Berberian Sound Studio

[david]

Saw this tonight and quite honestly I got mixed feelings about this. Though the play is based on the original film screenplay, I’ve never seen it so I went in cold. Running at around 96mins without an interval it does zip along nicely, but the actual plot left me very underwhelmed. I don’t know if I was still suffering after being sat for 3hrs beforehand at the Old Vic this afternoon, but I just couldn’t engage with this at all. 

Don’t get me wrong, there are some nice performances on stage with some great humour being delivered by the cast both physically and within the text. The sound design for this production is excellent and was the best part of the production for me. This definitely aided in telling the story and providing the dramatic tension and blurring the boundaries between art and reality of the plays character - the visiting sound engineer Gilderoy. The set design was also well done.  Unlike the previous production which had the big girder in the corner of the stage, there are no issues here with seeing the play from anyside of the auditorium.

[argon]

Unlike the film the director appears far to late in the play, his input, actually, starts to generate more interest and the fact that he speaks English helps with the understanding of the material. The set was fab though considering the space they have to work with.

[viserys]

I know the cast is mainly Italian, but... don't tell me they speak Italian except for the director? I booked this merely to indulge my crush on Luke Pasqualino, so please don't tell me it's going to be a dud

[david]

Feb 11, 2019 9:06:10 GMT viserys said:

I know the cast is mainly Italian, but... don't tell me they speak Italian except for the director? I booked this merely to indulge my crush on Luke Pasqualino, so please don't tell me it's going to be a dud

There is a fair bit of Italian spoken I’m afraid.

[viserys]

Che cazzo Thanks for the warning, lol, time to dig out my 20 year old "Italian for Beginners" book...

[catcat100]

Saw this last night and was really looking forward to it but it didn't quite live up to my expectations.

The set does look great with very good attention to detail. The first scene is a good comic start that sets the scene (I was in stalls B25 and got a bit of watermelon splash) but it then doesn't do a huge amount in the next 50 mins.

Yes its builds up the characters and storyline a bit but I don't think it does much with the tension. This comes in in the last 30 mins and comes in quite sharply. It comes in well though, with excellent use of 3D sound around the theatre and the introduction of the director. But it feels over all a bit quickly.

I think what this needs is to either bring in the tension earlier, either with the introduction of the director earlier or showing Gilderoy's decline earlier. Or by adding an extra 20 mins allowing for a longer period to build up the tension. There's a few 2 hour no interval plays around at the moment or they could use one of the tapes from home to insert an interval.

There is a lot of Italian spoken in the play which I don't think harms the play at all. The acting and the rough translations from other actors are enough to understand what's going on and in a way lets you know what Gilderoy is experiencing.

Its still in preview so hopefully they'll do a little bit of tweaking.

Overall a reasonable play, good use of the small theatre and worth a visit. 7/10.

[Deleted]

Feb 11, 2019 9:06:10 GMT viserys said:

I know the cast is mainly Italian, but... don't tell me they speak Italian except for the director? I booked this merely to indulge my crush on Luke Pasqualino, so please don't tell me it's going to be a dud

To be honest I wouldn't care a jot if Luke Pasqualino just stood there and spoke gibberish.

Preferably in something tight.

Or without a shirt.

[viserys]

Mitts off. You can keep your Bateman, but D'Artagnan is mine.

[catcat100]

Just a warning for those going for 'the actors'.

The play is set in the seventies and there's some quite impressive facial hair going on.

[greenswan]

Would say I almost completely agree with previous commenters. It starts of well (and funny) but then drags through a very extended middle. Thought the set was particularly cluttered, the sound effects worked well though. The highlight is definitely the melon massacre.

The Italian is bearable but I think taking it down by another 10% would probably have helped overall comprehension.

It’s not the worst 90 minutes I’ve spent in a theatre but I don’t feel a strong urge to recommend it either.

[emj892]

I'm another person agreeing with the consensus above. It would definitely benefit from adjusting the pacing. As said before, there was some excellent humour interspersed but the tension only really properly built towards the end. I'm pretty sure I was sitting near someone taking notes on the performance, so hopefully after previews the pacing will improve.

I loved the use of sound! That was incredibly well done.

[popcultureboy]

Feb 12, 2019 12:47:34 GMT @ryan said:

To be honest I wouldn't care a jot if Luke Pasqualino just stood there and spoke gibberish.

Preferably in something tight.

Or without a shirt.

My understanding of the wardrobe choices for him leads me to believe you will be satisfied on one of these fronts.....

[theatrefan77]

Mixed feelings about this play. It has a good set and effective special effects but I found it really difficult to engage and by the end I was a bit bored.

The performances are ok, but some of the Italian characters are presented here more as caricatures than real people.

I counted 23 empty seats which is not great for a tiny place like the Donmar.

[Steve]

Saw this last night, and it's good on atmosphere, Enzo Cilenti and Tom Brooke are terrific, but it fails to add up to anything.

Some spoilers follow. . .

I've not seen the original film, but my response to this was that it should have been a film.

Tom Brooke plays a sensitive movie sound guy, out of his depth in Italy, unable to speak the language, unfamiliar with and horrified by the kind of Italian horror film he's working on (think Dario Argento's Suspiria, all diabolical murders and witches). He misses his Mum, he's vulnerable and impressionable, and he starts to lose his bearings. . .

This sort of thing works fantastically on film, eg Polanski's "Repulsion," where all kinds of strange angles and lenses and impossible dream sequences can be filmed to provide entree to a decaying and fragile mind, but in the theatre, Brooke has an impossible task, where he just has to look at and react to perfectly ordinary looking filmmaking processes, and compel his already haunted eyes to become more and more expressive in each successive scene.

So to get inside Brooke's head, to experience his disconnect with the film he's making, with it's casual misogyny and overall misanthropy, we really need more scripted interactions with the man making the film, Luke Pasqualino's director, Santini, yet inexplicably (perhaps I'd understand this if I'd seen the film), Santini doesn't even show up until we are three quarters in, and only then for a fleeting appearance. This means that the misanthropist who triggers Brooke, never triggers us, so what's the point of all this?

Other than the brilliant Brooke, whose every tentative and haunted interaction make you want to give him a hug, and thus effortlessly and usefully draw you into a shaggy dog story that will never pay off, it is Enzo Cilenti's ruthless producer character, Francesco, who actually gives this rambling show some sense of threat. It is his evidently raging fury at his incompetent film crew, craftily contained behind a seemingly civilised monotone, that gripped me, as an audience member to my seat for most of the running time. The whole show becomes: What will Enzo do?

And thanks to these two actors creating two compelling characters, I was never bored, only disappointed, when I realised that the underlying story, of how and to what a vulnerable man starts to lose his mind, is never properly told.

Still, the atmospherics are good. Like the National Shed's "The Hush," in which two foley artists faked, live on stage, the sounds of Tobias Menzies' dreams and memories, using fresh fruits and whatnot, we get to see two foley artists in action, with their water melons and mics, creating the sounds of a misogynist horror movie. But unlike "The Hush," we don't get sufficently get inside the head of the protagonist. And neither Luke Pasqualino's fictional horror director, nor director Tom Scutt, know how to get us there.

Despite the failed dramatic and thematic thrust of the piece, for the atmospherics, and for Brooke's and Cilenti's evocative performances, 3 stars from me.

[crowblack]

I'd booked for this for the cast but I'm a bit concerned about the Italian - I'm not from the Tuscan-villa-owning class, though I suspect the Donmar audience mostly are.

[dani]

I think the idea is that you don't follow the Italian, not that you sit there thinking "This is just like being at my place in San Gimignano".

Personally I don't speak a word of Italian beyond buon giorno, grazie and prego - and I suppose pizza and cappuccino! I didn't find this hard to follow, thought the sound design was amazing, was thrilled to see Tom Brooke back in action and found it creepy as hell.

[theglenbucklaird]

Feb 15, 2019 10:08:54 GMT crowblack said:

I'd booked for this for the cast but I'm a bit concerned about the Italian - I'm not from the Tuscan-villa-owning class, though I suspect the Donmar audience mostly are.

Sorry if anybody is going the same night as I do. I am learning Italian and I will get very excited the one word in twenty I recognise. Very excited about this development

[Deleted]

If I recognise any of the few words I know in Italian, one can only presume that real Italian speakers in the audience will be outraged.

[n1david]

I don't tend to read reviews before I go and see shows, but I will glance at the star ratings and try to get a sense of "rant or rave". Reviews seemed to be broadly positive for this, coming in at the 3 and 4-star mark, so was optimistic.

Turns out to be one of those shows where I felt like I'd seen something completely different from the reviewers. I thought this was thin and disjointed - moments of brilliance interspersed with long periods where I frankly had little clue what was going on - or rather, I could understand what was going on but not how it fitted in to an overall plot.

It didn't help that I was in B6 - which means that the corner pillars of the recording booth were directly in view, so I couldn't see facial expressions of anyone sitting in the recording booth (the glass was bevelled towards the pillars so even if I leaned I saw a heavily distorted face). Given I was behind the girder in the opposite corner for Sweat, I strongly recommend that no-one book in seats B33/34 for Sweet Charity as they'll probably erect a tent around those seats to prevent me seeing anything of the stage.

I'd like to see the film now, maybe it will help me appreciate what was going on, but I left this bored and bewildered. The the two people dozing next to mea and the tepid applause at the end suggested I wasn't alone.

[dlevi]

The running time of the play and the running time of the film are almost exactly the same ( taking into account the credits for the film and a two minute delay in the start time of the play. The film is dark and claustrophobic and rather vague in its plotting with LOTS of Italian spoken and the play is much the same. The untranslated Italian is fine because it allows us to share the alienation Gilderoy (Tom Brooke) is experiencing. I can see why Tom Scutt and Joel Horowood were attracted to the piece because the film itself feels stagebound and the chance to create all those sound effects would be fun for them and presumably for the audience. But much like the film, it's dull and obtuse. And while it's well-intentioned and done creatively it is, I am sorry to say, instantly forgettable.

[Deleted]

But it's got Luke Pasqualino ❤️ and this 👇 which I think is one of the most fabulous production photos for a show around and makes me want to see the show . . .

[NeilVHughes]

More of an experiment in sound than traditional Theatre, found enough to keep me interested, wasn’t distracted by the Italian as it added to the isolation and had some very impressive staring to the middle distance as they were ‘watching’ the scenes.

[crowblack]

A mixed bag for me... admittedly I was in a mood because of something else (something I might do a thread on on Sunday) so wasn't able to give it my full attention which is a shame. I enjoyed it but yes, the Italian was an issue because many in the audience were laughing at whatever it was they were saying and I really did feel I was missing out, and that a lot of people in the audience around me did have Tuscan villas, the jammy sods.

[theglenbucklaird]

I thought this was really good. Watched the film a few weeks back and was very worried. Funny how a different medium works in a completely different way for the same piece of work. Understood more of the Italian than I thought. And Tom Brooke was very good. (Special mention to the sound effects crew).

[orchidman]

Quite a promising start but it built like a sophisticated horror story...except the horror never really came. Leaving a lot of atmosphere and not a lot else.

Seems strange to adapt a film that was a total commercial flop and without having seen the film but reading a bit about it, sounds like the problems and limitations of the film were not overcome in this adaptation.

Bit of a curio with a nice set and effects but wouldn't go out of your way to see it.