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Post by Deleted on Mar 20, 2017 10:11:45 GMT
I have nothing new to add, apart from it being a shame to go from one of the greatest Julius Caesars I've seen to an Antony & Cleopatra that failed to lift the material. I'm glad I didn't spend a lot of time on the stage, I'd underestimated the strength of the lighting by quite a lot.
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Post by altamont on Mar 20, 2017 10:30:15 GMT
We fully intended going up on stage but ended up with front rows seats with a perfect view - so we stayed there. It did strike me that you could be very lucky with your view from the stage but equally might miss a lot of what was happening. A very interesting idea though - it was good to be know you could stretch your legs if you needed to. I actually watched a bit of A+C from one of the screens in the lobby. Did they use the onstage seats idea for Kings of War?
As others have said, A+C was the weak link - it really seemed to drag toward the end, whereas C and JC had been slick and action-packed. I wondered about the decision to have very light, almost jaunty music in the scene changes - it didn't seem appropriate.
I also noticed Angus Wright in the audience.
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Post by Deleted on Mar 20, 2017 10:36:56 GMT
No, Kings of War audiences had to stay in the auditorium, but were at least given an actual interval which made it slightly easier to go to the toilet without fear of missing anything.
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Post by bordeaux on Mar 20, 2017 12:00:20 GMT
We fully intended going up on stage but ended up with front rows seats with a perfect view - so we stayed there. It did strike me that you could be very lucky with your view from the stage but equally might miss a lot of what was happening. A very interesting idea though - it was good to be know you could stretch your legs if you needed to. I actually watched a bit of A+C from one of the screens in the lobby. Did they use the onstage seats idea for Kings of War? As others have said, A+C was the weak link - it really seemed to drag toward the end, whereas C and JC had been slick and action-packed. I wondered about the decision to have very light, almost jaunty music in the scene changes - it didn't seem appropriate. I also noticed Angus Wright in the audience. Ruth Wilson, Ian MacDiarmid, Rupert Goold and Kate Fleetwood, Simon Stephens too. Overall, a pleasingly young audience, I thought. Those last two sentences not linked by the way. |
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Post by sondheimhats on Mar 20, 2017 12:25:08 GMT
Wow! I didn't realize just how many insdustry people were there. I did see Ruth Wilson, Kate Fleetwood, Angus Wright and also Leo Bill. Plus I spotted Ivo in the wings during curtain call, but I don't know when he showed up.
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Post by cirque on Mar 20, 2017 12:32:29 GMT
At uni Robert Icke may be done for plagiarism........last night sheer magnificence from TA.....
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Post by alexandra on Mar 20, 2017 12:36:31 GMT
We fully intended going up on stage but ended up with front rows seats with a perfect view - so we stayed there. It did strike me that you could be very lucky with your view from the stage but equally might miss a lot of what was happening. A very interesting idea though - it was good to be know you could stretch your legs if you needed to. I actually watched a bit of A+C from one of the screens in the lobby. Did they use the onstage seats idea for Kings of War? As others have said, A+C was the weak link - it really seemed to drag toward the end, whereas C and JC had been slick and action-packed. I wondered about the decision to have very light, almost jaunty music in the scene changes - it didn't seem appropriate. I also noticed Angus Wright in the audience. Ruth Wilson, Ian MacDiarmid, Rupert Goold and Kate Fleetwood, Simon Stephens too. Overall, a pleasingly young audience, I thought. Those last two sentences not linked by the way. And John Heffernan. I thought Antony and Cleopatra was phenomenal (apart from Enobarbus's death). Completely felt the obsession between the two. And the greatest ever Charmian. |
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Post by zahidf on Mar 20, 2017 12:54:02 GMT
Was great overall, but the death scenes at the end draggggeeeddd....
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Post by Steve on Mar 20, 2017 15:18:08 GMT
Thought this was excellent - didn't see Kings of War so can't compare with that. Spent a bit of time up on stage at which point I had a bit of a lightbulb moment that this is actually a very traditional thing to do - it was basically like being in the Pit at the Globe. Becomes quickly apparent that while being on the stage is a fun immersive experience you have a really terrible view of the action. Good opportunity to try out a few different seats! Agree with the above comments that "Friends, Romans, Countrymen ..." was the highlight. Wonder if video footage of Donald Trump in Shakespeare productions will become as ubiquitous as footage of George W Bush was a few years ago? One effect of seeing this is that I appreciate Robert Icke's Oresteia and Hamlet a lot less! Bob Dylan / Power Suits / Soft Furnishings / Countdown clocks for short pauses / Classical text spoken as naturalistic dialogue. Spotted in the audience - Angus Wright and several of the cast of Hedda Gabler including Ruth Wilson. Also saw this yesterday, saw Ruth Wilson, though missed the other famous faces. I did pretty much what Xanderl did (above), in that I sat on the stage for Coriolanus (sat next to Maria Kraakman at one point, who later ended up ruling the universe as Octavius Caesar), but decided to return to the stalls the moment Hans Kesting showed up, and stayed there for the next four hours. Being on the stage is a bit like being on stage in a Jamie Lloyd production, in that the other side get all the face time, which means you end up watching one of the tiny tellys on stage to see the actors' faces, which is silly as there's a cinema size screen on the other side. Hans Kesting made a massive impression on me as Richard III in the Kings of War (the best of Van Hove's amazing troupe, for me), so I just had to return to the stalls to see his performance front on. And in fact, what you get is the exact mirror of Kings of War, in that the latter two plays blend together to form one perfect whole. Whereas in Kings of War, the new whole was "The Rise and Fall of Richard III," here the new whole is "The Rise and Fall of Marc Antony." This latter combo is magnificent, with Kesting's Marc Antony speech a throbbing moment to moment miracle of acting, from the moment he tears up his speech, pretending to speak off the cuff, to his apparently agonised empathy with Brutus, slumping to the floor, apparently powerless, but actually just catching the audience off guard as a King Kong of ferocity seems to take him over, which giant monkey's gait he seemed to take on as he suddenly feigned leaving the auditorium only to return as a quivering quaking beast of an orator. From first to last, Kesting's Antony was a marvel, and it was great that Chris Nietvelt's Cleopatra was his mercurial and changeable match, her flighty hilarious tantrums dissolving into a heartbreaking gravitas (her final speech did flag in the middle, but was tremendous either side of the middle). The experience of joining the actors for the Coriolanus appetiser did serve to make me feel part of the hoi polloi of it all, so that by the time the main Kesting course played out, I was devastated. A crushingly brilliant piece of theatre, even better than Kings of War for me, on account of feeling more part of it. 5 stars!  |
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Post by nash16 on Mar 20, 2017 23:49:41 GMT
Thought this was excellent - didn't see Kings of War so can't compare with that. Spent a bit of time up on stage at which point I had a bit of a lightbulb moment that this is actually a very traditional thing to do - it was basically like being in the Pit at the Globe. Becomes quickly apparent that while being on the stage is a fun immersive experience you have a really terrible view of the action. Good opportunity to try out a few different seats! Agree with the above comments that "Friends, Romans, Countrymen ..." was the highlight. Wonder if video footage of Donald Trump in Shakespeare productions will become as ubiquitous as footage of George W Bush was a few years ago? One effect of seeing this is that I appreciate Robert Icke's Oresteia and Hamlet a lot less! Bob Dylan / Power Suits / Soft Furnishings / Countdown clocks for short pauses / Classical text spoken as naturalistic dialogue. Spotted in the audience - Angus Wright and several of the cast of Hedda Gabler including Ruth Wilson. Icke is a fraud. This production proves it. Apparently he saw it in 2009. And hasn't stopped pillaging it since. |
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Post by Deleted on Mar 21, 2017 0:13:39 GMT
So reductive to equate Oresteia with this. Almost to miss how directors borrow/pay homage/steal from each other and it is being sort of shock, like being surprised that politicians could be so biased towards one point of view. Nunn riffing off Peter Coe/Sean Kenny, Brook putting Brecht and Artaud in a blender to create Marat/Sade. Hell, was Katie Mitchell refracting Van Hove when she started using live video or was it vice versa? Some decent historical perspective please? Here's Andrew Haydon who opens his essay-review by pointing out moments of intersection between Icke's Oresteia and other European work and who then proceeds to ignore it because it - doesn't - matter. postcardsgods.blogspot.co.uk/2015/06/the-oresteia-almeida-london.htmlThat's even before we get onto the wholly different Vanya, 1984, Red Barn and such that pay no homage to Van Hove at all. |
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Post by Deleted on Mar 21, 2017 0:30:14 GMT
So reductive to equate Oresteia with this. Almost to miss how directors borrow/pay homage/steal from each other and it is being sort of shock, like being surprised that politicians could be so biased towards one point of view. Nunn riffing off Peter Coe/Sean Kenny, Brook putting Brecht and Artaud in a blender to create Marat/Sade. Hell, was Katie Mitchell refracting Van Hove when she started using live video or was it vice versa? Some decent historical perspective please? Here's Andrew Haydon who opens his essay-review by pointing out moments of intersection between Icke's Oresteia and other European work and who then proceeds to ignore it because it - doesn't - matter. postcardsgods.blogspot.co.uk/2015/06/the-oresteia-almeida-london.htmlThat's even before we get onto the wholly different Vanya, 1984, Red Barn and such that pay no homage to Van Hove at all. I really don't think Robert Icke Can be compared let alone mentioned Near Katie Mitchell She is a genius and sh*ts on Icke Her stagings are groundbreaking The same cannot be said of the former She has her own unique directorial style So distinctive His is a diluted and bastardised rip off from others he evidently admires If you saw The Forbidden Zone It surpasses anything Icke has ever managed |
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Post by Deleted on Mar 21, 2017 0:49:27 GMT
(The opening sentence of the following refers to a now deleted section).
You mean the Angus Wright who was magnificent in Oresteia, Master And Margarita etc. And who regularly works with Katie Mitchell (Cherry Orchard, Wastwater, Seagull etc,)?
(methinks Parsley belatedly realised that, hence the deletion of the comment on how indicative it was that Icke uses Wright in productions)
I love Mitchell's work but she is no better or worse than Icke (older, which counts for volume, though). I found a lot of Mitchell's nineties work was like watching Brook but so what? Then again, Icke and Vanya were similar but was that Brook or Mitchell or........
I saw Forbidden Zone.
I saw 1984 twice.
Saying one well respected director (or actor etc.) is 'better' is like saying that strawberries are 'better' than steak. It's just differences in and limitations of taste.
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Post by nash16 on Mar 21, 2017 1:35:45 GMT
So reductive to equate Oresteia with this. Almost to miss how directors borrow/pay homage/steal from each other and it is being sort of shock, like being surprised that politicians could be so biased towards one point of view. Nunn riffing off Peter Coe/Sean Kenny, Brook putting Brecht and Artaud in a blender to create Marat/Sade. Hell, was Katie Mitchell refracting Van Hove when she started using live video or was it vice versa? Some decent historical perspective please? Here's Andrew Haydon who opens his essay-review by pointing out moments of intersection between Icke's Oresteia and other European work and who then proceeds to ignore it because it - doesn't - matter. postcardsgods.blogspot.co.uk/2015/06/the-oresteia-almeida-london.htmlThat's even before we get onto the wholly different Vanya, 1984, Red Barn and such that pay no homage to Van Hove at all. It is not a shock that directors/artists borrow and steal. What is shockING is that people and the press have been lead to believe that Icke-man has been original a lot of this time in what he has presented to us. With Roman Tragedies, his cover and sources have been completely blown. It is a glorious day. |
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Post by Deleted on Mar 21, 2017 9:23:06 GMT
Have people honestly been operating under the idea that Robert Icke *isn't* heavily influenced by European directors? How funny.  |
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Post by Deleted on Mar 21, 2017 9:29:14 GMT
What is shockING is that people and the press have been lead to believe that Icke-man has been original a lot of this time in what he has presented to us. This is fake news. |
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Post by Deleted on Mar 21, 2017 10:16:17 GMT
So reductive to equate Oresteia with this. Almost to miss how directors borrow/pay homage/steal from each other and it is being sort of shock, like being surprised that politicians could be so biased towards one point of view. Nunn riffing off Peter Coe/Sean Kenny, Brook putting Brecht and Artaud in a blender to create Marat/Sade. Hell, was Katie Mitchell refracting Van Hove when she started using live video or was it vice versa? Some decent historical perspective please? Here's Andrew Haydon who opens his essay-review by pointing out moments of intersection between Icke's Oresteia and other European work and who then proceeds to ignore it because it - doesn't - matter. postcardsgods.blogspot.co.uk/2015/06/the-oresteia-almeida-london.htmlThat's even before we get onto the wholly different Vanya, 1984, Red Barn and such that pay no homage to Van Hove at all. It is not a shock that directors/artists borrow and steal. What is shockING is that people and the press have been lead to believe that Icke-man has been original a lot of this time in what he has presented to us. With Roman Tragedies, his cover and sources have been completely blown. It is a glorious day. Very strange to seek triumphalism, 'cover' and 'sources' makes me think that something is going on in your head that is completely removed from the actuality here.
Icke has made clear his debt to Van Hove in interviews (just as Van Hove has done the same for Chereau). As you appear not to have read or know about that, your comments appear to be left with no foundation.
I'm fascinated as to what is going on here.
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Post by Jan on Mar 21, 2017 18:29:29 GMT
Thought this was excellent - didn't see Kings of War so can't compare with that. Spent a bit of time up on stage at which point I had a bit of a lightbulb moment that this is actually a very traditional thing to do - it was basically like being in the Pit at the Globe. Becomes quickly apparent that while being on the stage is a fun immersive experience you have a really terrible view of the action. Good opportunity to try out a few different seats! Agree with the above comments that "Friends, Romans, Countrymen ..." was the highlight. Wonder if video footage of Donald Trump in Shakespeare productions will become as ubiquitous as footage of George W Bush was a few years ago? One effect of seeing this is that I appreciate Robert Icke's Oresteia and Hamlet a lot less! Bob Dylan / Power Suits / Soft Furnishings / Countdown clocks for short pauses / Classical text spoken as naturalistic dialogue. Spotted in the audience - Angus Wright and several of the cast of Hedda Gabler including Ruth Wilson. Icke is a fraud. This production proves it. Apparently he saw it in 2009. And hasn't stopped pillaging it since. Oh so Mary Stuart WASN'T any good after all. Thanks for clarifying that. You seem to be under the impression van Hove hasn't been "influenced" by anyone at all, what a very Little Englander view that is, ignorant of a large body of European directors' work over decades. |
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Post by Jan on Mar 21, 2017 18:34:15 GMT
So reductive to equate Oresteia with this. Almost to miss how directors borrow/pay homage/steal from each other and it is being sort of shock, like being surprised that politicians could be so biased towards one point of view. Nunn riffing off Peter Coe/Sean Kenny, Brook putting Brecht and Artaud in a blender to create Marat/Sade. Hell, was Katie Mitchell refracting Van Hove when she started using live video or was it vice versa? Some decent historical perspective please? Here's Andrew Haydon who opens his essay-review by pointing out moments of intersection between Icke's Oresteia and other European work and who then proceeds to ignore it because it - doesn't - matter. postcardsgods.blogspot.co.uk/2015/06/the-oresteia-almeida-london.htmlThat's even before we get onto the wholly different Vanya, 1984, Red Barn and such that pay no homage to Van Hove at all. I really don't think Robert Icke Can be compared let alone mentioned Near Katie Mitchell She is a genius and sh*ts on Icke Her stagings are groundbreaking The same cannot be said of the former She has her own unique directorial style So distinctive His is a diluted and bastardised rip off from others he evidently admires If you saw The Forbidden Zone It surpasses anything Icke has ever managed Just because Katie Mitchell's productions have been unpopular doesn't mean she is a genius. Also some of her direction owes a lot to Yuri Lyubimov circa 1985. So hardly groundbreaking. |
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Post by Deleted on Mar 21, 2017 19:30:39 GMT
Also, directing is not just a matter of using a similar staging element or two; the vast majority of a director's work is with the performers, making the story and characters live and breathe, addressing variations in mood, tempo, teasing out a web of relationships etc. Yes, it can happen despite a director but to have critical success after critical success points to that being the reason for such praise rather than 'using that countdown clock' or 'throwing in a Dylan song'. The latter are just easter eggs - little things that a director puts in there that give a nod to a cherished inspiration or some such (and they are fun to notice, if you get them). Also the parallel use of sofas, video screens, power suits for politicians etc. is a sign that these are our symbols of power, ubiquitous visual cues that allow us to connect ourselves to, and compare ourselves with, what could be an alien world of Athenian nascent democracy or Danish absolutism.
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Post by Deleted on Mar 21, 2017 19:46:15 GMT
Thanks for that Robert
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Post by Deleted on Mar 21, 2017 19:58:29 GMT
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Post by Jan on Mar 22, 2017 7:45:47 GMT
Just on a side issue, although Icke and Mitchell follow in the same general European "director's theatre" tradition one clear difference for me is that Icke can actually direct actors whereas Mitchell can't, for her actors are often just part of the staging to be moved around as appropriate (like Lyubimov). There are exceptions of course, her Uncle Vanya was very good indeed, but still not quite as good as Icke's at illuminating the play.
Also, there really isn't that much which is genuinely new in directing - for example van Hove's use of music in some of his productions reminded me of Ninagawa's productions from years before.
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Post by David J on Feb 8, 2021 17:10:53 GMT
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