come to an Ayckbourn.
Rattigan's script remains superbly truthful and raw, but the production fell into the 'good but not great' category for me. As a couple have commented, I couldn't really get beyond 'Helen McCrory playing Hester' to the essence of the character. Tom Burke as Freddie and Nick Fletcher as Dr Miller were better for me, the latter's final exhortation to survive cutting right to the core.
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Post by Deleted on Sept 4, 2016 13:39:37 GMT
I saw this on Thursday too in the cinema, and loved it. I don't know Rattigan at all, and knew nothing about the play, and I've never seen any of the cast before as far as I'm aware, so I didn't have any expectations. I loved it though, and was transfixed. I loved the set design, I thought so many moments looked beautiful, like paintings.
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Post by rumbledoll on Sept 4, 2016 14:17:11 GMT
Maybe it IS the best way to see anything. With no expectations whatsover  |
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Post by stefy69 on Sept 5, 2016 6:37:51 GMT
Maybe it IS the best way to see anything. With no expectations whatsover Well then you're never disappointed ! |
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Post by rumbledoll on Sept 5, 2016 6:45:22 GMT
For me it's really hard to have none but I always try to keep my excitement down a bit |
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Post by Squire Sullen on Sept 21, 2016 13:04:24 GMT
I don't suppose anyone could tell me the song that Hester kept playing on the record player? I had it in my head all evening after I'd seen this, but now it's completely slipped my mind.
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Post by Deleted on Sept 21, 2016 15:54:44 GMT
I don't suppose anyone could tell me the song that Hester kept playing on the record player? I had it in my head all evening after I'd seen this, but now it's completely slipped my mind. Wasn't it 'I Only Have Eyes For You'? Or was I imagining it? |
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Post by Nicholas on Oct 1, 2016 22:03:35 GMT
Whilst I’m tending towards agreeing with the ‘good but not great’, I think that actually serves this play to a fault. Damning with faint praise, perhaps, but this is not Medea, in which the histrionics are allowed to be so overplayed they’re represented through dance, and nor is it even A Doll’s House, with a plot with the mechanics of a Swiss watch and a crescendo to an iconic ending like no other. It’s a very, very withheld piece, about people who can’t express emotions. What makes this production more moving is how underdone everything is, and how Cracknell completely avoids even the potential of histrionics, making this about as quiet as it can be. I think something lingers from this production, and that comes from it being so subtle, so simple.
Carrie Cracknell has a very open-minded, even-handed approach to her drama (not always – it would have made Blurred Lines boring, and Birdland’s Andrew Scott-centricity gave that its energy – but when it comes to domestic settings particularly). What made A Doll’s House so stunning was that, however triumphant Hattie Morahan was, Cracknell’s treatment of Torvald and Krogstad was kindly, and for brief moments they became heroes of their own minor dramas with Nora, never the victim, almost a villain in their worlds; whilst we ultimately sided completely with Nora, that was despite the faults these prisms made us see in her, and that only made for richer, richer, ever richer drama – if I had to pick a best show ever, I think I’d still plump for that. Her Medea was far kinder on Jason than the play needed to be. Hell, even her Macbeth was strangely non-partisan, though that was a duffer. And here, the things that made it shine were the three dimensions every character had. Tom Burke does a wonderful self-analysis; he begins with caddish confidence and ends with caddish confidence, but at every stage where he’s allowed to be himself he lets us in on this as a façade. When he utters the awful shilling line, it sends chills through its cruelty, but also its possible faux-cruelty: that he’s saying that less because he means it and more because he thinks his ‘character’ of a cad would mean it, and the fact that he would hurt her so again for a façade... Where this egalitarian view came into its own was with Nick Fletcher (the wonderful Krogstadt from earlier), who absolutely stole the show. It looks like I’m not alone in thinking this, and if anyone from here is up for awards I hope it’s him. There’s a simple plain-speaking to him, yet a mournful tiredness, a resilience. It’s so supportive it’s tearjearking. Between the highfalutin pilot phoniness of Burke, and the slightly too-underdone support of Peter Sullivan who I did think didn’t make an impression, Fletcher injects real, sincere, human heart into this, able to articulate to her what McCrory clearly doesn’t allow herself to feel. He’s all the emotions of this piece. Marion Bailey was good in a role much too small for her – not least, when I noticed it was her, I remembered she was so good in Blurred Lines, then I remembered more about that show, then I had this bloody tune going through my head very inappropriately throughout the second half.
Helen McCrory has infinitely less to do than in Medea, and that’s why this is so powerful. Like Burke, she performs to conformity, until she’s allowed to be herself, though even then conformity is her normality; it's an exercise in breaking an unbreakable norm. She plays uncertainty. There’s a central self-doubt, in her occasional voice-cracks, her occasional shakiness, her Teflon approach to any questions about herself, all to reveal that, underneath her calm exterior there’s a desperately sad person, and underneath that there’s an absence where she’s been trying to conform for too long and the artist within, the person Hester used to be, is struggling to be heard. It’s judged rather beautifully, actually, how much of Hester is forced and how much is just because she’s not used to being ‘Hester’ anymore. As she becomes less Hester Collyer, and less Hester Page, her growing realisation that she doesn’t know who Hester alone is anymore is heartbreakingly held back, made more moving by Fletcher’s insistence on bringing out her intrinsic humanity. Because it’s less showy than some other performances (not least her own Medea) it won’t win awards, and arguably it’s less good too, but it’s a very moving portrayal of emptiness and societal conformity and loneliness which comes through clearly.
Unlike other Cracknell shows, this is not one which peaks and peaks and peaks until the tension at the end is airtight, but unlike other Cracknell shows the script she works with demands a subtlety she provides in spades. The ending, after all, is ultimately a boring act – boiling an egg – yet it takes a great director to make something so intrinsically boring so affectingly moving. Because she paints every character in a very human light, and because she demands all emotions be hidden behind the layers of Kenneth Moore-esque acting the 50s require, this Rattigan is a profoundly human, empathetic piece. I didn’t love it (not least, like Plough and Stars, the beautiful set was overblown in this too-big space), but I far more than admired this – its subtle unpicking of its characters’ restraint made for something truly heartbreaking, whilst if its central performance doesn’t set the stage on fire, that’s because it lights a much smaller spark that burns long after the drama is done.
P.S. Do any of you subscribe to the NT Podcasts, and have you heard the Helen McCrory one yet? It’s a bit underwhelming, a little too much of Libby Purves describing the show to Helen McCrory, but some interesting insights about working with Carrie Cracknell. Mostly, though, you can never over-estimate how facetious my mind can get: “Because I worked with Carrie, on Medea...” McCrory starts. “What did she say?” think I, “Kenneth Williams as Creon, Sid James as Jason, Hattie Jacques in the lead – it’s Carry On Medea!”.
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Post by mallardo on Oct 2, 2016 12:09:45 GMT
Some fiercely intelligent comments there, Nicholas, but I'm not as enamoured of Ms Cracknell's "open-minded, even-handed approach to drama" as you are. To me, her "kind" take on the men in Nora's life and her insistence on opening that play out scenically so that what should have been offstage was always firmly onstage, confusing the issues and, incidentally, totally undercutting Ibsen's "iconic ending like no other", badly damaged the Doll's House production, taking the focus away from where it should always be, on Nora.
As you astutely point out, the same approach was taken toward Jason in Cracknell's Medea production but, again, it didn't help the play to make Jason a more reasonable guy, it took away much of its primal power and made Medea look even worse than she arguably is.
And the treatment of Freddie (Tom Burke) in Deep Blue Sea, as you suggest, reflects the same idea, reducing his caddishness to a kind of affectation which, I suppose, is intended to make Hester's obsession for him more plausible. But, no, Freddie should be an out and out cad, it heightens everything if he's played that way - as he is in Mike Poulton's remake, Kenny Morgan. It makes Hester's situation much more extreme if she's throwing herself at a guy everyone can see is a self-centred bastard, ramping up the pathos in a production which often seems too polite for its own good. It's as if Cracknell is at pains to mediate the drama in the name of fair play to all characters which, to me, is an essentially undramatic approach.
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Post by Jan on Oct 2, 2016 12:48:07 GMT
Some fiercely intelligent comments there, Nicholas, but I'm not as enamoured of Ms Cracknell's "open-minded, even-handed approach to drama" as you are. To me, her "kind" take on the men in Nora's life and her insistence on opening that play out scenically so that what should have been offstage was always firmly onstage, confusing the issues and, incidentally, totally undercutting Ibsen's "iconic ending like no other", badly damaged the Doll's House production, taking the focus away from where it should always be, on Nora.
Right. Showing us Nora packing to leave before she tells Torvald was a really catastrophic misjudgement. Agree on Nick Fletcher, brilliant also as Stockmann @ Young Vic between his turn as Krogstadt and this. |
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Post by dramaqueen on Oct 7, 2016 16:23:47 GMT
I thought this was good, but not great as I hoped/expected it to be. I also saw "Kenny Morgan" prior and found it the superior production. However I still enjoyed "The Deep Blue Sea" and for me Helen McCrory is an actress I always enjoy watching on stage.
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Post by ncbears on Jul 10, 2020 1:19:58 GMT
Now streaming for a week. Based on comments, I may pass, even though it is relatively short
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Post by lynette on Jul 10, 2020 13:30:33 GMT
Good in real life and good on the telly. Would benefit from a proper tv mode production without the long shots of the stage so to speak, The last few minutes brilliantly written and brilliantly acted - egg sandwich eh? Give it the Olivier for best supporting sandwich.
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Post by peggs on Jul 14, 2020 18:29:31 GMT
Finished watching tonight, foolishly before I'd eaten as of course I didn't then want to eat what I had.
Any somehow I had forgotten the ending...........got to a point where I was thinking hang on this is the ending and there's been no egg, did I miss it?
How did I watch this and think it ended about 5 minutes before it did? I'd always argued I could bounce from seeing one thing to another and it didn't diminish anything but now am wondering how many other plays am I remembering wrong?!
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