423 posts
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Post by dlevi on Aug 2, 2018 7:43:36 GMT
I saw this in New York where it starred Michael Urie and Robin DeJesus and while the play is kinda sketchy but not bad and never boring, it provides great opportunities for the two performers. Certainly worthwhile - though Mr Urie would be hard to beat.
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2,743 posts
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Post by n1david on Aug 8, 2018 9:05:58 GMT
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245 posts
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Post by barelyathletic on Aug 13, 2018 16:43:07 GMT
Saw this on Saturday night, though it had been cancelled on Friday due to an electrical fault. The theatre was up-and-running again, but not the pub downstairs.
The play is excellent, a smartly written, witty and intelligent relationship drama that follows a gay couple over a six or seven year period in New York in the noughties. As you might expect it has echoes of Tony Kushner's Angels in America and Larry Kramer's The Normal Heart, but doesn't have the former's epic scope or the latter's heavyweight political punch. Though it has a good go at doing both. It is a more intimate piece, rather like a section lifted from The Inheritance. A taster for that, if you will. Which is no bad thing in my humble opinion.
The performances from Tyrone Huntley and Harry McEntire are excellent, full of energy and bounce, and they find a nice balance between the more combative moments and the more tender ones - even if (to me) they look about ten years too young for the roles. They're nicely supported in two smaller roles by the 'strapping' Dan Krikler and Cash Holland, in an emotional penultimate scene.
Only the design let it down for me. I assumed the sandpit they created was an analogy for the shifting sands of time and the instability that relationships can be grounded on, along with a nod to Fire Island. But it didn't really work for me as an environment for the drama we were watching. A bit too clever for its own good.
But, all in all, an excellent evening. With the added buzz on Saturday of the last minute arrival of Jake Shears into the Finborough's very intimate arena, adding a whole new level of gay New York glamour and authenticity.
Recommended. Four stars.
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2,743 posts
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Post by n1david on Aug 25, 2018 23:06:13 GMT
Oh boy, I didn't get on with this at all. Partly that's down to the seating arrangement, and if you're doing bench seating it does help if the ushers help police people taking up more space than they should (e.g. refusing to remove their backpack from the bench next to them). I was stuck in a triangular space immediately next to three boxes of stinky Lush bath bombs, the assaults of which on my olfactory system have still not cleared some hours later. The suggestion of a Lush store for the whole play is strange given that the store does not play a critical role in the play. Anyway, as to the play, it feels to me that the writer is trying to do a "state of the gay nation" play, but does no more than raise issues and then let them drop. So the play touches on monogamy and open relationships, the responsibility of community members to come out, drug abuse (alcohol, poppers and coke), gaybashing, gentrification, internalised homophobia, antisemitism, rent control... but all, ultimately, to no end. And it tries to do this all in one relationship (with an occasional third wheel). The play's structure is a rather odd back-and-forth in time, with some scenes being repeated out of context and then later in context. There's some rather ineffectual 'rewinding' and 'fast forwarding' with the cast in rapid motion to highlight jumps in time, but this is used inconsistently and ineffectually. I thought the performances of the central couple were OK, but The Writer (Harry McEntire) is such an unattractive character it's difficult to have any empathy with him. Maybe a performer like Michael Urie, who took the role in NY, would have suggested a better mix of bad-boy/twinkle in the eye to give a sense of why someone might be attracted to him, but in this production he just felt like a whining moaner. And it's another NY-set play where two of the cast are writers, one a media studies academic, and everyone's in therapy. That's a good cross-section of society to illustrate the "state of the gay nation". So I'm sorry, very much not for me, the 105 minutes in a cramped seat felt like a lifetime. (Round and round the sandpit. Shout at each other. Round and round the sandpit) Oh, and one last thing: If I am ever gay-bashed so badly that I need facial reconstruction surgery, don't you dare get me a box of f***ing Lush bath bombs. |
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