My Brilliant Friend - NT ( from Rose Kingston )

{Spoiler - click to view}
Unfortunately once the set was revealed, it just became a lazy rip-off of Harry Potter with a few projections and they didn't really do anything else with it from that point on.



I didn't mind the actors playing different ages - until Lila’s disastrous children - though it was a bit confusing at times, especially later on when actors came back to play other characters.



I did however mind that they didn't attempt any sort of Italian accents. I can understand why they didn't as it often sounds like a parody. But they all had different English accents and those just sounded every bit as comical instead. The 2 leads were ok and certainly put in the hours…but Catherine McCormack reminded me of James Dreyfus running lines for his Corrie audition in Gimme Gimme Gimme and once that was running through my head, she had no hope.



I did not feel any sense of being in Naples/Italy at all. A simple name change of the gangs and it could've literally been set in England and told the exact same story.



My biggest problems however was the playing of every character - apart from the 2 leads - as caricatures in EVERY scene. It ruined the whole play and I couldn't take any of it seriously.



The Keystone Crooks were always portrayed as babbling idiots and comedic relief whether they were being naughty or nice. There was no sense of peril from these people at all and therefore no shock at any of the horrible crimes they committed. The Mother was played for laughs in literally every one of her scenes. This also made their public outing less powerful and considering the lead characters story arcs hinged on that, it was a terrible decision! 


Lila's children...seriously WTH? Why have a 30 year old man play a new born female baby/young child? Why a man? Once again both children played for excrusiating humour the entire time. By the time we get to the scene where Lila left her husband (one which should've been heartbreaking) all anyone can really do is stifle laughter. It was also so badly directed. The children should've been crying first, then have the husbands breakdown so at least there would've been SOME emotion to the scene. I almost burst out laughing at the husbands breakdown and therefore the children’s reaction were totally lost…just dreadful.



The music worked sometimes, but didn’t know what it was doing for the most part. It reminded me of Chavkin’s misuse of music and dance routines throughout An American Clock. Sometimes it crashed in and was effective at bringing in a new time period. Other times - like the Frank Sinatra song - it faded up at some random moment in the song, then faded out, then later fades up again for one line and then it’s gone again…pointless. It became an overused scene change devise by a director who seemed to forget they had 25 actors, the biggest stage in London and an amazing lighting rig to play with.



And while we’re on the subject…some of the ‘scenes’ weren’t even scenes, they were 5 lines of dialogue in between totally random bursts of music that had no reference to the scene. They could’ve been easily disposed of or done properly. It’s not like some of the other drivel couldn’t have been trimmed elsewhere. There were many scenes that just did not work and felt like they went ‘meh yeah it doesn’t work, just play another song and we’ll fix it later’ and then never did.



Not one of the characters were even remotely likeable. I didn’t think any of them in the end did anything that wasn’t in their own interest and they didn’t care who they hurt in the process. What little ‘good’ anyone did was over shadowed by their vile behaviour in every other area of their lives. The only time I ‘felt’ anything for anyone was when the ‘jaundiced baby’ was kidnapped. Apart from the opening scenes, that was the only one in the entire 5 hours that made an impact.



Which brings us to the babies…seriously WTF was that about?!?!?! Why were they blue and yellow? Why did they look like a couple of cabbages with a silk cloth draped over them held in place by a rubber band and a handle on the back of their heads? Why were they being controlled by Amish women?



If they were re-writing Six Degrees of Separation in a modern context, surely this decision would replace Cats as the ‘all-time low in a lifetime of theatre going’.