My Country; a work in progress - NT and tour

So despite the great comments on social media, the reviews haven't been so great from Friday's press night...

***** - BritishTheatre.com
**** - WhatsOnStage
*** - The Telegraph, The Reviews Hub, LondonTheatre1.com
** - The Stage, The Upcoming
* (ouch!) - The Arts Desk

After listening to the Radio 4 documentary about it, I think it probably hasn't been developed well hence the structure isn't particularly strong - as the reviews suggest.

As I said though, still some great comments coming up on twitter, so can't decide if I still want to go now.

I went last night and also to the Platform beforehand with Rufus Norris and Padraig Cusack. The latter was mildly informative. Their attempt to capture the voices of Britannia deliberately excluded London and the South East (to avoid appearing too metropolitan) and the content of the play changed significantly till close to the first performance. Beyond that much of the discussion was about how to distil down hours and hours of recordings into a short play.

I found it fairly entertaining, but I fully agree that there was little new in the voices presented.

Note that the NT states a running time of 1h 30 mins, but even though we started 5 mins late, we were out by 9.20 - so a run time of 1h 15 mins.

Somewhere in here is the germ of a good idea but sadly those 15 minutes or so of the nations and regions speaking to each other are buried under the tedium of oral history speeches from the public that offer nothing new or interesting to the Brexit debate.

There isn't one single contribution from the public that will make you question your own thoughts or beliefs on the rights and wrongs of Brexit, its the same tired old clichés that the media and social media have been churning out since last June. I was hoping that someone they spoke to would offer some dazzling insight to justify the piece but no.

In the end it meanders to a meaningless close and you are left wondering what the point of it all was - both the play and the EU referendum.

Its 75 minutes long, which is odd in itself as Brexit is THE big topic of the moment and yet they clearly haven't got the material to produce anything more and that in itself is quite revealing.

A missing an open goal 4/10

I saw this tonight in Cardiff and the audience included a party from Merthyr Tydfil, where the welsh interviews were done, and at least one of the interviewees featured in the play. It was quite a lively crowd and the actors seemed to enjoy the experience as much as the audience, many of whom gave a genuine standing ovation and joined in with some of the songs. I imagine that it's much better to see this in one of the participating nations and regions, rather than in the sterile auditorium of the National Theatre of the South Bank with its blase, metropolitan, theatregoing audience. I thought the play was very successful in presenting the UK as a body of different nations and regions and individuals with varied heritages, histories, experiences and circumstances, all brought together or forced apart by the recent, catastrophic Brexit Referendum episode.

It appears performances, or perhaps a performance, have been cancelled at the Arts Theatre, Cambridge, though lack of sales. Now just on Thurs to Sat.

It's odd structurally. The first and last thirds are pure verbatim (and all that implies) and the whole singing and dancing jazz hands let's take a tour through regional stereotypes party in the middle is just... bizarre. Fun, but out of place. But without it it would just be an hour or whatever of watching the local news interviewing regular people with your eyes shut.