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Post by Marwood on Oct 3, 2022 20:36:17 GMT
Just finished seeing it tonight (I picked up a ticket at the weekend as a last minute choice before going on holiday on Wednesday): I thought it was ok rather than superb , excellent acting from the three leads but things never really took off (for me anyway).
The theatre wasn’t exactly packed, about half full: I’m writing this from the Bridge bar area, SRB having a beer with friends opposite while I write this (a few people went over to say hello but I think a man enjoying his drink is a sacred act, not to be disturbed so I have steered well clear)
Glad I saw it but not worth paying top dollar to watch to be honest.
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Post by theoracle on Oct 3, 2022 21:00:32 GMT
Lia and Claire were both excellent and the highlights of this production. The pacing was definitely slower than I had anticipated and sadly even the more tense moments didn't grip me as much as I'd hoped. I felt younger audience members around me started zoning out and getting twitchy towards the middle of it. By the time the show ends, it was more a feeling of "ahh, that was good" but not "wow". I was a little confused why Simon Russell Beale had his back turned to the centre block so often. The piano was a nice touch but not sure how much it added to the piece. 6.5/10 for me.
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Post by oedipus on Oct 5, 2022 11:42:43 GMT
I saw JGB on Monday and while I don't regret it, exactly, it's not a show I can easily recommend. The problem squarely lies in the structure: the three main characters talk endlessly about the actions of the past, and somewhere in those reminiscences are the materials for what could have been an arresting plot (grift! back-stabbing! mortification!). But that plot, alas, isn't what we're seeing, but rather, a sort of dismal epilogue: it's just recrimination 24/7, and that grows quickly wearisome. While the acting is superior, the production isn't helped by a drab, gray design that mirrors the flatness of the arc of the play.
I'm not quite sure what attract Hytner to this piece. I can see where a play about a megalomaniac financier might have some currency (so to speak) in the age of Trump, but that aspect is never explored. And it's not that every play needs to hit the audience over the head with urgency, but JGB is especially opaque. For Ibsen "completionists," this production is easy to recommend, but for most theatre-goers, I sense it's a puzzlement.
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Post by TallPaul on Oct 5, 2022 14:24:26 GMT
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Post by peterbrook on Oct 5, 2022 18:29:14 GMT
What a treat! Three exceptional actors at the top of their game - Simon Russell Beale, Clare Higgins and Lia Williams ably supported, especially by Michael Simkins.
I was among the very receptive matinee audience today and, judging from their reaction at curtain call, I was far from alone in thoroughly enjoying the afternoon. Yes, you had to concentrate very hard on the intricacies of the plot and dialogue, but then I expect that with Ibsen. I found it gripping from start to finish. Four stars from me.
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Post by david on Oct 6, 2022 22:33:48 GMT
After tonight’s viewing, I really didn’t get a lot out if this one I’m afraid. Running at around 105 minutes, I must of felt each of those minutes sat in my seat. Having purchased a deal from TT from a theatre week offer based on the casting of SRB and Lia Williams in this production, I’m really no clearer about what Ibsen was trying to say with this play at the end of the show as I was was when I walked into the auditorium. I really couldn’t engage with this play and really struggled to stay focused on proceedings.
I just felt that there weren’t any characters to support or empathise with. Despite some wonderful humorous moments, particularly between SRB and Michael Simkins, it really is a relentlessly bleak play that isn’t particularly helped by a grey set.
The addition of the piano playing was a nice touch though I did question the choice of coat worn by Ony Uhiara. All I’ll say it that it looked gastly.
Although not a great night out, the cast I thought were the one positive I took from this. For me, the acting was far better than the writing.
Rating - 2⭐️
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Post by Jan on Oct 12, 2022 6:23:50 GMT
Although not a great night out, the cast I thought were the one positive I took from this. For me, the acting was far better than the writing. I agree but we should make clear the poor writing was by Lucinda Coxon and not Ibsen. There are lots of good translations of this play which have been very successfully produced (the NT have sold out twice with it) so why not use one of those ? The answer here seems to be that they wanted an "updated" version. It is not necessary to update Ibsen - audiences are smart enough to draw parallels with the present day without being spoon fed - but if you're going to do it you need to rewrite the entire play word by word to fit a modern setting. This can be done well - I recall Simon Stone's "Wild Duck" - but usually it is a disaster. Here the dialogue is totally unbelievable in a modern setting, a strange combination of period English (I suppose copied from the literal translation) with soap opera style melodramatic additions, attempted jokes, and random Americanisms thrown in. Hopeless. The play is non-naturalistic and poetic - setting it in period makes that easier to accept, here you just think "Why are they speaking like that ?" and that undermines even the best actors. Points of the original plot make no sense in a modern setting either - why would anyone in 2022 care less what surname someone used ? They need to be modified to be relevant. I didn't like the design either - set or costumes. It is very well acted and so a great opportunity missed. The result is a play starring SRB with 50% of the seats empty. |
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Post by londonpostie on Oct 12, 2022 8:06:58 GMT
Well put.
Plus, if someone can gather a team together I'd like to rush the stage, lift that bloody sofa, dump it on the green out front and make an early bonfire out of it. Absolutely absurd disruption every 15-minutes to the flow; tv, cables, et al. Is The Bridge sponsored by Bishops Move?
Also, we obv. all need a stage the size of a tennis court to illustrate emotional distance cos we fick.
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Post by alessia on Oct 12, 2022 9:24:38 GMT
Although not a great night out, the cast I thought were the one positive I took from this. For me, the acting was far better than the writing. I agree but we should make clear the poor writing was by Lucinda Coxon and not Ibsen. There are lots of good translations of this play which have been very successfully produced (the NT have sold out twice with it) so why not use one of those ? The answer here seems to be that they wanted an "updated" version. It is not necessary to update Ibsen - audiences are smart enough to draw parallels with the present day without being spoon fed - but if you're going to do it you need to rewrite the entire play word by word to fit a modern setting. This can be done well - I recall Simon Stone's "Wild Duck" - but usually it is a disaster. Here the dialogue is totally unbelievable in a modern setting, a strange combination of period English (I suppose copied from the literal translation) with soap opera style melodramatic additions, attempted jokes, and random Americanisms thrown in. Hopeless. The play is non-naturalistic and poetic - setting it in period makes that easier to accept, here you just think "Why are they speaking like that ?" and that undermines even the best actors. Points of the original plot make no sense in a modern setting either - why would anyone in 2022 care less what surname someone used ? They need to be modified to be relevant. I didn't like the design either - set or costumes. It is very well acted and so a great opportunity missed. The result is a play starring SRB with 50% of the seats empty. Thank you for expressing so well what is wrong with the play- it did come across as modernised and abridged from what Ibsen would have written, but not knowing anything about it and never having seen it, I didn't know the extent of the changes. Now it makes perfect sense why it did not work for me. |
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Post by Jan on Oct 12, 2022 9:33:05 GMT
Well put. Plus, if someone can gather a team together I'd like to rush the stage, lift that bloody sofa, dump it on the green out front and make an early bonfire out of it. Absolutely absurd disruption every 15-minutes to the flow; tv, cables, et al. Is The Bridge sponsored by Bishops Move? Also, we obv. all need a stage the size of a tennis court to illustrate emotional distance cos we fick. On the design, the first big problem was the set and costumes were designed by different people who were apparently totally uncoordinated, but then worse they were uncoordinated within each area too. Some of the costumes could have easily passed for drab period (1900) costumes but the rest were Scandi day-glo as pioneered by Richard Jones (of course) in his updated "Enemy of the People" (which I liked a lot). The set indicated some weird house of no particular style (modern but decorated in battleship grey ?) which had an entirely implausible corner that opened as a door and a scattering of props: your old grannie's sofa, a camp bed (SRB has slept on that for 8 years ? Really ?), a 1960s bar heater, a modern TV but with loads of dust on it, and multiple bottles of Scottish cola. A total mess. |
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Post by Jan on Oct 12, 2022 9:38:46 GMT
Thank you for expressing so well what is wrong with the play- it did come across as modernised and abridged from what Ibsen would have written, but not knowing anything about it and never having seen it, I didn't know the extent of the changes. Now it makes perfect sense why it did not work for me. My impression at the time was that it wasn't significantly abridged. I checked afterwards and one character had been dropped but no scenes. The problem was rather that key telling lines in the original were simply rendered banal by the adaptation and thrown away. This is a great play but you'll have to take my word for that - the previous productions I've seen were electric - and far more accessible than "The Master Builder" or "When We Dead Awaken" for example. |
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Post by stevemar on Oct 12, 2022 9:54:27 GMT
Interesting discussion. I only saw the Donmar version (2007) with magnificent performances from Ian McDiarmid, Penelope Wilton and Deborah Findlay. I remember it being very claustrophobic even though I don’t recall the plot points. Did anyone else see that version?
When I saw this announced pre-pandemic, it would have been a sure fire show for me to book. Despite the comments here, I probably ought to judge for myself, but I guess £ has also made me much more picky given I’d held back booking.
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Post by Jan on Oct 12, 2022 10:00:39 GMT
Interesting discussion. I only saw the Donmar version (2007) with magnificent performances from Ian McDiarmid, Penelope Wilton and Deborah Findlay. I remember it being very claustrophobic even though I don’t recall the plot points. Did anyone else see that version? When I saw this announced pre-pandemic, it would have been a sure fire show for me to book. Despite the comments here, I probably ought to judge for myself, but I guess £ has also made me much more picky given I’d held back booking. I saw the Donmar one. Directed by Michael Grandage in a version by David Eldridge. If you haven't got a ticket you can get one on TodayTix Rush for £25 - given how poorly it has sold I imagine you'd easily get a good seat. |
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Post by kathryn on Oct 12, 2022 12:48:59 GMT
We were upgraded from gallery to stalls on Saturday.
It might have been partly due to strike cancellations though.
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Post by Jan on Oct 12, 2022 13:02:48 GMT
We were upgraded from gallery to stalls on Saturday. It might have been partly due to strike cancellations though. Gallery stalls were closed yesterday, so I assume they always are now. |
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Post by stevemar on Oct 12, 2022 15:18:15 GMT
Thanks for the TodayTix tip Jan!
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Post by Steve on Oct 12, 2022 16:05:33 GMT
The problem squarely lies in the structure: the three main characters talk endlessly about the actions of the past, and somewhere in those reminiscences are the materials for what could have been an arresting plot (grift! back-stabbing! mortification!). But that plot, alas, isn't what we're seeing, but rather, a sort of dismal epilogue: it's just recrimination 24/7 There are lots of good translations of this play which have been very successfully produced (the NT have sold out twice with it) so why not use one of those ? The answer here seems to be that they wanted an "updated" version. It is not necessary to update Ibsen - audiences are smart enough to draw parallels with the present day without being spoon fed - but if you're going to do it you need to rewrite the entire play word by word to fit a modern setting. This can be done well - I recall Simon Stone's "Wild Duck" - but usually it is a disaster. Here the dialogue is totally unbelievable in a modern setting, a strange combination of period English (I suppose copied from the literal translation) with soap opera style melodramatic additions, attempted jokes, and random Americanisms thrown in. Hopeless. The play is non-naturalistic and poetic
I agree with Oedipus that the fact that the play's mostly all aftermath makes it one of Ibsen's weaker plays, and I agree with Jan that if you are going to do it, you need a really poetic translation, and not this one, because if you are going to ruminate about the past, it needs to be poetic and atmospheric. I do love the three principal actors, though, so it was worth it for them, and I did enjoy the extreme bile of Borkman towards his wife and vice versa, which put me in mind me of the sitcom, "Kevin Can F--k Himself.".
Some spoilers follow. . .
What I like about Ibsen is the way he writes characters that simmer with almost religious intensity until they smash through the status quo. Here, like Oedipus said, Borkman has already done that before the play begins, and is now basically a ghost, as are the other two principals.
So if you are going to examine the aftermath of such an earthquake, and write about ghosts feeling aftershocks, then you deserve a Samuel Beckett level translation of ghostly ghastly brilliance, and this isn't it.
What this could be is the last ever episode of "Kevin Can F--k Himself:"
Basically, ye olde sitcoms often used to revolve around a lazy egotistical bloke, blaming a long-suffering her-indoors for everything about his life, and that was what was funny. "Kevin can F--k himself" is a show that repeats that basic setup, with Kevin getting laughs at his other half's expense, but then sympathetically and darkly cuts to her-indoors plotting to finish off Kevin lol.
This show is just like that, with SRB's Borkman endlessly rubbishing "the one downstairs" (this show's version of her-indoors, Clare Higgins's Gunhild), and downstairs, Clare Higgins deeply desperately hates his guts. I found SRB a marvellously funny "Kevin," in that his extreme contempt, trivialising "the one downstairs," is delightfully off-the-cuff and lived-in, and I found the dark brooding hatred of Clare Higgins's wife downstairs deliciously dark and deep. The introduction of Lia Williams' sister, Borkman's former lover who has cared for his son, triggers events that feel like a perfect last-ever-episode of this dark "sitcom."
Anyway, I probably shouldn't have been laughing, but my only excuse is that this translation omits the grave and necessary poetry to stop me doing it. And I really enjoyed the laughs.
3 stars from me, so happy to see the principals, and hoping to see them again in something better.  |
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Post by londonpostie on Oct 12, 2022 16:57:16 GMT
There's a lot of familial history in this one. Henrik seems to have had a weight to get off his chest.
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Post by Jan on Oct 12, 2022 17:37:33 GMT
What this could be is the last ever episode of "Kevin Can F--k Himself:"
The use of the piano piece Dance Macabre by Saint-Saens, which is specified in the text, brought to mind as I was watching it Strindberg's "Dance of Death" which is a play which actually is in that format. |
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Post by vickyg on Oct 14, 2022 7:40:43 GMT
I saw this last night and really enjoyed it. I was a bit worried as I have previously found Ibsen hard going (see The Masterbuilder at the Old Vic a few years ago!) and a few people here have commented similarly about this one but it zipped along for me. Really impactful performances from the 3 leads and I really felt the complex history between them. The other performances were a long, longggg way off the leads but their short stage time meant it didn't cause too much of an issue for me. Overall very glad to have seen it and 4.5*.
The theatre was the emptiest I have seen the Bridge and a strange mix of people in their early/mid 20s or 70s with very little in between!
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Post by joem on Oct 15, 2022 22:33:51 GMT
I wondered whether Simon Russell Beale was suited to the part and having seen it tonight, have to say the jury is well out on that. His physique is not helped by the odd (and pointless) decision to vaguely set it a few decades into the future from its original 1890s setting - which sees him clad in a shapeless vest and tracksuit bottom - putting him in a frock-coat or even an old-fashioned, expensive gown might have helped. But above all he is too buffo, too keen to wring a laugh out of anything which makes this production at times veer towards an Ayckbournesque vibe. We needed gravitas and got gags.
Already mentioned the "updating" - the visible evidence is the television set, a two-bar electric radiator and mention of "a car". None of these does anything for the play but, as with many plays which rely on sins and transgressions, making it more modern merely stretches credibility. Profumo would never have resigned in the modern political climate.
Lia Williams stood out for me as the characteristic Ibsen outsider in this play - even if she is JGB's sister-in-law. She was very convincing as the fey, disappointed dying former love interest - convinving to the point that I hope it was all characterisation, she didn't look well.
There is, as has been pointed out, a lot of talking about the past in this play but then this was practically Ibsen's last properly completed play and, in a loose sense, autobiographical in that he was looking back at his career as a playwright. Some of these speeches were addressed at great distances and the intimacy required wasn't always there.
Not bad, but far from what could have been achieved.
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Post by lynette on Oct 23, 2022 18:03:33 GMT
Lots of empty seats which surprised me asSRB is usually a sure fire draw. I liked this, it was short enough just to avoid tedium, it was superbly acted. I disagree with joem above. I think SRB was very convincing as a failed man, 13 years into that failure. It is hard not to see Ibsen bashing us over the head with his messages about life and art but with his oeuvre I think he is justified here.
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Post by Jan on Oct 23, 2022 18:51:53 GMT
Lots of empty seats which surprised me asSRB is usually a sure fire draw. I liked this, it was short enough just to avoid tedium, it was superbly acted. I disagree with joem above. I think SRB was very convincing as a failed man, 13 years into that failure. It is hard not to see Ibsen bashing us over the head with his messages about life and art but with his oeuvre I think he is justified here. I agree on SRB. He is a peerless comic character actor but in serious roles he’s mostly only good as characters who have been disappointed in some way - this fits that bill. I’ve seen him more than any other actor, 35 productions. |
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Post by londonpostie on Oct 23, 2022 21:16:18 GMT
I was pondering the stage configurations of The Bridge, am I right in thinking it's either the full thrust or the somewhat inaccurate immersive option?
In my mind I have thought it more flexible, perhaps like the Young Vic or NT Dorfman, but I'm not sure it is. I'm not even sure they can unthrust, to use a technical term - perhaps the Stalls sideways seats are either in or out.
Not entirely sure what point I'm trying to make. There was something in the back of my mind about occupying the stage acreage and that .. creating dissonance or separation (or something)? .. from events (stage area also goes way back, almost to SE17, almost). Or maybe I'm thinking of the shape forcing choices - The Southbury Child and the absurdly-sized table, or Back and Son, again, with unused acreage.
Am I just waffling nonsense on a Sunday evening? Is there a director in the house?
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Post by Jan on Oct 24, 2022 13:27:49 GMT
I was pondering the stage configurations of The Bridge, am I right in thinking it's either the full thrust or the somewhat inaccurate immersive option? In my mind I have thought it more flexible, perhaps like the Young Vic or NT Dorfman, but I'm not sure it is. I'm not even sure they can unthrust, to use a technical term - perhaps the Stalls sideways seats are either in or out. Not entirely sure what point I'm trying to make. There was something in the back of my mind about occupying the stage acreage and that .. creating dissonance or separation (or something)? .. from events (stage area also goes way back, almost to SE17, almost). Or maybe I'm thinking of the shape forcing choices - The Southbury Child and the absurdly-sized table, or Back and Son, again, with unused acreage. Am I just waffling nonsense on a Sunday evening? Is there a director in the house? Yes I was wondering if they could convert it to a proscenium configuration too. I don’t know. The Young Vic is by far the most flexible space, or at least they’ve used it that way. I’ve seen all possible configurations there: in the round, thrust stage, promenade, proscenium, traverse, and several unique combinations of those. |
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