562 posts
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Post by jadnoop on Apr 20, 2018 14:06:56 GMT
I just don't know how seriously I can take someone's opinion on writing when they themselves write like a sixth former's idea of avant garde poetry... Is it not just a parody account? I mean stuff like... "Like a fake LV bag I can see it from miles off But some are deceived" and "Some people Probably inspired by me in the past Left before the end" ...who really talks about themselves and others in these terms? I assumed it's just a jokey account like the kind of thing you get on www.reddit.com/r/iamverysmart (?) |
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Post by ls86 on Apr 20, 2018 14:16:39 GMT
I'm in Tuesday for press night and I am so so excited
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Post by Deleted on Apr 20, 2018 14:30:52 GMT
Is it not just a parody account? I mean stuff like... "Like a fake LV bag I can see it from miles off But some are deceived" and "Some people Probably inspired by me in the past Left before the end" To be fair though, nowadays if any of us sees someone leaving a show during the interval don't we all always consider that they are "doing a Parsley"? P has wormed his way into our theatre psyche like no other. Make of that what you will. |
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Post by Snciole on Apr 20, 2018 14:33:21 GMT
Brilliantly perceptive review Steve and Crouch/Churchill/Rashdash is ticking a lot of boxes here. Adler & Gibb, by the way, played at the Unicorn in a revised version and Crouch is writing quite a lot of new work for younger audiences, his play 'Beginners' having just finished there as well. I'm sure he finds it refreshing to have an audience that doesn't arrive with so much baggage. Beginners was full of nice performances but the children were bored and baffled in equal measure. I gave it a damning review, as did the Evening Standard's Fiona Moubtford. For me Crouch is going to young audiences for the reasons you say but they bring adults, some of whom might be able to tell whether they are watching a Royal Court reject. The press night cupcakes were nice though! |
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Post by Deleted on Apr 20, 2018 14:54:38 GMT
Brilliantly perceptive review Steve and Crouch/Churchill/Rashdash is ticking a lot of boxes here. Adler & Gibb, by the way, played at the Unicorn in a revised version and Crouch is writing quite a lot of new work for younger audiences, his play 'Beginners' having just finished there as well. I'm sure he finds it refreshing to have an audience that doesn't arrive with so much baggage. Beginners was full of nice performances but the children were bored and baffled in equal measure. I gave it a damning review, as did the Evening Standard's Fiona Moubtford. For me Crouch is going to young audiences for the reasons you say but they bring adults, some of whom might be able to tell whether they are watching a Royal Court reject. The press night cupcakes were nice though! Mountford's was easily its worst press review, The Times was average but generally four stars with Miriam Gillinson five stars in Time Out. All these are adults of course but his other children's plays seem to have been well received by their audiences. He's very divisive though, I can well remember the uproar around The Author (in Edinburgh) or the broad incomprehension on here for Adler & Gibb. He's been commissioned for a TV series now, which should put the cat among the televisual pigeons! |
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Post by Deleted on Apr 20, 2018 16:38:49 GMT
Like a fake LV bag I can see it from miles off But some are deceived Oh P, Vuitton? I expected more from you.  It’s not MINE Others I see What THEY carry I just have a small carrier bag from LIDL |
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Post by Deleted on Apr 20, 2018 17:02:19 GMT
I love Tim Crouch Also Caryl Churchill And Anthony Neilson I have to say I found The Writer Nothing like those works And far inferior to anything from them Ella Hickson has been unable to emulate them If they are her inspiration Like a fake LV bag I can see it from miles off But some are deceived Collectively those writers have almost 100 years of age and experience over Hickson. In my opinion love or hate the play (I am reserving judgement) we have to acknowledge that she is an incredibly promising young writer. I am excited to see her next piece. |
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Post by Deleted on Apr 20, 2018 17:13:09 GMT
Steve I wonder why Hickson said “girls” get all the buzz when “boys” get most of the production slots on offer. Perhaps she meant young, photogenic girls like her, in which case she should also feel sorry for less photogenic older women who, according to Timberlake Wertenbaker, don’t get a look in. By the way, before you all take me to task yes Wertenbaker is very photogenic, but that’s not the point.
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Post by foxa on Apr 21, 2018 14:24:16 GMT
I have tickets for this, but for all your insight and enthusiasm, Steve, you lost me at Tim Crouch. If it is Adler and Gibb-ish or Adler and Gibb-lite, I'm in trouble. I've forgotten which of my long-suffering family members/friends I'm dragging to this one...
Though, oddly, Ryan's review rather made me want to see it - drink trolleys, orgasms, pink chairs - what's not to like?
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Post by Steve on Apr 21, 2018 23:05:37 GMT
I have tickets for this, but for all your insight and enthusiasm, Steve, you lost me at Tim Crouch. If it is Adler and Gibb-ish or Adler and Gibb-lite, I'm in trouble. I've forgotten which of my long-suffering family members/friends I'm dragging to this one... Though, oddly, Ryan's review rather made me want to see it - drink trolleys, orgasms, pink chairs - what's not to like? Foxa, you need to BE Ryan to see through Ryan's eyes. If he had reviewed Adler and Gibb, I'm betting he'd have written about tighty whities. This is why Ryan is so necessary to Theatreboard, to let us see truths we'd otherwise miss. I mean, thanks to Ryan, I now realise Cambridge Analytica is a Bond girl lol! Of course, it was my intention to lose you at Tim Crouch, if that would save you pain lol. Still, I think you may be ok. Here are more thoughts: Tim Crouch is like the comedian, Andy Kaufman, in that he likes his audiences to cringe and squirm. Ella Hickson, while she uses the same techniques as Crouch, isn't like that. So while Crouch will deliberately stage longeurs, Hickson in fact will write the opposite: a sense of urgency. In fact, the single continuous thread I've felt in Hickson's work, that I've seen, is her sense that time is running out, and that makes her plays more conventionally exciting than Crouch's plays. In Eight, at the Trafalgar, time was up for four actors who never got to give their monologues (by audience vote), while the other 4 gave monologues about time running out lol. In Precious Little Talent, also at the Trafalgar, time was running out for poor Ian Gelder, suffering from dementia, while his daughter, Olivia Hallinan felt her own pleasurable time with him running out. In Boys, at Soho Theatre, time was running out for four Boys, as their halcyon uni days came to a close, and Tom Mothersdale's overgrown child took a last sniff of cocaine off his teenage girlfriend's stomach, while Danny Kirrane sat on top of a fridge, with death on his mind, as political unrest roared outside their flat. In all these plays, that sense of time running out gave an urgency to the subject matter that made you leave the theatre gasping for air. I missed Hickson's plays, Hot Mess and Peter and Wendy, but came back in with Oil, at the Almeida, to find Hickson growing into an experimental phase. Hickson borrowed Caryl Churchill's Cloud Nine presentation of characters who live centuries through historical events, as well as her strategy of presenting scenes in different styles, and her deconstruction of feminism, to show us a world where both the depletion and use of oil meant time was running out for the Western World, for feminism, and maybe for all of humanity. So despite branching out into experimental terrain, there was still terrific urgency to the work. And now, in this play, while she uses Crouch's meta alienation techniques to wake the audience up, she doesn't set out to piss her audience off, as Crouch might. In fact, instead, you get that Hicksonian sense of urgency and confused malaise, that time is running out for artists to make a difference in the world, that while patriarchy reaches it's tipping point, nonetheless most artists may merely be masturbating their audiences with titillation, sexual, violent, narcotic, musical, commercial: as someone who has booked a return trip to Tina the Musical, I know I am the kind of pleasure seeking fool, who is the target of some of The Writer's heaviest criticisms. And yet, Hickson presents her material not as a critique, but as an exciting urgent ride of ideas, that she is on with us, equally confused. Simply put, she may have gone meta, but her sense of urgency continues to energise and entertain. Cleo, regarding Hickson's years-ago observation that girls get the hype over poor hard-working boys, I'd suppose the following: 1: She overestimated the quality of her male peers' work; 2: She underestimated the quality of her own work; 3: She mistook the media's sexist amazement that females like herself, Lucy Prebble, Anya Reiss, etc could actually write, for some kind of preferment or advantage, instead of the patronising nonsense it really was. |
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Post by foxa on Apr 22, 2018 9:36:58 GMT
Thanks, Steve - of Hickson's plays I've only seen 'Oil' so it's useful to have that background.
I have a writer friend who saw this and she rated it. It seems to be a play that people want to discuss, so that's good. But it's not going to be an easy sell for me to convince someone to go with me, I suspect...
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Post by greenswan on Apr 22, 2018 14:55:26 GMT
Saw this last night. The stalls weren't completely full but pretty busy. One very elderly couple walked out twenty minutes before the end but everyone else stayed put. 2 hours was ok as the seat next to me was empty and so I had legroom.
The play itself feels all over the place. The first section is somewhat like a typical Guardian opinion piece come to life. Interestingly done though, especially if taken with the Q&A segment. The second section with the partner and the boyfriend I found the most accessible - looking for meaning in life/art and the choices/compromises we need to make.
And then unfortunately I could not follow the second hour at all. I couldn't and still can't make anything out of the excursion into the woods nor the writer with her girlfriend, even a day later.
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Post by alexandra on Apr 23, 2018 12:36:32 GMT
"For example, Hickson asks us specifically what the point of Laura Wade's "Posh" was, if the Hooray Henrys depicted were the ones who enjoyed the play the most?"
And this discussion involved the character played by Sam West, Laura Wade's partner. It was so self-referential that I wondered whether the baby was their second daughter (about the right age).
Interesting that people found the last scene difficult to interpret. I though it was a walk in the park compared with the swim in the woods. I liked the play very much overall, though.
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Post by bellboard27 on Apr 24, 2018 21:24:18 GMT
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Post by theatrelover123 on Apr 24, 2018 21:26:53 GMT
Oh grow up Sam West
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Post by nash16 on Apr 24, 2018 23:58:36 GMT
They know they're gonna get slammed! |
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Post by popcultureboy on Apr 25, 2018 7:15:44 GMT
I'm not so sure they will. I've read 2 x 4 star reviews so far. The play has positioned itself as having Important Things To Say about gender and sexuality so it's very possible that critics won't eviscerate it for fear of backlash or seeming out of touch with Important Issues Of Today.
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Post by Deleted on Apr 25, 2018 7:22:20 GMT
I'm not so sure they will. I've read 2 x 4 star reviews so far. The play has positioned itself as having Important Things To Say about gender and sexuality so it's very possible that critics won't eviscerate it for fear of backlash or seeming out of touch with Important Issues Of Today. No, it will be because they liked it. |
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Post by altamont on Apr 25, 2018 7:22:43 GMT
Possibly - or maybe they’ll just like it
Edit - snap!
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Post by bellboard27 on Apr 25, 2018 7:52:05 GMT
I’ve only found 4 star reviews from WOS, BWW and Time Out. Nothing from the bigger hitters yet.
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Post by bacon on Apr 25, 2018 8:12:57 GMT
I'm not so sure they will. I've read 2 x 4 star reviews so far. The play has positioned itself as having Important Things To Say about gender and sexuality so it's very possible that critics won't eviscerate it for fear of backlash or seeming out of touch with Important Issues Of Today. No, it will be because they liked it. Yes, critics never have agendas. Never. |
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Post by Deleted on Apr 25, 2018 8:21:41 GMT
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Post by Deleted on Apr 25, 2018 8:22:04 GMT
No, it will be because they liked it. Yes, critics never have agendas. Never. I have issues with the importance of critics but they do say what they feel (however useful that may be).
Think about what you are saying, that people who disagree with you actually agree but don't want to say so, that's the height of arrogance.
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Post by bacon on Apr 25, 2018 8:56:24 GMT
I shall think deeply about what I am saying, oh Great One of Theatreboard! I was indeed an arrogant fool, not just in questioning the impartiality of professional critics, but also in questioning your mighty, irrefutable theatrical proclamation. Thank you for putting me firmly in my place.
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Post by alexandra on Apr 25, 2018 9:01:43 GMT
No, actually I think you're suggesting that no-one could in good faith agree with me and the other people who like it.
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