The Corn is Green - National - Lyttelton

[Deleted]

Thank you everyone, looks like I can risk it. Hooray!

[Steve]

Dominic Cooke is one of my favourite directors, and lifts this dated on-the-nose play by his staging, and by casting Nicola Walker, who is always worthwhile. For me, a four star production of a three star play. . .

Some spoilers follow. . .

As far as inspirational teachers go, I think movies like Dead Poets Society or Dangerous Minds, or even To Sir With Love, go a lot further dramatically in developing the characters of the pupils and teachers and the relationships between them. Here the pupils are massively underdeveloped as characters, and plot developments, which are the primary driver, are archaic and dated.

That said, the milieu is the strength of the play, and Dominic Cooke, who directed the National's spectacular Follies, takes inspiration from that show's strengths, and gets in lots of Welsh mining singing choruses, as well as the dramatic device of having the main character exist in two different timelines at once, by having the character of Emlyn Williams on stage, reading the stage directions, witnessing and staging his own story.

I was reminded of how effective this same device was in the Young Vic's "The Inheritance," with Paul Hilton's terrific E. M. Forster, guiding us through his story, but this is a pale imitation of that, as the character of Emlyn Williams is, for the most part, limited to Williams's own stage directions, rather than being fully characterised.

How Iwan Davies's dashing charming extroverted Morgan Evans (the playwrights alter-ego) becomes the introspective haunted Gareth David-Lloyd was an anathema to me for almost the entire running time, but the plot developments satisfactorily resolve this question, and this resolution is part of Cooke's crafty and successful imagining.

This is the least interesting play I have seen Nicola Walker do, as "Seasons Greetings" was better plotted, "Curious Incident" better characterised, "Di and Viv and Rose" better plotted and better characterised, and "A View from the Bridge" was an all round tour-de-force masterpiece in every way. But you really appreciate an actor when they have less to work with, and Walker brings a welcome mischief to the by-the-numbers set-up, and when she finally gets some worthwhile meaty scenes, especially with Iwan Davies (who is terrific) in the latter half of the play, they both really shine.

I feel there are better plays about teachers (not least "The History Boys, "The Browning Version," "South Downs" and "Quartermaine's Terms") but if you want to see a solid but dated play about an inspirational teacher superbly done, Dominic Cooke and Nicola Walker are hands that can be trusted to make a good night of it.

3 and a half stars from me for some solid old fashioned entertainment.

[jojo]

Apr 23, 2022 8:16:28 GMT jek said:

We did enjoy it but found the initial clever framing device to go on a bit too long (I felt a bit like I did once when I accidentally turned on audio description on my TV remote). We definitely enjoyed the second half more. I see it got a four star review in the Times and 5 stars in the Telegraph. I suspect it will be a winner in terms of getting audiences and the National must be thrilled about that. It was good to see the building back to its old buzzing self last night.

I love this explanation. 

We've all been there, confused by why the voice-over won't shut up. But I've found that audio description can add a lot of value to cheesy dramas, especially the ones that don't realise they are cheesy. I feel for the poor people trying to describe sex scenes, but it's probably quite a skill to describe the way characters give each other knowing/dodgy looks without drawing too much attention to what is supposed to be a subtle clue that something is amiss.

Great news that the National seems to have a decent show on their hands.

[jek]

Thanks jojo. My own personal favourite audio description moment was during an episode of Doctors. I must have sat on the remote as I had no idea I had turned on the relevant button. It took me a good ten minutes to realise that it wasn't one of those episodes of Doctors when they had let the work experience student/young graduate director loose. I mean they've had some weird episodes over the years (I'm not an everyday viewer but used to catch it often enough to recognise the characters). There have been flashbacks, episodes in black and white - all the sorts of things you'd reckon could be comfortably tried out when not too many people (or at least people who could be reckoned not to count - housewives like me, for example) were watching. I really did think it was just the TV production crew being a bit kooky. I was quite disappointed when I realised it was all down to me.

Yes it really is good news that The Corn Is Green is proving to be a winner. Apart from anything else I want to see all those young people they employ front of house not having to deal with fed up customers who feel they've been short changed by a production, or watching the mass exodus at the interval (I felt really guilty collecting my coat half way through George and The Dragon, for example!)

[Mark]

Glad to read the positive reviews. I managed to pick up a Friday rush ticket for next weeks Saturday matinee.

[saints]

Hello, Looking forward to seeing this soon.
I hear the front row has some restriction in this production and some seats have been removed from the seating plan.

Has anyone sat in the front row? It's usually great value but does the stage design might make it less comfortable?
Thanks!

[Steve]

I was in the second row, actually Row C where I was sitting, as Row A was visible underneath the stage lol.

The view there was fantastic, with very little need to look up vertiginously, and no obstacles to seeing the characters.

[theoracle]

I didn’t love this as much as I imagined but I still enjoyed it as a nice Friday night after work treat. Nicola Walker is on fire as already mentioned and great to see such a strong Welsh cast on the NT stage. I can’t help but feel the set could’ve been more imaginative though and the characters could’ve been explored more vividly. The story is easy to follow though and the sound of the singing was gorgeous

[cherokee]

I quite enjoyed the play. Nicola Walker gives a solid central performance, and the Welsh choir sounded beautiful. But my God, did I find the framing device irritating!
Poor Gareth David Lloyd is reduced to wandering around, issuing stage directions. "There's a knock on the door"; "She enters, carrying a vase." I found myself wanting to scream: "I know!! I can see it in front of me!!"
Thankfully it peters out in Act 2, but there's still far too much of it. Although the point when the playwright stops the action and tries out a different version made me cringe.
It really feels like they didn't have enough confidence in the original play to just stage it without a pointless framing device.

[kt12]

May 2, 2022 16:11:43 GMT cherokee said:

I quite enjoyed the play. Nicola Walker gives a solid central performance, and the Welsh choir sounded beautiful. But my God, did I find the framing device irritating!
Poor Gareth David Lloyd is reduced to wandering around, issuing stage directions. "There's a knock on the door"; "She enters, carrying a vase." I found myself wanting to scream: "I know!! I can see it in front of me!!"
Thankfully it peters out in Act 2, but there's still far too much of it. Although the point when the playwright stops the action and tries out a different version made me cringe.
It really feels like they didn't have enough confidence in the original play to just stage it without a pointless framing device.

This seems to be standard fare these days : a director who wants to be noticed adds a 'framing device' . All the reviews talk about that - so the director- not the play, or the cast-  are central to the critical response. Under Milk Wood at the same theatre suffered the same fate. Just do the play!

[pochard]

May 2, 2022 16:11:43 GMT cherokee said:

I quite enjoyed the play. Nicola Walker gives a solid central performance, and the Welsh choir sounded beautiful. But my God, did I find the framing device irritating!
Poor Gareth David Lloyd is reduced to wandering around, issuing stage directions. "There's a knock on the door"; "She enters, carrying a vase." I found myself wanting to scream: "I know!! I can see it in front of me!!"
Thankfully it peters out in Act 2, but there's still far too much of it. Although the point when the playwright stops the action and tries out a different version made me cringe.
It really feels like they didn't have enough confidence in the original play to just stage it without a pointless framing device.

Oh I SO agree about the framing device.  I thought it was ok at the start - I imagine they were worried about it being a bit old school, and making it an obviously autobiographical piece takes that tension away, but I genuinely thought/hoped it would stop after the first 15 minutes or so.  It really should have done.

Still, it's worth it to see Nicola Walker. I think she should just be given a part in everything - tv/radio/theatre!

[Mark]

Saw it this afternoon and really enjoyed. Yes the framing devices is laboured a bit but it does work for the most part. National Theatre back doing what it does best.

[joem]

An enjoyable play, I feared it would drift into The Corn Is Green In My Valley but the singing was dignified and tasteful and the semi-autobiographical plot is not especially exciting but decent enough. A great performance by Nicola Walker, hope we see a lot more of her in the theatre in years to come.

I always suspected Emlyn Williams a bit of windbaggery - and there are certainly elements of this here, in the convenient inventions to the real story and how it fits into accepted genres - but it's a well-written play with plenty of good lines and business to keep the audience interested.

As to the framing device, a little at the beginning might have been fine but it does go on pointlessly. It doesn't make it modern, it just makes it annoyingly intrusive - half the time the guy is just walking around like a ballerina in a modern ballet pointing pointedly (but pointlessly) and adding mock gravitas. I went to see a play by Emlyn Williams, warts and all, if Dominic Cooke wants to write a play I might consider going to it but I'd rather he wrote his own rather than tinkered with someone else's writing.

Great to see the National full and with a hit on its hands! It sure needed it! It does make me wonder with all this talk about "old chestnuts"... maybe audiences prefer to watch some of these rather than productions which will be forgotten even before the final night is over?

[Jon]

The old chestnuts debate is interesting, I think there needs to be a balance between the revivals of classics and new plays because how can theatre thrive and evolve if we just stick to tried and tested.

[joem]

Forgot to mention - due to illness there were three casualties in the cast last night - the role of Bessy Watty was played by Megan Grech and the roles of Mrs Watty and Miss Ronberry were read, respectively, by Rebecca Todd and Helena Wilson ("borrowed" from the cast of the Jack Absolute Files).

Has to be said they all coped admirably, a bit like when you are watching puppets you ended up not seeing the script or making it part of the scenery. Well done you three and well done the National for coping. The shows must go on!!!

[edi]

I really didn't enjoy the 'framing' last night, it just distracted and annoyed me.

However the covers were excellent. Seriously I hardly noticed that they were reading at all. Well acted.

[kathryn]

May 13, 2022 11:47:27 GMT Jon said:

The old chestnuts debate is interesting, I think there needs to be a balance between the revivals of classics and new plays because how can theatre thrive and evolve if we just stick to tried and tested.

Honestly, we picked this to see (using up credit vouchers) because it was a revival and not a new play. I just don’t trust the Nash with new plays at the moment. Almost all of the new plays I’ve seen there recently seem to have needed another draft before being staged.

[Jon]

May 13, 2022 20:39:30 GMT kathryn said:

Honestly, we picked this to see (using up credit vouchers) because it was a revival and not a new play. I just don’t trust the Nash with new plays at the moment. Almost all of the new plays I’ve seen there recently seem to have needed another draft before being staged.

The Ocean at the End of the Lane was a smash hit and that was a new play so it's not true that all new plays at the National are duds. It can't just be revivals that they stage.

[kathryn]

Yes, but I saw that at the Nash years ago now - pre-pandemic, in 2019.

Small Island was also very good.

But I’ve seen so many more duds or average new plays than really good ones, it’s made me wary.

[andrew]

I really enjoyed this at the Saturday matinee, despite a one hour show stop and being booted out of the theatre. I thought this was a bit mishandled by the Nash, I couldn't see what was going on but from the stalls I could clearly hear commotion from the circle for about 15 minutes before the stage manager walked on mid-scene and halted the play. If there's a medical issue in the middle of the audience, don't try and soldier on for quarter of an hour, just pause the play, it was very distracting for the audience and presumably quite distressing for the front of house staff and even the paramedics who arrived before the show had been stopped. When we were being turfed out for an impromptu interval another patron felt very unwell and also had an ambulance phoned for her. Two casualties in the space of half an hour.

I really took exception to a pair of gentlemen in their 50s having a go at an usher for the fact that after we'd eventually finished the first act, we were daring to have an interval instead of just soldiering through into the latter half of the play. I get that being 45 minutes delayed may impact a pre-booked train or dinner reservation, but you're old enough to firstly know that during the interval usually a lot of stuff happens (in this case, an entire house being built on stage) with the crew and actors that can't simply be skipped, and also that bitterly complaining to a young lady about a medical delay is fruitless and mean. Go to the box office if you can't stay for act 2, get your money back or another date, and move on.

Anyway. It's a great play I loved it, especially the Welsh choir. I didn't hate the new changes but they were a bit intrusive and needed to be toned down in the first 2 scenes. I have a question for the esteemed community here though, what was the idea in the framing device petering out as the play progresses? We went from a black box set, to a set where you can see behind the scenes, to a properly framed and realistic theatrical set piece, all the while getting less and less of the read-out stage directions. Is this Davies coming to terms with his memories, is it him building more artifice and unreality to his past as he goes on? I wasn't sure.

[MoreLife]

May 15, 2022 10:14:43 GMT andrew said:

Anyway. It's a great play I loved it, especially the Welsh choir. I didn't hate the new changes but they were a bit intrusive and needed to be toned down in the first 2 scenes. I have a question for the esteemed community here though, what was the idea in the framing device petering out as the play progresses? We went from a black box set, to a set where you can see behind the scenes, to a properly framed and realistic theatrical set piece, all the while getting less and less of the read-out stage directions. Is this Davies coming to terms with his memories, is it him building more artifice and unreality to his past as he goes on? I wasn't sure.

My - very own, and therefore quite possibly flawed - interpretation is that we get to see the space inhabited by the characters evolve from a Brechtian set-up to the fully detailed set piece of Act 2 at the same time as we see Morgan evolve from reserved kid - whose existence is basically confined to the village, school and mine - into a brilliant young man, whose agile mind, gift for eloquence and thirst for knowledge open up his world and enable him to let other people, thoughts, and feelings in.  To me it felt that the more Morgan grew and learned to express his ideas, the more the world he inhabited could actually be seen for what it was.       

[cavocado]

I'd been reading about Emlyn Williams beforehand, and that he had a breakdown while at Oxford and started writing as (what we'd now call) therapy. So I saw the framing device in terms of EW's development as a writer and mental recovery of sorts.

At the start when the EW character runs out of the party in his dinner suit, presumably at Oxford, he is very distressed, and has the male voice choir inhabiting his head, like he's struggling to reconcile those two aspects of himself - intellectual Oxford man and working class Welsh boy. When the main play starts it is transparently artificial - no props, no scenery, actors often looking a baffled by what they are being told to do, EW often stopping and changing or re-starting the play, and his contributions get more intrusive for a while.

To me the arc of the EW character effected the changes to the play (the addition of props, not reading out the stage directions, a realistic set). It gradually becomes more seamlessly fictional rather than a work-in-progress exercise in autobiography and learning to write, so EW as a character becomes less intrusive, because it's no longer 'just' his own story/therapy.

Having said that, I did find the stage directions really intrusive and annoying after about half an hour!

[gazzaw13]

I really dislike the writer framing device in general and in particular in this play. It shows a lack of faith in the original source and has become overdone in recent years. One of the joys of theatre is engaging with the characters onstage and losing oneself in the experience. Why take away that joy through distanciation?

[Dave B]

We were there this evening. Our usual A £20 seats were moved a row back by phone call about half nine this morning. A bit late in the day and annoying as I didn't realise the front row was still in place and I'm too tall for B to be comfortable, I would have said no and asked for a different option had I realised.

Other than that, it was fine. I think I'm in the minority in that I liked the framing device, I like it even more reading cavocado's post above about therapy etc. I'd also agree with comments further back about Nicola Walker often feeling like she was in a different play, felt like she didn't get much to do other than be stern and then stern some more.

Very full this evening so at least it is doing well for the NT.

[mkb]

I had the call this morning to "upgrade" our dead-centre, front-row, plenty-of-legroom seats to row E, well off centre, tomorrow afternoon. Not best pleased. And why leave it so late?