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Post by londonpostie on Oct 28, 2019 9:14:53 GMT
Some thoughts that percolated around my head yesterday. I make no claims as to their merit  Annie Baker was, of course, reaching for more. For example, surely there was a theme about the corporatisation of ideas – perhaps something more alien for those outside the USA (hierarchy, boardroom table, PA, etc). Once in the corporate environment, creativity suffocated in the bogus *dome* concept. The guy who had no ID and wasn’t getting paid – no idea, perhaps intended as a motivational tool for the group. The choice of brainstorming ‘grotesque’ as a subject. Parody? The whole set up felt pretty grotesque as a creative environment .. The chicken story (and dismissal of Danny 2) was certainly there for a, presumably, counterpointy reason. Was it the best story because it resonated at a very relatable, human level - the nonsense Greek myth-type story at the end has been parodied by Caryl Churchill recently so that did fall flat with me. Maybe the inward-looking table was indicative of how these environments produces, well, there’s a phrase: ‘a camel is a horse designed by committee’. Maybe our experience as an audience proved the point …
A couple of times I did think, for no reason at all I can discern, 'Netflix'. I also noted the artistic choice to mix UK and US accents.
I still wish someone with this talent would go out in the world.
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Post by wiggymess on Oct 28, 2019 11:44:15 GMT
Some thoughts that percolated around my head yesterday. I make no claims as to their merit Annie Baker was, of course, reaching for more. For example, surely there was a theme about the corporatisation of ideas – perhaps something more alien for those outside the USA (hierarchy, boardroom table, PA, etc). Once in the corporate environment, creativity suffocated in the bogus *dome* concept. The guy who had no ID and wasn’t getting paid – no idea, perhaps intended as a motivational tool for the group. The choice of brainstorming ‘grotesque’ as a subject. Parody? The whole set up felt pretty grotesque as a creative environment .. The chicken story (and dismissal of Danny 2) was certainly there for a, presumably, counterpointy reason. Was it the best story because it resonated at a very relatable, human level - the nonsense Greek myth-type story at the end has been parodied by Caryl Churchill recently so that did fall flat with me. Maybe the inward-looking table was indicative of how these environments produces, well, there’s a phrase: ‘a camel is a horse designed by committee’. Maybe our experience as an audience proved the point …
A couple of times I did think, for no reason at all I can discern, 'Netflix'. I also noted the artistic choice to mix UK and US accents.
I still wish someone with this talent would go out in the world.
Out of interest, did you see The Flick? |
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Post by foxa on Oct 28, 2019 13:10:00 GMT
How funny that several of us were there at that eventful Friday night. Sorry not to have met you! I had an image that they were world-creating, in order to make the next Game of Thrones. It seemed like Conleth Hill's character had (at least) once been part of a big success and pretended that through this loosey goosey stuff the next hit would reveal itself. {Spoiler - click to view}
But that success was probably as random and chaotic as this failure. |
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Post by londonpostie on Oct 28, 2019 13:58:21 GMT
Out of interest, did you see The Flick? Sadly not. Circs didn't allow. Having read some about it, I did wonder if Baker worked part-time while a student |
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Post by wiggymess on Oct 28, 2019 14:04:20 GMT
Out of interest, did you see The Flick? Sadly not. Circs didn't allow. Having read some about it, I did wonder if Baker worked part-time while a student Urm.. OK. Best to leave it sometimes I guess. |
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Post by crowblack on Oct 30, 2019 10:36:06 GMT
2.5 stars from Monstagigz. Press Night tonight.
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Post by digne on Oct 30, 2019 12:42:49 GMT
Will write more, but I did like it. In fact, I liked the first hour immensely, but then thought it lost its mojo a bit. However, the most newsworthy thing is that for the first time ever I heard someone actually shout 'Is there a doctor in the house.' Hadley Fraser launched into a speech and then saw something in the audience. He said 'we have to stop the show' and the stage manager ran out. The house lights came up and there was some agitation SR Pit. Anyway the call for a doctor went out, two ran forward and a man, after a short delay, was helped out. A guy near us said he thought someone else had taken ill upstairs as well and there was at least one leaver. So a bit eventful. I went to the Annie Baker talk in the Dorfman last night, where she told us that there is one monologue in the play which seems to cause seizures in the audience in both London and New York. I assume she was referring to this incident, and I'm curious now what speech that was - was it his weird concept of time? |
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Post by londonpostie on Oct 30, 2019 15:41:48 GMT
Perhaps it occurs when the x axis says an hour has passed but the y axis says there's still 55' to go ..
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Post by foxa on Oct 30, 2019 17:24:46 GMT
My recollection was that it happened early in Hadley Fraser's time talk. Hadley looked very intense - and for a second I wondered if he had forgotten his lines - and then he called for the play to be stopped.
But interesting! Did Dan R. bring it up or did Baker?
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Post by londonpostie on Oct 30, 2019 21:09:04 GMT
They were doing this a week ago. Longer queues at the collections desk. Iirc it was expensive seats that were being reallocated ..
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Post by theatrelover123 on Oct 30, 2019 21:52:55 GMT
Phone call from the NT, telling me I've been re-seated due to sightline issue. Will report more when I know what they mean... There are many sightline issues with this show ;( |
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Post by crowblack on Oct 30, 2019 22:20:18 GMT
There are many sightline issues with this show ;( Really bad. Maybe it should have been an arthouse film instead, or staged with the stage much lower and with the table on a revolve. |
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Post by turbo25 on Oct 31, 2019 10:38:24 GMT
I've been lucky enough to see Circle Mirror Transformation, The Flick and John all here in London and consider myself a big fan of Annie Baker's thought-provoking, atmospheric style. However, The Antipodes was a big disappointment for me: loved the first 80 minutes or so but eventually I tired of trying to decipher precisely who these people were and what they were actually doing - I found it frustrating and willfully obscure.
However, if you are popping along to give this one a go then I suggest you sit up in the circle. I was on the top level (which I usually avoid at the Dorfman) and was very glad to have a) a rail to lean on; b) good sightlines; and c) to not be in the pit...the poor folk in the front couple of rows are in the light and completely on show. I amused myself watching them fall asleep or struggle to see what was going on.
Bring back The Flick. Oh, and Rufus, while you're at it, a revival of Here Lie's Love (off topic I know but, hey) would definitely wash this sour taste out of my mouth.
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Post by Boob on Oct 31, 2019 13:19:05 GMT
They were doing this a week ago. Longer queues at the collections desk. Iirc it was expensive seats that were being reallocated .. The night I went, most of Row L in the Pit was blocked off apart from the end seats. |
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Post by londonpostie on Oct 31, 2019 23:53:58 GMT
It's driving me nuts this one.
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Post by crowblack on Nov 1, 2019 10:01:38 GMT
It's driving me nuts this one. The play or the reactions? Some people clearly love this - fair enough, horses for courses, Marmite and all that, but it annoys me when they loftily dismiss those who thought it half-baked as conservative. And I think some reviews have given an extra star for her reputation - the Indie's doesn't read like a 4 star review. |
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Post by Deleted on Nov 1, 2019 10:18:58 GMT
Row L is gone in the centre block now. Aside from central facing seats, and those in the circles, nobody sees faces most of the time for the first hour, I think. I'd go for the end furthest from the auditorium entrance, circle or back 2 rows of those end stalls (raised block of 4 rows, last one being high seats at side stalls level). So do you think side seats in the circle are better than side stalls for this one? Currently in a cheap side seat in the pit. |
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Post by londonpostie on Nov 1, 2019 10:34:35 GMT
It's driving me nuts this one. The play or the reactions? Some people clearly love this - fair enough, horses for courses, Marmite and all that, but it annoys me when they loftily dismiss those who thought it half-baked as conservative. And I think some reviews have given an extra star for her reputation - the Indie's doesn't read like a 4 star review. Even the reviews feel a little off; on the one hand - I agree with you - she gets credit for her past work. On the other, some reviewers wave airily and say 'a play about plays', before moving on to their next gig.
I can't ignore there is stuff there, that is there for - presumably - intelligent reasons, that I'm not getting to the bottom of. It is unusually cryptic. So does that expose my limitations or is Baker being, as turbo25 mused above, a little unnecessary.
That rather begs the question - me or her ..which is where I am with this atm
Soooo .. anyone, any thoughts on, say, the wolf guy? The extraordinary is all around us ...
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Post by crowblack on Nov 1, 2019 11:00:47 GMT
That rather begs the question - me or her ..which is where I am with this atm For me it's defo "her". I think structurally it isn't a great play, and to say oh, it's playing with structure isn't a good enough response: you can play with structure without boring your audience (even the actors looked flat at the curtain call). Similarly, when I read about the set up - a table with actors' backs to you - I thought, '"provocative?" but it's not: some plum seats - the expensive ones they put the professional reviewers in - do get a decent view. As it's co-directed by Baker and the other director is also a designer, I don't think there's an excuse for this. On the subject itself, it didn't chime with either my experience in meetings/groups where stories are pitched and developed or the sheer wealth and joy people take in stories and world-building. As I've commented elsewhere, this year AO3, the fanfic website, won a collective Hugo Award, everyone from broadsheet press to Twitter is obsessed with dissecting season finales and drama trailers, Netflix's spend on 'content' is $15 BILLION this year and you can get Pop figurines of screenwriters. Writers - story creators - are lauded now in a way they haven't been for years (the nasty old Hollywood joke about the actress so dumb she screwed the writer), with podcasts etc. listened to by thousands. I find the set-up idea of a group of people struggling to come up with stories alien to my experience and to what is going on out there, and even when they tell personal stories, those stories just feel flat and in no way develop or build, have no impact on the way the other characters round that table subsequently view or interact with that character, apart from a brief poignancy for the chicken story. The doll fairy tale was amusing, but Caryl Churchill did the domestic fairy tale so much more powerfully and meaningfully in Imp. I did think, watching, maybe it's a middle-class, lauded American writer struggling with her own personal ennui or writer's block? |
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Post by wiggymess on Nov 1, 2019 11:26:30 GMT
I do wonder why the debate so quickly turns to dismissing differing opinions on a piece of (subjective) art.
Especially when it's prefixed with being annoyed at have been dismissed for their own opinion. Odd to me.
Another discussion being hijacked by the "People only like it because of the name attached" argument.
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Post by gazzaw13 on Nov 1, 2019 11:45:57 GMT
As a big Annie Baker fan I was desperately disappointed with this. A play about the creative process needs to engage the audience, otherwise it will inevitably degenerate into self reverential navel gazing. Laura Wade pulled it off in The Watsons but having previously thought Annie to be a fully dressed emperor, here she has no clothes. Struggle to award more than *
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Post by katurian on Nov 1, 2019 11:57:36 GMT
That's certainly true sometimes, leaving aside British TV writers (because they tend to write the whole of a show themselves), there are a crop of very well known showrunner type writers in America (Vince Gilligan of Breaking Bad, David Simon of The Wire, although he's just recently got himself into hot water over defending James Franco), and though there are exceptions, they are still mostly white middle aged men. But, I'm not sure beyond the showrunners' names, if a general audience (not people interest in screenwriting themselves) could reel off a list of writers for episodes of their favourite shows. Mostly, outside other writers, most TV writers aren't household names at all. Even if you told the audience which episodes of Better Call Saul or Game of Thrones they wrote and they realised "oh! I love that one!". That is reflected in Antipodes, if we go with the theory it's a TV show brainstorm, with Sandy as the big cheese, and the guy he was mentored by himself, and with Heathens being mentioned as his name making prestige show. The other writers in the room are just fodder for the endless churning mill. A lot of screenwriters are still treated poorly and underpaid behind the scenes, or suddenly dropped from a project with no warning. There always seems to be some problem going on with the WGA or a strike, and PAs are treated even worse. So given that, I find it entirely plausible that Sandy is a prestige drama showrunner who had a hit and now has the pressure of trying to recreate that magic in a bottle again, starting from scratch with a new bunch of writers. In the increasingly overloaded "golden age of TV" where everyone's bored of anti heroes, they've seen the hero's journey a million times, most historical periods have been done, violence/nudity/etc don't shock anymore, I can totally see it being a nightmare to try and find "something new to say". It's also maybe that Sandy is a one hit wonder and isn't really that good at his job. I kept thinking of William Goldman's line that nobody knows anything in Hollywood about what will work, everyone's just guessing and hoping. The play is about interaction between a bunch of people who know each other to varying degrees (some going back longer than others), but none of them really know each other, and they're there to work, so I don't mind that none of them develop deep bonds because that often isn't the case at work, and I actually like that depiction when paired with the fact they're all forced to tell intimate stories and fears, that doing that doesn't really open them up to each other, or seriously change anyone's opinion of anyone else, or make them truly empathetic to each other either. I like that the play both works as an ode to the power of stories, since every time they fall into despair, someone begins one and once again they are all drawn irresistibly into listening... but also, it's about the limits of stories, or the contradiction, that they are trying to find the heart of something in that room, but nothing they tell each other makes them really care about each other. (don't know if the below counts as spoilers, so I'll say just in case) Although I think in small ways there are subtle developments and changes of view. Sinéad Matthews cares about Stuart McQuarrie, from my memory I think they both bring each other water bottles and share stuff, quietly, while most of the team ignore him. I also think it's very pointed that they all wake up and realise the power of Fisayo Akinade's long story after its been pointed he and Matthews are the only two (not white men!) who the intern doesn't take notes from. |
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Post by crowblack on Nov 1, 2019 12:31:06 GMT
who the intern doesn't take notes from. Good comments, though from where I was sitting (stalls) I couldn't see the intern at all, so his taking notes and Sandy's texting went unseen. From my glimpse of Conleth Hill, I thought maybe he was hair/beard styled to look like GRR Martin, and the carpet and set up an obvious nod to the Overlook Hotel (writer with writer's block goes muderously insane, though in that film other stories and backstories emerge in the rooms around him while his brain folds in on itself). Perhaps this play doesn't culturally translate from New York, or maybe it already feels dated with its overwhelmingly male roundtable (the women bringing in takeways or knitting felt a bit 70s sitcom to me) : women screenwriters and showrunners are a thing here and in the USA and I think the names of Sally Wainwright, Sarah Phelps, Jane Goldman are well known and lauded, and Emmy-garlanded Phoebe Waller-Bridge has just landed a whopping Amazon contract. I'm following the Amazon LOTR on Twitter and there has been a lot of excitement about the diverse writing team assembled for that. I think an aspect of the play I'd have liked to see explored but wasn't was the woman - disappeared - who had issues with everything. That, I think, is a big factor in storytelling at the moment - it's why I think dystopias, Marvel, fantasy and zombies/supernatural dominate the scene right now: no nationality/country/culture has to be the baddie, controversial issues around religion can be sidestepped, historical misogyny and racist structures can be ignored if you use a steampunk rather than 19thc setting etc., enabling the mega-dramas to sell globally without upsetting any potential audience market. Look at the furore over Joker - the Guardian published several negative pieces on it before it was even released, but then there was a backlash to the backlash. I thought it was an amazing, very timely piece of storytelling, absolutely on the nose of where we are right now, but some were dismissing it without seeing it because of the director and writers' previous output. It also addressed the role of stories in society in De Niro's casting and the stylistic and storyline nods to some of his films- Taxi Driver was said to have inspired the attempted assassination of Reagan, while his character in Brazil was a favourite of the Oklahoma Bomber, who used Tuttle as a pseudonym, though the writers and director are naturally horrified that their film has become a favourite with the US Right. I'm going on a bit here, but I think the way stories are created and consumed is fascinating - it's why I booked for the play months ago but it's also why I found her outlook didn't chime with me. |
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Post by crowblack on Nov 1, 2019 16:05:42 GMT
Do you think that is who they are and what they are doing? I thought there were clear biblical and other nods in the text and staging but she threw so much into it nothing really seemed to stick for me - it was more like watching someone's copious essay notes: I didn't think it had that theatrical alchemy that, say, Caryl Churchill brings to similar material. Maybe if you were sitting somewhere else this would play differently (Vinay Patel was asking this question with this in mind on Twitter yesterday): for example, Conleth Hill with his George Lucas, JRR Martin, Charlton Heston Moses look was hidden from me by the staging. |
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Post by crowblack on Nov 1, 2019 19:18:35 GMT
which caused me to really listen to the words, perhaps, making me think? Maybe that was the intention of the way they staged it, come to that. Stories are an oral tradition and most of the audience relied on that for much of the play. My first review comment on this thread was to say it might as well have been a radio play for most of its length. It would have saved me a lot of money and an 8 hour train journey if they'd just stuck it on Radio 3 instead. If events like Sandy's texting or the intern's note-taking (or not note-taking) are important to the theme or plot it would be helpful if all of us could see them. The RX staged a recent Beckett using a very slow revolve, and I'd have appreciated that here. |
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