DRAMA
I love the theatre – dramas, plays – musicals… not so much. I probably go to more shows than most; very little compares to living through an amazing performance on stage, knowing that it is a one-off experience, no show will every be exactly the same or be experienced in exactly the same way. I never read reviews until after I have seen the play and too often I find that I simply disagree with the reviews, especially with the hype. On the flip side, some of the more obscure plays I watch seem to be terribly underrated. So I set up a blog, really to vent my frustration, but also to share my love of the theatre.
The Play
Is it a classic, is it new, does it make you think?
MESSAGE
The Acting
Does it grip you, does it take your breath away?
EMOTION
The Scenography
Is there enough, is there too much, is it magical?
VISUAL
Why I started this blog
I saw on average two plays a month in 2022 – most of them superb. But in September I went to the Harold Pinter to see the Seagull. I had to wait for two years… I was meant to see the show not long after COVID hit.
For the first time I really wanted to leave at the interval. I had missed the fact that this was not ‘THE’ Seagull but some horrible re-write, or should I say “Anya Reiss’ unique 21st century modernisation.”
It is not a ‘unique’ modernisation – rather a bad one. A woman fallen due to pregnancy out of wedlock – that simply does not translate into the 21st century when over half of children in England and Wales are born to unmarried parents. Adding references to mobile phones and crude language does not make a rewrite cool or justifiable. The whole play was a mess, the scenography abysmal, the acting (apart from Indira) poor. I could not understand the hype reviews that I scrolled through whilst taking the bus home.
Maybe if I were a bona fide theatre critic I would have felt differently about the show. But I am not – I am just a person who loves going to the theatre, who goes to the theatre a lot and who chooses going to the theatre over most other forms of entertainment. I thought to myself – maybe there are others who feel duped by the hype, misled by critics’ reviews either into going to see a poor play, or worse, misled into missing out on a good one.
Latest From MY Blog
Subscribe today and never miss a thing.
