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Post by intoanewlife on Dec 23, 2019 15:24:55 GMT
Going on Saturday. It seems a little divisive...
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Post by david on Dec 28, 2019 23:29:22 GMT
Just got back from doing the double header. Overall, I enjoyed it but it didn’t blow me away. Part 1 I felt dragged a bit whilst setting the scene for Part 2 which was far more livelier and engaging. I thought the use of the minimalist set worked well against the video backdrop and it was nice to see the revolve in action. Though my heart did sink a little before the start of Part 1 when I overheard a gentleman behind me saying that the fantastic drum revolve wasn’t being employed in this production. With all the different settings, I would of thought it would have had a good workout here.
Casting wise, having mature adults playing kids early on was a bit of a head scratcher and wasn’t particularly effective, particularly during the more emotional moments, a lot of impact was lost during these scenes. With no particular reference to their ages or the year (this could have been put up on the video screens to help with the timeline). Ok, it works with Blood Brothers having adults playing kids, but with this production, for me it would have been better having kids playing kids and adults playing adults. Adults playing babies in this show was really terrible, but got plenty of laughs from the audience.
In a similar vein, the use of the puppets for the young kids in Part 2 was a big fail for me. Why not again use real kids? Because of this creative decision, for me the ending wasn’t as nearly as effective or emotionally powerful I think it could of been had real kids been used.
There where times particularly during Part 2, where it seemed I was watching a completely different play (particularly during the celebration and wedding scenes) where I was convinced that I was watching scenes direct from Coronation St ( Mary Jo Randle (the Greco’s mother) and VIctoria Moseley (Gigliola) I thought were fantastic and brought a lot of comedy to proceedings).
Despite the many creative flaws in this production, what was a big winner for was the use of pop songs from the 1960s onwards which I thought worked well.
Overall, comparing this adaption to the Small Island adaptation in the same theatre, I thought the latter was far superior both in the book and the overall impact it had on me whilst I was watching this. I really cared about the journeys those characters took and I came away thinking I had watched something very special (Small Island is my number 1 play this year), whilst with MBF I didn’t have that emotional connection unfortunately.
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Post by intoanewlife on Dec 29, 2019 7:45:09 GMT
Oh my Dear Lordt what an absolute disaster this was on every single level. Absolutely terrible book, bizarre performances and the direction is some of the worst I have ever seen.
I actually don't know where to begin with this one, it was so horrible literally everything was a fail.
It was like an Eastenders omnibus, where the cast and crew took the day off and just let some random strangers wander in to have some fun with the cameras.
How the hell this even made it to rehearsal stage is beyond me. 2 weeks before closing and it still felt like a dress rehearsal.
Worst production I have ever seen at the National by a million miles.
The need to spend a little bit more money on development and a little less on planting reviews.
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Post by lynette on Dec 29, 2019 15:54:11 GMT
Not in your top ten of the decade then? 😂
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Post by intoanewlife on Dec 29, 2019 19:17:56 GMT
Not in your top ten of the decade then? 😂 It'll certainly make my Top 10 Worst List of the Decade... Some thoughts and probably a slightly (but only slightly) fairer review. The Good... I LOVED the opening scene. It was chilling and compelling and a brilliant way to open the play. It was well staged and gave the impression we were about to watch something original and very special...it lied through its teeth… I also thought the set and it's big reveal was stunning and beautifully done. Then the next 4 hours and 45 minutes happened. The Bad... {Spoiler - click to view}
Unfortunately once the set was revealed, it just became a lazy rip-off of Harry Potter with a few projections and they didn't really do anything else with it from that point on.
I didn't mind the actors playing different ages - until Lila’s disastrous children - though it was a bit confusing at times, especially later on when actors came back to play other characters.
I did however mind that they didn't attempt any sort of Italian accents. I can understand why they didn't as it often sounds like a parody. But they all had different English accents and those just sounded every bit as comical instead. The 2 leads were ok and certainly put in the hours…but Catherine McCormack reminded me of James Dreyfus running lines for his Corrie audition in Gimme Gimme Gimme and once that was running through my head, she had no hope.
I did not feel any sense of being in Naples/Italy at all. A simple name change of the gangs and it could've literally been set in England and told the exact same story.
My biggest problems however was the playing of every character - apart from the 2 leads - as caricatures in EVERY scene. It ruined the whole play and I couldn't take any of it seriously.
The Keystone Crooks were always portrayed as babbling idiots and comedic relief whether they were being naughty or nice. There was no sense of peril from these people at all and therefore no shock at any of the horrible crimes they committed. The Mother was played for laughs in literally every one of her scenes. This also made their public outing less powerful and considering the lead characters story arcs hinged on that, it was a terrible decision!
Lila's children...seriously WTH? Why have a 30 year old man play a new born female baby/young child? Why a man? Once again both children played for excrusiating humour the entire time. By the time we get to the scene where Lila left her husband (one which should've been heartbreaking) all anyone can really do is stifle laughter. It was also so badly directed. The children should've been crying first, then have the husbands breakdown so at least there would've been SOME emotion to the scene. I almost burst out laughing at the husbands breakdown and therefore the children’s reaction were totally lost…just dreadful.
The music worked sometimes, but didn’t know what it was doing for the most part. It reminded me of Chavkin’s misuse of music and dance routines throughout An American Clock. Sometimes it crashed in and was effective at bringing in a new time period. Other times - like the Frank Sinatra song - it faded up at some random moment in the song, then faded out, then later fades up again for one line and then it’s gone again…pointless. It became an overused scene change devise by a director who seemed to forget they had 25 actors, the biggest stage in London and an amazing lighting rig to play with.
And while we’re on the subject…some of the ‘scenes’ weren’t even scenes, they were 5 lines of dialogue in between totally random bursts of music that had no reference to the scene. They could’ve been easily disposed of or done properly. It’s not like some of the other drivel couldn’t have been trimmed elsewhere. There were many scenes that just did not work and felt like they went ‘meh yeah it doesn’t work, just play another song and we’ll fix it later’ and then never did.
Not one of the characters were even remotely likeable. I didn’t think any of them in the end did anything that wasn’t in their own interest and they didn’t care who they hurt in the process. What little ‘good’ anyone did was over shadowed by their vile behaviour in every other area of their lives. The only time I ‘felt’ anything for anyone was when the ‘jaundiced baby’ was kidnapped. Apart from the opening scenes, that was the only one in the entire 5 hours that made an impact.
Which brings us to the babies…seriously WTF was that about?!?!?! Why were they blue and yellow? Why did they look like a couple of cabbages with a silk cloth draped over them held in place by a rubber band and a handle on the back of their heads? Why were they being controlled by Amish women?
If they were re-writing Six Degrees of Separation in a modern context, surely this decision would replace Cats as the ‘all-time low in a lifetime of theatre going’. There was a VERY compelling story in their somewhere, there really was and done in a totally different way it could’ve been a fantastic 2-3 hours in a theatre. But this entire production was just a total misfire. As I walked out with the rest of the crowd in stunned silence and crushed down the stairs, the only thing I could muster was ‘well that was 5 long hours of who cares’. I got the biggest laugh of the night. |
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Post by couldileaveyou on Dec 29, 2019 19:44:51 GMT
I did not feel any sense of being in Naples/Italy at all. A simple name change of the gangs and it could've literally been set in England and told the exact same story.
My biggest problems however was the playing of every character - apart from the 2 leads - as caricatures in EVERY scene. It ruined the whole play and I couldn't take any of it seriously.
Absolutely this, they took Naples out of Neapolitan novels and made the setting so generic that it could have been set anywhere. And I also agree on the acting, I really liked Niamh Cusack and Catherine McCormack but I found most of the other performances frankly offensive. My overall opinion is that there was very little intelligence going on behind the concept of this adaptation. Not only De Angelis - in what I guess is an attempt to "universalize" the story - minimized the role of Naples (which in the novels is a sort of third protagonist), but also the choice of the material from the novels is poorly thought-out. In the impossible effort of putting everything that happens in the novels on stage, De Angelis seems not to have spent a moment thinking about what was important, what was trivial, and what was essential. The first two novels are pretty much entirely on education, how almost impossible it was for these girls to achieve, the constant hardship and struggle. In the play Lenù turns up out of the blue in a nice dress and says "look, I've just graduaded from university", as if the fact that someone of her gender and socio-economic position didn't make this an unique case in that place and time. If there is a version of "[name] is turning in their grave" for the living, this must be the case for Elena Ferrante. |
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Post by intoanewlife on Dec 29, 2019 20:04:56 GMT
I did not feel any sense of being in Naples/Italy at all. A simple name change of the gangs and it could've literally been set in England and told the exact same story.
My biggest problems however was the playing of every character - apart from the 2 leads - as caricatures in EVERY scene. It ruined the whole play and I couldn't take any of it seriously.
Absolutely this, they took Naples out of Neapolitan novels and made the setting so generic that it could have been set anywhere. And I also agree on the acting, I really liked Niamh Cusack and Catherine McCormack but I found most of the other performances frankly offensive. My overall opinion is that there was very little intelligence going on behind the concept of this adaptation. Not only De Angelis - in what I guess is an attempt to "universalize" the story - minimized the role of Naples (which in the novels is a sort of third protagonist), but also the choice of the material from the novels is poorly thought-out. In the impossible effort of putting everything that happens in the novels on stage, De Angelis seems not to have spent a moment thinking about what was important, what was trivial, and what was essential. The first two novels are pretty much entirely on education, how almost impossible it was for these girls to achieve, the constant hardship and struggle. In the play Lenù turns up out of the blue in a nice dress and says "look, I've just graduaded from university", as if the fact that someone of her gender and socio-economic position didn't make this an unique case in that place and time. If there is a version of "[name] is turning in their grave" for the living, this must be the case for Elena Ferrante. Out of interest as I have never read any of the books... Is the humour in the books? |
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Post by intoanewlife on Dec 30, 2019 16:57:53 GMT
I finally found an image of 'the baby'...seriously what were they thinking?!?!?!  |
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Post by kathryn on Jan 12, 2020 19:42:06 GMT
Saw both parts of this yesterday. Have never read the novels or seen the TV show, and had managed to avoid reviews, so was really going in blind.
I enjoyed it a lot. Thought the puppetry worked really well - particularly the use of the dresses as puppets during the violent scenes.
The lead actresses were very good but we did find it hard to keep track of who everyone else was. I understand why they didn’t got for Italian accents but without that the Italian names were kind of hard to understand sometimes - at first I was like, Donna Keely, who’s that?!
The setting definitely didn’t feel very Italian - in fact for the first few moments I thought it was Ireland!
But it did keep me gripped for the full 5 hours!
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Post by jek on Jan 16, 2020 9:35:26 GMT
Went to the first part on Monday and the second part last night. Was really pleased to emerge from the first part looking forward to the second - otherwise it would have felt like a real effort to make the trip to Waterloo on a January night. I am someone who has read all the novels and seen the Italian mini series (I believe the second installment of this is due in the spring). I thought the central performances were excellent as was the staging and music (last night's performance was captioned so we got a running set list of what was being played!). But I did find the second part a disappointment. It's unsurprising - I suppose - that the concentration is on the more visually dramatic Camorra storyline rather than the feminist consciousness raising but it did really shift the emphasis away from the central theme of the books - and interestingly the ideas highlighted in the essays (by Sue Rainsford and Michelle Tarnopolsky) in the programme.
On a different point we go to the National fairly regularly - I have priority membership - but this is the first time I can remember my seats being upgraded. For both parts we were moved from the £15 seats in the circle to fairly central row K seats in the stalls. Not sure how this happened as the circle still looked pretty busy but it was a real treat. My partner was joking that they have a database and choose people who sat through St George and the Dragon and other less than pleasurable evenings for an upgrade!
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Post by Being Alive on Jan 21, 2020 23:30:15 GMT
Went into this blind today, not having a clue where it was set or about any kind of concept - and I think that was a positive and a negative.
It being set in Italy I think was pretty clear to me from the off (although they did absolutely nothing to establish that or try to build on that with characterisation or set/costume). I think my main negative is that I thought it was too long, particularly the first part. At least 30-40 mins (but probably up to an hour) could have gone from Part 1 and it make no difference to the story. Niamh Cusack and Catherine McCormack both gave excellent performances (particularly McCormack) but I didn't feel they were able to be excellent all the time because there was a lot of 'filler' that was unnecessary. There'd be 10 mins of excellent text, and then 15 minutes of unnecessary drivel.
I also got really confused with what was happening in terms of time jumps in the second act of Part 2. I found it relatively easy to follow till then, but it got too confusing for me in the final few scenes.
Apart from the two leads, I didn't think that really any of the cast were up to scratch (apart from Nino some of the time). It felt like bits of it were being dragged through by the leading performances.
I sort of liked the stripped back set that they'd gone for instead of the other option, and certainly helped with laying out the situation at the beginning. We had an issue with the revolve in the fact that it didn't work for Act 1 of Part 1, and stage crew had to push on and move things the revolve would usually control. It was going again by the end of Part 1.
Overall I'd say a solid 3 stars, with two 4 star leading performances, but it needed someone to take a red pen to the script and rework it I think. I think there's an excellent 3 and a half hour play in here somewhere that's trying to get out, but is being blocked in by lots of stuff around it that's unnecessary.
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