The Collaboration- Young Vic

[zahidf]

Starring Paul Bettany and Jeremy Pope, about Andy Warhol and Basquait collobarating


www.youngvic.org/whats-on/the-collaboration

[couldileaveyou]

Very excited to see Jeremy Pope after his two Tony nominations in one season feat

[Dave B]

Priority booking for members today, £10 front row seats. That'll do.

[londonpostie]

Public booking now open - virtually no queue, front row bargains at £10

With Paul Bettany and Jeremy Pope ...

[stevemar]

Thanks londonpostie. I had this in the diary to book, but hesitated due to the current situation. But £10 front row and credit vouchers to use, and I’m there!

[Stephen]

Yes thank you! An interesting cast. I’ve managed to book a good £10 seat at one of the socially distanced performances. Nice to be able to book an individual seat on the aisle.

[floorshow]

Front row for a tenner, nice and easy! Thought I had credit but turns out they just refunded me last year.

[Marwood]

I was in such a rush to book this when I got the email earlier saying it was on sale to the general public that I just bought a £10 lucky dip ticket and had done with it; are these likely to be the same front row seats that everyone else seems to have nabbed or will I be sat up in the rafters looking at the lighting techs toilet door?

[Dave B]

Dec 21, 2021 21:06:42 GMT Marwood said:

I was in such a rush to book this when I got the email earlier saying it was on sale to the general public that I just bought a £10 lucky dip ticket and had done with it; are these likely to be the same front row seats that everyone else seems to have nabbed or will I be sat up in the rafters looking at the lighting techs toilet door?

You'll get the best available seat that is not occupied with about 2 minutes until the show starts. I've had front row, I've had mid stalls, I've had balcony. Worth showing up and going into the auditorium nice and early as FoH seat lucky dip seats in order of arrival into their queue.

[joem]

Thrilled when I managed to get tickets for this say but regret to say the first half is dull as ditch water, no dramatic tension of any kind, and while the second half is better with some insights into what makes the two artists tick, this is still a rather uninspiring play.

Yes Bettany is made up convincingly to look like Warhol and has a few amusing catty lines but no amount of "with-it" thumping dance music and projections before the start and during the interval makes this an exciting production even if it looks good at times especially when there's artworks floating around the stage.

Still, the audience seemed to like it and managed to summon the by now practically obligatory standing ovation but, as often happens with these, it also dissipated very quickly.

I was reminded of David Bowie's song "Andy Warhol":

"He'll think about paint and he'll think about glue
What a jolly boring thing to do...."

[samuelwhiskers]

It’s kinda weird that the YV had two plays in a row featuring Andy Warhol as a character.

[mrbarnaby]

What’s the running time please?

[Marwood]

Feb 18, 2022 8:18:40 GMT mrbarnaby said:

What’s the running time please?

Two hours fifteen minutes including an interval according to the Young Vic website (I’m seeing it on Monday)

[Stephen]

I am looking forward to this but hearing the first reviews I feel it may leave me as cold as RED did. Then again, I'm not into art so perhaps it's just wasted on me.

[crowblack]

Deadline reported that it's going to be made into a movie with this cast and crew, and on the YV website it says they're not doing a livestream. 

I am into art, but a stage play seems like an odd medium for people who chose to express themselves visually, and in the case of Warhol made not speaking such a major part of his schtick. 

[Marwood]

Dec 21, 2021 21:12:05 GMT Dave B said:

Dec 21, 2021 21:06:42 GMT Marwood said:

I was in such a rush to book this when I got the email earlier saying it was on sale to the general public that I just bought a £10 lucky dip ticket and had done with it; are these likely to be the same front row seats that everyone else seems to have nabbed or will I be sat up in the rafters looking at the lighting techs toilet door?

You'll get the best available seat that is not occupied with about 2 minutes until the show starts. I've had front row, I've had mid stalls, I've had balcony. Worth showing up and going into the auditorium nice and early as FoH seat lucky dip seats in order of arrival into their queue.

The ticket has been emailed to me and it’s LD : in the absence of anything on Theatremonkey for the Young Vic, any idea where this is (I’m assuming the L is for lower)

[princeton]

LD is lucky dip. As Dave said - when you get to the theatre you have to join a queue for the lucky dip ticket holders and then you'll be taken to wherever there is a free seat a couple of minutes before the show starts, which could be anywhere in the theatre.

[Marwood]

Feb 19, 2022 21:23:43 GMT princeton said:

LD is lucky dip. As Dave said - when you get to the theatre you have to join a queue for the lucky dip ticket holders and then you'll be taken to wherever there is a free seat a couple of minutes before the show starts, which could be anywhere in the theatre.

Thank you, I didn’t think of that 🧐

[jaggy]

Feb 19, 2022 8:50:30 GMT crowblack said:

Deadline reported that it's going to be made into a movie with this cast and crew, and on the YV website it says they're not doing a livestream. 

I am into art, but a stage play seems like an odd medium for people who chose to express themselves visually, and in the case of Warhol made not speaking such a major part of his schtick. 

That's so strange. When I booked my tickets there were three or four consecutive dates mentioning the show would be filmed on those days. I presumed it was for a livestream or something like the Old Vic: In Camera series they had during lockdown.

Maybe that has been scrapped since they're making a film?

[crowblack]

Feb 20, 2022 1:13:37 GMT jaggy said:

Maybe that has been scrapped since they're making a film?

Yes, I thought they were going to stream it too. There's a huge hunger for TV 'content' at the moment and a lot of streaming money in the UK so maybe it's backed by one of the streaming channels?

[mkb]

Feb 18, 2022 9:11:06 GMT Marwood said:

Feb 18, 2022 8:18:40 GMT mrbarnaby said:

What’s the running time please?

Two hours fifteen minutes including an interval according to the Young Vic website (I’m seeing it on Monday)

You're right, but I'm sure it said 75 minutes (no interval) when I booked.  Did anyone else see that?  It's quite a jump.

[Dave B]

Saw this last night. With basically minutes notice, I found out I was going solo as my partner could not make it. So I went to the Box Office to tell them, saying that I knew it was too late to do anything about it but if anyone could use it, they were welcome to give it out. Really loud and between masks and the full plastic encasement she could not hear me fully and said there were a lot of returns and so there was no chance of getting it sold - not a good sign!! I left it with BO and the seat remain unused and there were a few other seats dotted around.

Anyways, I really enjoyed watching Paul Bettany and particularly Jeremy Pope which is good because the play was dull. It is occasionally funny with some good one-liners but the story is just hohum.

SPOILER: Click to show

{Spoiler - click to view}
There is also very little of the actual collaboration, a lot of talking about it beforehand, a quick intro that doesn't see any actual collaboration and then a time jump that tells us they collaborated successfully on 15+ pieces and have this strange but close relationship ... that the play has not shown them develop. So it feels like initial set-up, very little, payoff and the middle section needed a lot more.

On the plus side, the £10 front row seats we were talking about above are really good seats for this YV setup.

Run time dropping, I didn't check what time I left the YV but I was on the 21.42 train home from Waterloo with about a minute to spare so I'd guess it is 2 hours now. No big standing ovation but certainly a warm round of applause which I did think performances at the least deserved.

[budd]

This sounds like very typical Anthony McCarten fare then. He's made his name writing about famous men, but there's always something missing from all his work, or they are loaded with sentimentality. But impressive how he'll turn this into a film as well, while not doing much alteration in shifting from medium to medium 

[budd]

This has got equal number of 3s and 4s, with the ones I trust giving it the 3s. I wish critics would demand a bit more of new plays than they do at the moment.

[mkb]

It's a brave notion to centre a whole play around possibly two of the most unrelatable characters you could find and hope the audience will find something of interest in their imagined conversations. Does it work? Not really.

What the characters of Warhol and Basquiat have to say here about art is about as intellectually undemanding as much of modern art. There are no meaningful insights into life or the human condition to be found in their musings. These are not great philosophers; just people who got lucky finding a product for which there was a very lucrative market.

The play only becomes really interesting when "regular" people -- the promoter, the ex-girlfriend -- enter the stage, and their familiar behaviour is juxtaposed against the other-worldliness of the two artists.

While the play disappoints, it is saved by exceptional acting performances all round, particularly of the two leads. It is worth two hours of your time for that reason alone.

I preferred Act 1, which has more humour, to the melodrama of Act 2. Act 2 has the bigger wigs, and the leads both strip topless, having to carefully pull shirts over their heads without dislodging their wild tresses. As directed, there are hints of an unfulfilled homosexual attraction between the artists, which seemed like wishful thinking.

I could have done without the pre-show/interval dj at the side of the stage. Her anachronistic choice of funk and hip-hop inspired modern remixes, while not my thing, was not the issue; rather it was her bad segues and overlays, some of the latter being completely out-of-synch car crashes, and an excessive use of scratching. In my day, one could admire the craft of the club dj when all of this had to be achieved dexterously with vinyl decks. Nowadays, computers do much of the synchronisation of digital tracks, and there is no excuse for a bad mix.

Three stars.

Act 1: 19:38:20:27
Act 2: 20:38-21:37

[The Young Vic lists a 2-hour running time on their website, but, on the day, sends out an email claiming 2:15. As you can see, the truth is in between.]