That Is Not Who I Am - Royal Court

[Mark]

Jun 11, 2022 23:14:01 GMT shakeel said:

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Oh, and I'm not actually sure if she was pretending to not know her lines — there were points where that seemed quite real to me. (If it was a conceit, it's an annoying one because it didn't add anything and made it hard to follow certain passages)!

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She did this twice tonight and it did seem she may have genuinely needed them. Either that or very good acting like she’d forgotten 😂

Not sure what to make of it really. I did enjoy it to an extent but agree with others that it was a bit gimmicky. I did love the two main performances though. The last 5 minutes was certainly a bit messy I thought. A strange one for sure, will have to give it more thought.

That said it was my first visit to the RC and I loved the venue.

[foxa]

My first time back at the RC since beforetimes- it is a venue I like and great to be in Sloane Square on such a pretty evening.

I don't think this is selling at all well - I had forgotten it was rush Monday so several hours after booking opened I had a look and there was good availability, so on a whim got a £12 aisle seat. On non-£12 days some performances barely seem to have sold. I thought the actors and design were good, as was the use of video, but didn't love the play or gimmicks. Will be interested to see the reviews - the reaction tonight felt very luke-warm, but that may in part be due to the odd ending.

Also heads up - 2 hours straight through. Also, you can't buy a programme/script beforehand, but they are available afterwards, if you are so inclined.

[foxa]

Oh andI wonder if they should start issuing TW for plays about people stuck at home, going mad looking at social media. I mean - I can do that without leaving my house :-)

[samuelwhiskers]

The play’s marketing person is all over Twitter claiming that 

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Lucy Kirkwood

invented the marketing “persona” for Dave Davidson, insisted he be described as a first time writer who’d been a security guard for 40 years.

This is all such a cluster****.

[crowblack]

And then there's this: "Royal Court’s new play about antisemitism has been programmed over Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur and Sukkot. Arguably the most important and busiest month of the Jewish year.". And the venue's toilets are now mixed sex, so many Jewish women can't use them even if they do visit the theatre.

[BurlyBeaR]

Folks can you all decide/agree whether this is still a secret or not please. If it is then please use spoilers.

[andrew]

Am I correct in saying nobody's walked out of this raving about the play? All the discussion is about the writer, commentary on the work itself seems fairly middling. Just trying to work out whether I'm going or not.

[samuelwhiskers]

I honestly did really like the play. And actually the themes of the play are more appealing to me than identity theft.

If they hadn’t done this gimmick and just presented it as a straight play by X, I reckon it would have received solid 3-5* across the board.

[foxa]

I would say 3*: topical, fine performances and design, I laughed a couple of times, just (IMO) no incredible insight or depth. Described it to a friend as being like an Edinburgh show on steroids. The way it has been framed, both marketing and in the production,is kinda irritating. For £12 it met my FOMO need. (Sorry andrew I'm probably not helping.)I've seen a couple of people online very enthusiastic.

[BurlyBeaR]

Just to say I’m not adding any more spoilers for posts which are reported for not using the spoiler tags. 

Details of how to use spoilers are here

Please don’t report any more posts that reveal the playwright. It’s up to you now as to whether this is discussed openly. Thank you!  

[dlevi]

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I Saw this tonight and thought it - and by "it" I mean ALL of it, the announcement, the marketing, the production and the play itself - was pretty terrific.


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There seems to be resentment in the Twittersphere and here that the RC lied about programming a first time writer instead instead of coming clean that it was one of their most often produced ones in recent years. I think they are going for a more adventurous audience. If they sold it as a new Lucy Kirkwood play then there would be a core audience of fans of hers who would book it on her name alone. This way the initial bookers are people who are actually tantilized by the idea of an unknown writer writing a provocative new play. It's a risk in business terms but in creating buzz about a play it's very smart. Anyone remember "Great Britain" by Richard Bean at the National? A play that was rehearsed and produced in secret and only a day or two before the first preview was it "announced" . That ploy created buzz around a play which had everyone talking.

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But what about the play? 

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As for the play itself, I found it to be a solid A play - not great but damned good. Thanks to terrific performances from all involved and the sort of TEDTalk presentation. Once the gimmick is public, time will tell if the play itself endures, I think it might because as much as many of us think conspiracy theorists can be wackos, sometimes there is simply too much coincidence and we need to stop and consider what's really going on.

[n1david]

I was there last night too - sorry to miss you dlevi and (big spoilers in here):

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I was not as impressed by the play. I thought the acting was terrific - I have rarely seen such a realistic couple portrayed on-stage - but I wasn't so keen on the play, nor the rigmarole around it. With the opening statements I thought I was going to get something special here, having avoided all the spoilers (apart from the playwright's name) I thought OK, this could be really interesting. However well acted it was, though, as time went on I kept thinking "get to the point", and then when it did get to the "fake" ending I thought, what was the point? Then there's the business with the RC disclaimer and Kirkwood appearing on-stage, and it just became a mess. The conclusion I came to was that it would give some succour to conspiracy theorists by suggesting that such a tale could be true, and I didn't really see the point of that. Supporting a different way to run the world isn't necessarily an extreme belief, but this seemed to put it in the same category as anti-vaxxers and 9/11 conspiracists. So it seemed to be both at the same time dismissing anti-capitalists while encouraging conspiracies. I enjoyed it on the night but ultimately didn't feel that it made a coherent point in a coherent way. Lots to talk about afterwards though.

To summarise in a spoiler-free way: great performances, average play, weird gimmicks, confused message.

[Steve]

I'll just avoid talking about the spoiler bits, as they've been thoroughly discussed above.

I agree with Foxa's views, in particular.

For me, this is a wonderfully written romantic comedy, with truly individual and loveable characters, contained in the body of a flaccid unexciting thriller.

The style mitigates against getting excited or frightened, and that lets down, what is otherwise a brilliantly written character piece, from a thrilling four stars to a merely middling 3 stars from me.

Worth watching, though, especially for the comic timing and charm of Jake Davies and the remarkable in-the-moment lightness and wit of Siena Kelly.

[Latecomer]

Have to agree with people above, great performances, I enjoyed the dialogue which was very natural and well written, but…..to be frank I was a bit bored by the end and sort of “get on with it” so play lacked a bit of something and was rather muddled. Felt a bit like it was written by rich people about how they think people must feel. Gosh that sounds awful but it’s how I felt. It felt a bit patronising? I’ll have to think about that a bit more!!!!

[Dave B]

I don't think I have much more to add but I would just highlight that both Siena Kelly and Jake Davies are absolutely great and I really enjoyed watching their relationship. £12 Monday was pretty busy... but several early walk outs!

[Forrest]

I cannot add much to what has already been said (decent play, great performances, somewhat confusing message), so I'll make you laugh (or try to) at the expense of my own stupidity.

I took my guests from abroad to see this, and spent most of the play wondering if these were actually real people - as the beginning had implied - and if perhaps I was just simply so oblivious that I managed to completely miss the story in the media, and how would I explain this to my guests if that was indeed the case. I let out a loud sigh of relief when I googled their names after it had ended. Yup, I'm an idiot! 

[n1david]

I wouldn't worry about it @forrest I was 99% sure that the characters were fictional but I still Googled their names in the bar queue afterwards!

[alessia]

Finally went to see last night. Having carefully avoided all reviews and spoilers, I had no idea what to expect and I enjoyed it very much. Not at all what I had anticipated it would be about. Kept me interested all the way through, the two actors are brilliant together, and I thought the concept was clever- I was bemused at the final bit, but I do agree with others that it was a bit of a gimmick. I wonder (after reading the playtext) if this is a play that can be produced again in future, and how it would be made to work without the 'unknown writer' trick.

David Morrissey was in the audience

[NeilVHughes]

A play let down by its construct and an ending that stretches it too far, almost as if the playwright didn’t trust the audience to grasp the concept.

The central message on where the world is at the moment is strong enough not to need the distractions and one thing that resonated was how during lockdown there was a sense of a different way of life which is now a distant memory.

Worth seeing for the relationship between the leads, a naturalness that I found more empathetic than the relationship plays Beginning and Middle at the National

[cavocado]

I saw this last week and am still unsure what to think. During the play I felt it lacked substance because the messages were so mixed - important issues but told through a couple of wishy washy characters who believe pretty much every conspiracy theory going and are often quite dull, along with a somewhat annoying meta character. There were also some elements so ridiculous that I felt they dragged down the more real issues.

But then thinking about it afterwards, I can see that this is one of the points of the play - in an age where everyone is on social media, it's hard to know what is real and important or whose word to rely on. So even though it's a frustrating method of storytelling, there's a clever ambiguity in having two gullible characters putting across serious issues which they themselves are unable to separate from whacky conspiracy theories.

The relationship aspect reminded me of David Eldridge too, and the acting was impressive, but I felt it fell between two genres, conspiracy thriller and relationship play, and didn't quite work as either.

As to the Dave Davidson issue, I think it was pretty unnecessary. It didn't add anything to the play, and it still feels a bit off for the Royal Court to give false information about a playwright, given that new writing is their selling point. I'd rather have booked based on the real writer, whose work I like. This one is worth seeing but it has some big flaws, and you've got to wonder if it might have developed better in rehearsals if they'd been free to dump the 'Dave Davidson' concept.

[tal]

I didn’t know about the gimmick and I actually gasped when it happened.

I had a great time with the play but do agree it goes on for longer than what it needed to.