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Post by mkb on Jul 12, 2021 18:00:36 GMT
That's a great shame. I was lucky enough to catch this last Friday and would recommend it. (Three stars from me, but nudging four; four from my partner.)
My limited knowledge of classical music meant this was quite educational as well as entertaining. I hadn't even realised there were multiple Bachs. (Paxman only ever asks "Which one?" when the answer is "Strauss".)
The main problem is that the shoe-horning in of the "facts" is not subtle and spoils some of the dialogue. From what I read afterwards, Raine does seem to have accurately represented the technical information. (Stoppard could learn from this.)
Timings were:
Act 1: 19:32-20:33
Act 2: 20:53-22:00
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Post by firefingers on Jul 22, 2021 17:39:51 GMT
I enjoyed this. First post-pandemic show with an interval. Thought the "music" was excellently done, you'd (almost) think all the cast could play. It was funnier than I thought it would be, and the staging felt wonderfully intimate (which is mainly down to the Bridge, such a good theatre). SRB could read a phone book and I'd be down, so is obviously great, and Samuel Blenkin was just as good in this as he was playing Scorpius in Cursed Child.
Interestingly no talk of covid passes or lateral flows, and on the door they said they weren't insisting on masks, so ended up with only about 50% of the audience wearing them, but given everyone is sat socially distanced I felt safe enough. Went with my mum who loves Bach and she really enjoyed it too.
Four stars.
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Post by peggs on Jul 22, 2021 22:37:39 GMT
How socially distanced is it still, I got my reminder email today and it said you may now be sitting next to someone thought this is a gap and I note on the plan when I looked the seat next to me is available for sale. Also my reminder said you can't bring any food or drink in with you, are they really going to confiscate my water bottle?
Am rather assuming someone will get pinged before I actually get there but good to know.
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Post by firefingers on Jul 23, 2021 6:07:43 GMT
How socially distanced is it still, I got my reminder email today and it said you may now be sitting next to someone thought this is a gap and I note on the plan when I looked the seat next to me is available for sale. Also my reminder said you can't bring any food or drink in with you, are they really going to confiscate my water bottle? Am rather assuming someone will get pinged before I actually get there but good to know. The took out a lot of seats so distajced but I guess if you are a "two" in a block of "three" then that's why they are selling the 3rd. And there wasn't any notices or mention of food and drink, with the weather we've been having not allowing people to bring in drinks would be madness. |
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Post by Jan on Jul 23, 2021 6:42:26 GMT
Plus if theatre is going to prove its relevance in a post-covid society, does a play about Bach do this? It reeks of appealing to a middle-class educated elite who can dose off during the performance but drop a reference to it during a dinner party! Commercial theatre doesn't have to prove it's relevance. It just has to entertain an audience who will buy the tickets. That's literally all it has to do. |
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Post by Jon on Jul 23, 2021 16:56:59 GMT
Commercial theatre doesn't have to prove it's relevance. It just has to entertain an audience who will buy the tickets. That's literally all it has to do. I agree, it's not a good business model to produce shows nobody wants to watch, even in the subsidised sector, you don't want have shows that are worthy but flops all the time. |
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Post by Jan on Jul 23, 2021 17:10:56 GMT
Commercial theatre doesn't have to prove it's relevance. It just has to entertain an audience who will buy the tickets. That's literally all it has to do. I agree, it's not a good business model to produce shows nobody wants to watch, even in the subsidised sector, you don't want have shows that are worthy but flops all the time. In any event The Bridge recently staged Sir David Hare's play about Covid which could hardly have been more relevant and I bet the audience for it was exactly the same middle-class educated elite who went to the Bach play and who subsequently discussed it at a dinner party (along the lines that they agreed with every point Sir David made). The NT recently changed their mission statement (or whatever they call it) to include a "relevance" requirement - which seems to be loosely interpreted by them as meaning "no comedies". |
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Post by peggs on Jul 23, 2021 19:30:21 GMT
Wow being middle class sounds terrible if sleeping in theatre and dinner parties are compulsory.
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2,389 posts
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Post by peggs on Jul 24, 2021 11:56:59 GMT
Do you have to complete test and trace to get in please?
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Post by floorshow on Jul 24, 2021 18:09:55 GMT
Do you have to complete test and trace to get in please? If you've got etickets then they ask for track and trace details in advance. Thoroughly enjoyed the matinee today, lots to like. |
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Post by peggs on Jul 25, 2021 21:02:45 GMT
Got sorted in the end thanks. Wasn't wild about this, it was fine just nothing amazing after all this time out and I suddenly had a none distanced person next to me and that made me really jumpy. Tell me what you like floorshow and then I'll probably go and yes that was good and that and be forced to admit I quite liked it. It might be that it wasn't the most stretching part for SRB and I've been spoilt in the past. |
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Post by NorthernAlien on Jul 27, 2021 9:16:37 GMT
I saw this on the Saturday matinee, and was also surprised to have someone in the seat immediately next to me - they have plainly put more on sale since the 19th. Mask wearing was at a good level, I felt.
I don't think I've seen SRB actually in the flesh before (I saw The Lehman Trilogy at an NT Live screening), so getting to see him up close and personal was brilliant - and I agree with whoever said that he could read the phone book and be enthralling. Also hard agree that Samuel Blenkin was superb.
The play itself was all right. Overall, I felt that maybe the last 20 minutes or so needs a tighten, mostly in the script department. I also thought we were going somewhere with a specific allegory about Peter betraying Jesus and a mechanical rooster at Frederick's Court, but either we were supposed to extrapolate, and I haven't quite got my 'critical engagement with a text' brain back post-pandemic, or it didn't quite go there.
3 out of 5 for me.
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Post by floorshow on Jul 29, 2021 16:50:56 GMT
Got sorted in the end thanks. Wasn't wild about this, it was fine just nothing amazing after all this time out and I suddenly had a none distanced person next to me and that made me really jumpy. Tell me what you like floorshow and then I'll probably go and yes that was good and that and be forced to admit I quite liked it. It might be that it wasn't the most stretching part for SRB and I've been spoilt in the past. SRB was at least playing his parts when at the keyboard not just fumbling away at the ivories trying to mime convincingly. If I were to nitpick, the elder son was underwritten but it didn't really need him, if anything the unseen children had a lot more weight. |
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Post by peggs on Jul 30, 2021 19:48:59 GMT
Oh was he, I was facing head on so couldn't see, I always wonder when actors 'play' on stage and screen how much they have to learn so it at least looks right, on screen you can cut it so what you think are their hands aren't etc but trickier on stage.
Yes unseen, never met child deaths pulled didn't they.
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Post by londonpostie on Aug 1, 2021 11:49:52 GMT
tbh, I thought the 'mechanical rooster' was a Carry On-type cock joke, but maybe that's me.
This felt somewhere between BBC4 and Radio 3. There's a market for it, but maybe not here.
I did feel a little beaten around the head with the idea of entwining family members with musical forms, unresolved and harmonised, unresolved and harmonised and ... unresolved and harmonised.
In the end I lost focus and strangeness ensued; SRB in a Barogue Elton John period, SRB as the well-known chaotic father Boris Johnson. A confusing evening, more unresolved than harmonised.
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Post by theatrefan77 on Aug 3, 2021 0:08:26 GMT
I saw this before July 19th. Mask wearing was still compulsory and the seating was arranged with social distancing.
Thought SRB was excellent, but the play just ok. I was engaged most of the time, but ultimately it's just decent if forgetful play.
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Post by Steve on Aug 4, 2021 16:52:38 GMT
I saw this at the Saturday matinée, and although the play tells too much and shows too little, there was just enough in this to make me glad I saw it. Some spoilers follow. . . Basically, if you pierce the lid of oodles and oodles of extraneous history, this play is the Parable of the Prodigal son. In that story, the most captivating character from a dramatic point of view isn't God, who makes mysterious, impenetrable and potentially capricious choices, or the Prodigal son, who gets everything handed to him on a plate, but the Dutiful son, who does everything right, but still gets shafted. That's where the interesting human emotions are, and for me, in this, all the compelling drama is with how Samuel Blenkin's dutiful son deals with being relentlessly sidelined and unloved by SRB's Bach. Whenever that is the drama on stage, this show becomes exciting to watch. When it isn't, it's like being back at Uni having a history lecture. SRB is luxury casting that this show doesn't deserve, as the script mostly requires him to be inactive and grumpy. That's not right in my books, as Russell Beale is a master of reacting on stage. Whether it's knowing malevolent reaction, as in Collaborators, or tragic overreaction, as in Timon of Athens, or comic hysteria, as in The Hothouse, or gently touching and modest under-playing, as in Temple, I have found SRB to be electric on stage, reacting to situations. But this script gives him nothing to show, only to tell, and it never sufficiently plugs him in. At least he will soon get to return to The Lehman Trilogy, which is a wonderful and topical play for our times. Weirdly, the best speech in this play goes to Bach's second wife, about her miscarriages, and the actor delivers it brilliantly, but the show includes the scene as just one more historical incident instead of dramatising the heck of everything in and around it. Anyway, this play is worth seeing for Blenkin's portrayal of a son heroically (I felt) coping with family injustice. Also, if you have an exam coming up on Bach, see it. 3 stars, for me.  |
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Post by peggs on Aug 4, 2021 19:42:48 GMT
Steve how very well summed up and yes I agree with pretty much everything you said.
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Post by cavocado on Aug 5, 2021 7:21:07 GMT
I enjoyed it a lot, but I also agree with most of Steve's review, especially about Blenkin's character. I didn't know much about Bach or baroque music, so I found the informational aspect of it very interesting. I went with a friend who used to be a professional musician and she thought it was very average with too much lecturing, so maybe it depends on your level of knowledge? We both agreed that SRB was underused.
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Post by jgblunners on Aug 12, 2021 9:42:46 GMT
I saw this last night and also agree with Steve's review - too much telling, not enough showing. The way that music is woven into the play is very effective, but the characters spend too much time talking about music as metaphor, the power of music, how you can say things with music you can't say with words, and it wears thin quite quickly. There's also too much historical fact-dropping - some conversations feel like a Wikipedia paragraph transcribed into dialogue. However, there is a really engaging family drama hidden in there and between SRB's magnetic stage presence and the glorious design (particularly the lighting), there is much to enjoy here.
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Post by sfsusan on Aug 18, 2021 11:17:12 GMT
Tonight's performance has been cancelled. The text didn't give more details, but an email should follow.
Edited to add details from the email:
"Despite thorough precautions in place at The Bridge, we have become aware of a suspected positive case of COVID-19 within the team working on Bach & Sons. To ensure the safety of our audiences and colleagues, we are cancelling the performance you are due to attend today.
You are entitled to an exchange, account credit or full refund."
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Post by sfsusan on Aug 25, 2021 21:00:22 GMT
Since my previously-booked performance was cancelled, I've been trying to decide whether or not to rebook for this or save the credit for something else. The universe may be trying to tell me something... I was wandering around St. Pancras Old Church's graveyard today and found... a memorial to Johann Christian Bach! The exact site of his grave has been lost, but there's a memorial to him. (I know he's not one of the sons in the show, but still, he's 'a' son.)
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Post by theatrelover123 on Aug 25, 2021 21:42:13 GMT
Since my previously-booked performance was cancelled, I've been trying to decide whether or not to rebook for this or save the credit for something else. The universe may be trying to tell me something... I was wandering around St. Pancras Old Church's graveyard today and found... a memorial to Johann Christian Bach! The exact site of his grave has been lost, but there's a memorial to him. (I know he's not one of the sons in the show, but still, he's 'a' son.) And so you decided to save the credit for something else? |
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Post by joem on Aug 31, 2021 22:26:21 GMT
Yes, this is not a play that's going to make it into the canon. It has its moments but it's a stereotypical bio-play which struggles between telling a story and providing dramatic conflict. The conflict here is the clash of musical idea(l)s and the generational strivings between Bach and two of his Malthusian sons, but nothing Cat Stevens didn't put better in four minutes of "Father and Son".
Simon Russell Beale is of course a national treasure, and if he isn't he should be, but this comes too easy for him - I would rather they hadn't cancelled John Gabriel Borkman which would have been meatier and more of a challenge for him. I hope he goes on getting lead roles for as long as he is one of our finest actors.
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Post by bee on Sept 5, 2021 16:08:33 GMT
I saw this on Saturday. I’d go along with the general mood here I think. It’s OK, really well acted but a bit dry. I would maybe single out Pravessh Rana as Frederick, all smiles and charm but with a rather sinister undertone, obviously enjoying Carl’s discomfort as he agonises over each response when they are talking.
To be honest, for all the banging on about the meaning and importance of music, the line which stayed with me afterwards was when Anna (Racheal Ofori) said “I can’t remember when I wasn’t pregnant”, it was a real cry of despair.
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