Meetings - Orange Tree

At least it was parsley attended though!

We went last night, the emptiest I've seen OT in a long long time. It had been noticeable over the past year how much audiences had returned, with my last visit there just a couple of weeks ago having downstairs and upstairs completely full.

I know it is plot related but the smoking...ugh. A lot of unhappy audience members with a couple of 'em talking to FoH at the interval. I know they are herbal but the smell and smoke still affects people and OT is quite a small space. Surely these days you just trade in a suitable looking vape and pretend it is the real thing.

Other than that, I enjoyed this. Three really good performances and the writing is really smart, I really like food as the gateway to connect/reconnect with heritage and in this case (as with so many) to think more on colonialism and the things that might have been lost along the way. It doesn't feel at all dated for a play pushing 40.

Gosh, Steve, I sincerely hope I don't notice any similarities to Jerusalem, which I loathed and couldn't sit through (& for which the almost universal accclaim still baffles me), as I was looking forward to my visit until I read your review. However, like yours, all the reviews Ive read have been very positive, so I'll go prepared but hoping for the best. I alos hope that your matinee was better attended and that mine will be than Dave B found, as I don't recall ever seeing the OT less than full or almost, including on my most recent visit to see That Face.

No expectations as I didn't know the work of Mustapha Matura and it was the positive comments here which made me see it - together with an unexpected free night in London.

I am glad I went. This is a very good play, well written and shaped with important themes and three very interesting characters, all interesting in their own ways. I didn't see the Jerusalem link - I think Johnny Rooster Byron is a character rooted in conviction (and convictions) whereas Hugh is actually trying to find his real self. Perhaps there is a thematic link though, both of them understand (Hugh, eventually) that there are elemental forces which have an effect on us humans.

What I do see is a very Ibsenian quality to the crafting of the narrative and in the way the inter-personal relationships between the characters are presented and developed. If Halvard Solness (the Master Builder) had married Hedda Gabler or Nora Danvers this is the marriage we might have got. And beyond the relationship and Hugh's angst there is also the societal theme in Jean's promoting a dangerously unhealthy product and how our actions can come back to haunt us - a la Ghosts?

In making the Ibsen comparison I can't help wondering if Matura's stage writing might have been influenced by the theatres he was getting produced in? Good as the actors were my one quibble is that the play would have benefited from some attendant lords - the doctors, or mayors, or lawyers, or servants who turn up in Ibsen's plays providing valuable information and helping us to see the main characters in a slightly different light, away from the struggles between themselves. Maybe I'm seeing too much in this and Matura was happy to cut them out and just keep the important characters in the play. But I'd have loved for the maid's grandma to have appeared on stage and maybe the businessman dealing with Jean.

Excellent performances from the three-strong cast. I am glad to report that the Orange Tree was pretty much full and that the audience was wildly enthusiastic about the evening. Great stuff. Once again thanks to those of you who recommended it, I'd have missed it otherwise.