Wild Duck-Almeida theatre

[Deleted]

Right so on another thread totally on topic discussion about the wider implications a production has, results in a mod wrist slapping.

But NSFW totally off topic pictures are ok if it’s a hot man? Got it. Right.

[nash16]

Maybe if we'd have put a photo of Rob Icke like this when there was a discussion about what a nasty piece of work he is in real life, we wouldn't have had our posts removed because "his agent asked"...

Not that ANYONE wants to see said image...

[Deleted]

Oct 21, 2018 21:19:30 GMT nash16 said:

Maybe if we'd have put a photo of Rob Icke like this when there was a discussion about what a nasty piece of work he is in real life, we wouldn't have had our posts removed because "his agent asked"...

Not that ANYONE wants to see said image...

Ooh, that's interesting, Nash.  is he an awful person?  Perhaps fame has gone to his head.  How disappointing.

[Deleted]

Oct 21, 2018 19:23:45 GMT stevemar said:

I am pretty much with Andrew on this play. I have to say, I needed to look up “meta” before the play, and it certainly is very knowing and workshop-like during the first half. This does illuminate the text though with references to the real life events that influenced Ibsen, and his own behaviour. The wish to “tell the truth” or just present one’s own version of it. My only criticism here is there was a lot of this - much of the first 1.5 hours, which was perhaps too much. I can see how this would divide the audience and the board, with some people seeing this as pretentious or just waiting for the play to begin. It was very Almeida, I liked it.

Fortunately, I was forearmed by the comments here, and the play really took off in the second half. So much drama, and, as with say Oresteia adapted freely by Robert Icke or Hamlet, the focus on the family drama and consequences so well done. I have been a big fan of Robert Icke’s work, and here he only slightly missed the mark with the exposition of the first half.

The acting was superb - particularly good to see Lyndsey Marshall again after her superlative performances some years ago in The Pride and Three Days of Rain. Clara Read as Hedwig was superb too.

8.5/10. 2hours 55min currently.

PS The front central stalls (not front row) suffer from the usual issue here with no rake, but particularly poor as the stage is at the same level as row AA so a lot of moving of heads to strain to see what was happening. 

The production has made me very interested in the original play and I've bee listening to it in the car all day via audiobooks .  What Andrew, myself and others describe as "meta" is in fact quite true to the original play which opens with two characters commenting on the action of the play and its back story.  They more or less function as a chorus.  There is a disclaimer of sorts at the beginning of the Almeida production which asks us to consider the fact that we never see a true production of the play because we always see it in translation, which means that something gets lost along the way or is subject to the interpretation of the translator.  But I'm saying too much.  Go and see it for yourself.

[nash16]

Oct 21, 2018 21:24:57 GMT @cleoskryker said:

Oct 21, 2018 21:19:30 GMT nash16 said:

Maybe if we'd have put a photo of Rob Icke like this when there was a discussion about what a nasty piece of work he is in real life, we wouldn't have had our posts removed because "his agent asked"...

Not that ANYONE wants to see said image...

Ooh, that's interesting, Nash.  is he an awful person?  Perhaps fame has gone to his head.  How disappointing.

Check Pg 5 of this thread. The red lettering.

[Jan]

Oct 21, 2018 10:56:15 GMT learfan said:

Oct 21, 2018 10:05:29 GMT lynette said:

I don’t mind a bit of 'meta' but this doesn’t appeal to me. I always think well, write an essay about your thoughts on this masterpiece, don’t sit on its back. But it is a trend, this 'adaptation' stuff so I will have to put up with it for now.



ps, thought I'd strayed onto quite a different kind of site for a mo, there. This is a family, in its broadest definition, site, so don’t over do it. Ahem. 

Indeed L, this kinda thing seems to be viewed as acceptable, not quite sure why.

I think it’s viewed as acceptable by some here because the subject is male. Just as it has been acceptable in the past for posters to comment on the appearance of a male usher at the Almeida. I assume if the subject in each case had been female the mods would have (rightly) removed them. It does seem odd that “fair comment” posts about Icke were instead removed at the behest of his agent.

[showgirl]

Oct 21, 2018 19:56:14 GMT jadnoop said:

For the avoidance of doubt, are we saying that it's acceptable to have completely random erotica posted on this board?

I'm no prude, and accept that this will probably get me laughed off the messageboard, but I kinda feel like this is really pushing the line for what is a pretty family-friendly site. I accept that we are (presumably) all adults here and that the photo is not pornographic. However this has nothing to do with the discussion and seems to me to be a step up from the 'cheeky chappy' type content that is pretty common here.

(I know that some will say that I should use the report button, but since admin members have liked the posts, this is at least tacit acknowledgement and acceptance.)

I completely agree and had considered both saying so publicly and reporting the original post but as someone else has noted, there seemed already to have been tacit approval from some members and many similar posts have passed without comment.

So for the record, and whether anyone thinks I am a prude or not:  I do not wish to see comments on or images of anyone's body or body parts, regardless of their gender/sexual orientation or mine.  I am here to talk about productions, not the physique of the performers.  I think if this were a public forum there would be outrage and that there is a marked double standard in that some are - rightly - very quick to criticise comments about the appearance/body shape of female performers but any about men are not only condoned but encouraged.  Suppose the photo had shown a woman in her underwear and in a similarly provocative pose?  Not acceptable, so neither is this.

[learfan]

Oct 22, 2018 2:44:11 GMT Jan said:

Oct 21, 2018 10:56:15 GMT learfan said:

Indeed L, this kinda thing seems to be viewed as acceptable, not quite sure why.

I think it’s viewed as acceptable by some here because the subject is male. Just as it has been acceptable in the past for posters to comment on the appearance of a male usher at the Almeida. I assume if the subject in each case had been female the mods would have (rightly) removed them. It does seem odd that “fair comment” posts about Icke were instead removed at the behest of his agent.

Oh defo, prof. If i put a pic of a Victoria's Secret model, i would be hounded off. Not that i would, ahem!

[Deleted]

I don't think anyone is a prude for saying so. I like a picture of a hot man as much as the next. BUT that photograph was very sexually suggestive and as many of us browse in public/in work that would have been very embarrassing for some- even resulting in trouble (my former employer had no issue with me browsing the forum in quiet times, but if my boss had walked past at that point she would not have been amused)

As much as there is a double standard on the men/women debate at times (a bigger one than perhaps getting into here is worth). There's also an increasing double standard in Moderation. We already know that certain members get away with anything (particularly when they delete accounts and come back), but there is both a sense of some Mods going after certain members, and letting others slide. I know they decide a lot by committee, for which I am grateful. But increasingly moderation feels from some members of the team 'what I don't like' rather than 'what falls under our guidelines'

[Deleted]

Could someone please send me a message about the Icke comments. I am dying to know what they said.

[Deleted]

Although some Doctors up the thread have made it clear they disagree, I think saying that somebody is attractive is completely reasonable, even if they're a woman (I seem to recall some good-natured admiration of Samantha Barks in the Pretty Woman thread that offended precisely nobody) and it's not a double-standard to consider it reasonable to remark on how attractive a particular man is. It's not a double-standard either to consider "so-and-so is extremely attractive" okay and "I would like to discuss in some depth the shape of a particular body part belonging to a performer" to be crossing the line, particularly as the latter is rarely "doesn't so-and-so have an extremely elegant nose" and far more often "doesn't so-and-so have huge thighs in that skirt, my awful friends thought she was a poor casting choice".

Also, I don't think it's relevant to *this* thread, but there's a clear line to be drawn with regards to remarks on what one would like to do with an attractive person. "Admire them" is fine, '70s-sitcom-level innuendo is as much about the wordplay as the desire behind it and thus far only seems to offend people who can't bear terrible puns, but anything more specific and/or explicit is pretty gross and definitely over the line.

It's maybe an imperfect tool, especially as the moderators are very clearly a bunch of disparate personalities who'll all have different places where they would choose to draw the line, but really we should all be into using the Report button. Maybe the mods will all think "hey, this post is reasonable", but if twenty-five people see fit to report a single post, they all have enough sense to see if something is not going down well with the community as a whole. Instead of banging on for years about a couple of posts that you alone considered entirely unacceptable, hit "report" on those posts when you see them. Worst case scenario, the mods will consider your reported post not worth doing anything about, and then you'll know for a fact that it counts as acceptable content and you won't need to weirdly bring it up over and over again in barely-relevant conversations in the future.

[Deleted]

I’ll apologise for quoting the image. It never entered my head that people might get in trouble at work for a NSFW image and saw the chance to be funny (within the context of the discussion) and took it.

I also admit to a personal double standard because if the image had been of a woman, I would have been a bit grumbly.

I do get a bit prickly about people (no-one in particular, a generic people) being very quick to jump on a sexualised image of a man and use the “you’d moan if it were a woman” argument, as we’ve had hundreds and hundreds of years of male gaze and female sexualisation. But I recognise that sexualising men doesn’t really resolve that, and it’s not a hill I want to die on.

So, sorry.

[Deleted]

Oct 22, 2018 10:24:38 GMT @happysooz said:

I’ll apologise for quoting the image. It never entered my head that people might get in trouble at work for a NSFW image and saw the chance to be funny (within the context of the discussion) and took it.

I also admit to a personal double standard because if the image had been of a woman, I would have been a bit grumbly.

I do get a bit prickly about people (no-one in particular, a generic people) being very quick to jump on a sexualised image of a man and use the “you’d moan if it were a woman” argument, as we’ve had hundreds and hundreds of years of male gaze and female sexualisation. But I recognise that sexualising men doesn’t really resolve that, and it’s not a hill I want to die on.

So, sorry.

This is a lovely response - full credit to you.

[Deleted]

I think my favourite "you'd moan if it was a woman" response I ever saw EVER was in the Magic Mike Live thread. I couldn't work out if they'd just never heard of female strippers, or if they understood the principle but didn't realise how many there actually are within even just a five minute walk of the Hippodrome. It's not exactly a double-standard if one gender has consistently been the subject of it for literal millennia, but there we are...

[Deleted]

Oct 22, 2018 10:45:17 GMT @baemax said:

It's not exactly a double-standard if one gender has consistently been the subject of it for literal millennia, but there we are...

I would say it is a double standard, because there's a very strong attitude of "It's our turn to treat you like crap now". That attitude always seems justified to the people who think they're redressing the balance. Except that the people being treated like crap aren't the ones who created the problem. You don't redress the balance by punishing people who have done nothing wrong. That's how you go about perpetuating conflict.

People are individuals. The moment someone starts splitting people into Them and Us and deciding that all of Them need to suffer for a perceived grievance against Us then they've become the problem.

(And isn't it funny how in all those Us and Them splits it's always Them that's the problem? Every single time. I mean, what are the odds?)

[Deleted]

Too soon to post a d*ck pic?











I hope it's the actual duck in the show. It looks a bit sassy.

[zahidf]

I thought this was wonderful, if a little overlong. Great acting and adaption of the play.

[drmaplewood]

5* in Time Out
2* in Guardian

[Jan]

Oct 24, 2018 9:53:17 GMT drmaplewood said:

2* in Guardian

Oh dear. Icke’s agent won’t like that.

[zahidf]

Oct 24, 2018 9:53:17 GMT drmaplewood said:

5* in Time Out
2* in Guardian

Billington seemed to have missed that its not supposed to be a straight adaption of the play: its 'after ibsen' either all.

I quite liked the stuff about Ibsens thinking when writing the play and I found the asides and breaks into the asides well done    

'But Ibsen was a better dramatist than Icke and, since we see this play so rarely, I feel audiences deserve the real thing rather than this parasitic rewrite.'

That right there seems to sum up his issues with it which I think is unfair

[stevemar]

And Billington as usual gives away most of the plot points, so please don't read it if you are going to the play and are not familiar with them all .. I should add, I agree in part with some of his comments although as per my original post believe that the workshop nature does enlighten the play in many ways (despite being too long as a "workshop") and ultimately works really well.

Evening Standard 4 stars
The Stage 5 stars

[Deleted]

That's the most Billington review I could possibly have imagined. (Don't read it if you're unfamiliar with the play and would like to go in unspoiled, but do read it if you like having a good giggle at Billington at his most Billingtonesque.)

[Deleted]

Referring to

Guardian review

Parasitic

Is an excellent term to describe

The work of Robert Icke

I wonder I didn’t think of it myself

I actually didn’t mind
The Wild Duck

And would give it 3 stars

I thought it was ruined
By the awful acting of the two lead men

But overall it is interesting

However I agree
That Icke

Leeches off existing works

And I would like to see him
Direct an actual new play/ piece of writing
By somone else

I wonder how long
These adaptations
And “versions”
Will carry on

[Deleted]

I would also say
That Icke is far inferior

To all of the directors he cites
As his role models and inspiration

[Deleted]

“But Ibsen was a better dramatist than Icke and, since we see this play so rarely, I feel audiences deserve the real thing rather than this parasitic rewrite”

There is some truth in this