Below is the link to the News review of "Closer", in which the reviewer refers in glowing terms to the performance of Alice Corrigan as Anna:
"http://www.portsmouth.co.uk/entertainment/Review-Closer.5202520.jp"
Please forgive a father's pride in his younger daughter but the review says everything about the performance that I and her mother saw last night and were unable to express. Comic timing allied with purity of characterisation and emotional depth contributes to a stunning performance! Well done, Kitten!
This is a link to some stunning rehearsal photos by Finchy: http://www.flickr.com/photos/7174256@N03/sets/72157617196543832/
Friday 24 April 2009
Tuesday 21 April 2009
Quarter Final Winners!
Yes, folks! The Bench production of "Father For Justice" won the Southern Division quarter finals of the All England Theatre Festival and Martin McBride won the Best actor award yet again. It was interesting that the only other nominee was his co-star, Damon Wakelin, so the Bench were on something of a win-win situation there! The adjudicator gave a wonderful adjudication and what he said about the direction made my face glow with pride! I wish now I had asked for a written adjudication as it was really good to have all that praise heaped on my young and inexperienced shoulders. (OK, so the rest of me isn't that young and experienced, but my shoulders are!)
This win will only embolden me to continue my series of directorial guidelines for the new director.
I found support for my theory about choosing a bloody good cast in Brian Moore's column in the Monday Daily Telegraph. I was recommended the Monday Daily Telegraph for its sports/football coverage by a newsagent in the bed opposite when I was in hospital. Moore was writing about the task facing Ian McGeechan as he tries to put together a Lions Squad for the tour to South Africa. The quote which caught my eye was "It is the assembling of the team, not the training, which has the greatest impact on their chances of success."
If you change the word "team" to "cast" and the word "training" to "rehearsals", you will see that it almost replicates my point that the director's utmost priority is choosing the cast. The rehearsals are there to help that cast realise the play. They can be a help or a hindrance!
The Bench now travels to Devon to take part in the semi finals of the All England Theatre Festival as one of the "best of the west" quartet. We look forward to a new challenge!
This win will only embolden me to continue my series of directorial guidelines for the new director.
I found support for my theory about choosing a bloody good cast in Brian Moore's column in the Monday Daily Telegraph. I was recommended the Monday Daily Telegraph for its sports/football coverage by a newsagent in the bed opposite when I was in hospital. Moore was writing about the task facing Ian McGeechan as he tries to put together a Lions Squad for the tour to South Africa. The quote which caught my eye was "It is the assembling of the team, not the training, which has the greatest impact on their chances of success."
If you change the word "team" to "cast" and the word "training" to "rehearsals", you will see that it almost replicates my point that the director's utmost priority is choosing the cast. The rehearsals are there to help that cast realise the play. They can be a help or a hindrance!
The Bench now travels to Devon to take part in the semi finals of the All England Theatre Festival as one of the "best of the west" quartet. We look forward to a new challenge!
Friday 10 April 2009
Watch the listener
I was impressed by a Sky Arts 1 television production of "In the Company of Actors". It was the transfer of a Sydney Theatre company production of "Hedda Gabler" with Cate Blanchett and Hugo Weaving to the Brooklyn Academy of Music. The programme was an interesting look at the rehearsal process and would make a terrific Club Night for the Bench Theatre. Robyn Nevin, the STC Artistic Director, directed both the original production and the transfer to America. She made a number of telling comments about being pedantic about the script, about listening to the rhythm of the lines and insisting that the actors adhere to the words in the text. She also commented that when the books were down she would inevitably watch the actors listening on stage rather than the actors speaking. She found that their concentration and reactions in responding to the speeches were telling and uplifting.
In amateur acting actors without words to say sometimes see themselves as lesser roles as a consequence. I can remember at one workshop two actresses playing Gwendolen and Cecily in "Importance of Being Earnest" (not the ones in the final production I hasten to add) trying very hard not to impinge on the scene or the speeches of the young men, who are given all the words. I had to point out that these two young women were the whole reason for the scene and for the young men's speeches. Their reactions were paramount and of far greater importance than what the young men were saying. Actors sometimes need reminding to ask themselves why the writer wanted them on stage in this particular scene. Sometimes their presence is why the scene was written and that their reaction makes or breaks the scene. This is easier to understand if you are the lead character but are not given words in a particular scene. However this can be equally true of a smaller role and an ill-judged or badly thought out reaction can ruin a scene.
In amateur acting actors without words to say sometimes see themselves as lesser roles as a consequence. I can remember at one workshop two actresses playing Gwendolen and Cecily in "Importance of Being Earnest" (not the ones in the final production I hasten to add) trying very hard not to impinge on the scene or the speeches of the young men, who are given all the words. I had to point out that these two young women were the whole reason for the scene and for the young men's speeches. Their reactions were paramount and of far greater importance than what the young men were saying. Actors sometimes need reminding to ask themselves why the writer wanted them on stage in this particular scene. Sometimes their presence is why the scene was written and that their reaction makes or breaks the scene. This is easier to understand if you are the lead character but are not given words in a particular scene. However this can be equally true of a smaller role and an ill-judged or badly thought out reaction can ruin a scene.
Being directed
I believe I have related elsewhere that I was personally directed by Michael Stevenson in "Shanghai". I had one tiny sequence where I had to cross a crowded room and had to do so on the personal nod of Michael Stevenson stood out of camera. I had grown to like Michael over the five days of shooting and realised he was much admired by those around him. Recently I was watching a television biography of David Lean. Michael Stevenson was interviewed with the tag line of second assistant director on "Lawrence of Arabia". This was in 1962 of course but Michael's list of credits on the Internet Movie Database (IMDb) is stunning: Harry Potter, Alexander, Atonement, Bourne Ultimatum and V for Vendetta to name but a few! Wow, so I can claim to have been "personally directed" by someone who has a fantastic film career and experience and who has worked with stars galore! I love this business!
Tuesday 7 April 2009
Directing
I intend continuing with my mini series on directing especially for the newer and inexperienced director started in a previous post.
However in the interlude I am delighted to say I got the autograph of Sir Richard Eyre, who directed "The Last Cigarette" at the Minerva as part of the Chichester Theatre Festival 2009. If he had hoped to sneak in to a performance of his production without being spotted by an eagle eyed theatre fanatic like me he was mistaken. I caught him leaning against the first floor rail and in my most oily tones asked him for his autograph. He signed my programme over his own autobiographical notes and I managed to let him do so in silence without my usual gushing, bowing and scraping and licking of toecaps. Usually I burble on about how brilliant their production is and probably sound as insincere as hell. I once sat next to Harold Pinter in his production of "Blithe Spirit" at the Lyttleton. I must have been at my most obsequious because he didn't come back after the interval. I laughed at all the "jokes" as well even though, with a cast led by Richard Johnson and I can't remember the star playing Madame Arkadi, I didn't enjoy it very much.
We have "Hay Fever" tickets for this year's production at Chichester but I wait to be convinced by Noel Coward. This is a hint to the director, Nikolai Foster.
However in the interlude I am delighted to say I got the autograph of Sir Richard Eyre, who directed "The Last Cigarette" at the Minerva as part of the Chichester Theatre Festival 2009. If he had hoped to sneak in to a performance of his production without being spotted by an eagle eyed theatre fanatic like me he was mistaken. I caught him leaning against the first floor rail and in my most oily tones asked him for his autograph. He signed my programme over his own autobiographical notes and I managed to let him do so in silence without my usual gushing, bowing and scraping and licking of toecaps. Usually I burble on about how brilliant their production is and probably sound as insincere as hell. I once sat next to Harold Pinter in his production of "Blithe Spirit" at the Lyttleton. I must have been at my most obsequious because he didn't come back after the interval. I laughed at all the "jokes" as well even though, with a cast led by Richard Johnson and I can't remember the star playing Madame Arkadi, I didn't enjoy it very much.
We have "Hay Fever" tickets for this year's production at Chichester but I wait to be convinced by Noel Coward. This is a hint to the director, Nikolai Foster.
The Last Cigarette
The "Last Cigarette" by Simon Gray and Hugh Whitemore is adapted from the former's book, "The Smoking Diaries". It was performed at the Minerva Theatre (Chichester Festival 2009)until April 11th, prior to a subsequent move to the West End.
The play is an autobiographical account by a writer blessed with acute observation, the ability to turn a telling phrase and the wit to make the onlooker laugh. Gray began the play himself but had to collaborate with his friend of forty years, Hugh Whitemore. Whitemore describes the collaboration as "tremendous fun" and that "Simon wrote like a jazz musician. He could improvise beautifully."
It was Whitemore that came up with the idea of portraying the narrator with two actors and an actress. This quickly establishes what a complex character with whom we are dealing. It also enables other people encountered in Simon Gray's life to be portrayed by these aspects of himself. This works beautifully as the script works in and out of remembered snatches of the past. Simon Gray would write through the night, go to bed at dawn and not rise until midday. The first half is devoted to the telling of his story and each scene is punctuated by the ritual lighting up of cigarettes by all three aspects of the writer simultaneously. The effect is clever and telling - and the health of the cast and the audience were never endangered at any time. The second half is more concerned with Gray's terminal cancer. its impact on him and the well meaning but clumsy attempts of the medical profession to deal with the condition.
The production is marvellously paced and the reference to jazz music is very apt. The voices and emotions of the three actors, Jasper Britton, Felicity Kendal and Nicholas Le Prevost, are beautifully tuned together under the direction of Sir Richard Eyre. We believe that they are all Simon Gray and we believe that they are the characters he meets in his life - Jasper Britton does a wonderful scene as Harold Pinter with Nicholas as Gray. In the second half Jasper takes on more and more of the role of Simon Gray as Nicholas plays the medical profession ( a brilliant impersonation of the "chipmunk" doctor which made the audience roar) and Felicity the supportive wife. At no point does it become maudlin or sentimental. We are told that this is a man who smoked sixty cigarettes a day for fifty years and not once does he ask us to pity him.: "it's about the experience of going along a path which we shall all have to take one day". In the hands of a writer and craftsman like Gray, that experience is not downbeat or depressing.
In the programme, Hugh Whitemore reflects, "Even now, when England are playing a test series against the West Indies, I still think that I must ring Simon to talk to him about the cricket and then I realise I can't."
The play is an autobiographical account by a writer blessed with acute observation, the ability to turn a telling phrase and the wit to make the onlooker laugh. Gray began the play himself but had to collaborate with his friend of forty years, Hugh Whitemore. Whitemore describes the collaboration as "tremendous fun" and that "Simon wrote like a jazz musician. He could improvise beautifully."
It was Whitemore that came up with the idea of portraying the narrator with two actors and an actress. This quickly establishes what a complex character with whom we are dealing. It also enables other people encountered in Simon Gray's life to be portrayed by these aspects of himself. This works beautifully as the script works in and out of remembered snatches of the past. Simon Gray would write through the night, go to bed at dawn and not rise until midday. The first half is devoted to the telling of his story and each scene is punctuated by the ritual lighting up of cigarettes by all three aspects of the writer simultaneously. The effect is clever and telling - and the health of the cast and the audience were never endangered at any time. The second half is more concerned with Gray's terminal cancer. its impact on him and the well meaning but clumsy attempts of the medical profession to deal with the condition.
The production is marvellously paced and the reference to jazz music is very apt. The voices and emotions of the three actors, Jasper Britton, Felicity Kendal and Nicholas Le Prevost, are beautifully tuned together under the direction of Sir Richard Eyre. We believe that they are all Simon Gray and we believe that they are the characters he meets in his life - Jasper Britton does a wonderful scene as Harold Pinter with Nicholas as Gray. In the second half Jasper takes on more and more of the role of Simon Gray as Nicholas plays the medical profession ( a brilliant impersonation of the "chipmunk" doctor which made the audience roar) and Felicity the supportive wife. At no point does it become maudlin or sentimental. We are told that this is a man who smoked sixty cigarettes a day for fifty years and not once does he ask us to pity him.: "it's about the experience of going along a path which we shall all have to take one day". In the hands of a writer and craftsman like Gray, that experience is not downbeat or depressing.
In the programme, Hugh Whitemore reflects, "Even now, when England are playing a test series against the West Indies, I still think that I must ring Simon to talk to him about the cricket and then I realise I can't."
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