9 replies to this topic

[Pharaoh's number 2]

1hr20mins straight through is the approx running time. The third play in a row Downstairs at the RC running at well under 2hrs, no interval. Plus The River, upstairs, isn't long either.Are writers running out of steam these days?

Don't get me wrong- I love short plays- but I don't like it when I book for a matinee, and then find I have an ultra long wait between that and the play I'm seeing in the evening!  

[Honoured Guest]

Love and Information was not a short play, at almost two hours of relentless short scenes demanding more concentration than humanly possible to fully heed. Of course Ding Dong the Wicked was undeniably short, at 20 mins. I get what you mean about travel and waiting - I've foolishly booked a 23:30 coach from Victoria after NSFW.

[Pharaoh's number 2]

I wasn't actually including Ding Dong the Wicked, but rather the slight Birthday.

When these plays go on sale, they must have some idea roughly how long they'll be- ie whether they'll be a 3hr epic like Jerusalem or a quick one like nsfw. It would be lovely if they could give us some idea...

[xanderl]

Plus these will be running alongside the very short "Constellations" in the West End. In fact they could do all three as a triple bill and it would be shorter than some shows!

[mallardo]

It came in at just over 80 minutes last night - the same length as The River apparently.  The lobby was a confluence of crowds spilling into Sloane Square at nine o'clock.

I don't know why it's called NSFW as it's not about internet porn but about magazines, a lad's mag called Doghouse, dealt with in the first two scenes; and a girl's mag called Electra, dealt with in the third.  Lucy Kirkwood's point seems to be that both are bad things in their own gender-based ways: Doghouse feeds male fantasies of perfect big-boobed female bodies while Electra takes the opposite approach, inventing non-existent or irrelevant body flaws which they can tell their readers how to fix.  At least women read.  Men only look.

Each mag is dominated by a monster of control and manipulation at the editor's desk, Julian Barratt at Doghouse, forthrightly sleazy and utterly convincing; and a glamorous, self-obsessed Janie Dee at Electra.  The problem for the play is that both are so entertaining we want MORE of them.  We want them to collide in a climactic Scene Four which would lift the evening to the heights it has been promising.  Alas, no Scene Four.  And it's not ilke there wasn't time for it.

In any case there is still much to enjoy.  Scene Two, a confrontation between Barratt and an excellent Kevin Doyle as the father of an underage girl whose semi-nude photo has been mistakenly published by Doghouse, is blazingly dramatic, full of shocks and surprises - a fabulous piece of writing and acting.  And Dee's long Scene Three, a job interview, is superb in every way.

Lucy Kirkwood - yet another of the seemingly endless stream of brilliant young women writers the Royal Court has tapped into - is a very fine playwright and she will soon write a great play.  This one might have been it had she really gone for it.

[Honoured Guest]

Hmm. This was unlucky to follow Love and Information. It seems so thin and slight in comparison although most of the audience seemed to love it.

[fringefan]

I really enjoyed this and thought it was one of the best plays I've seen this year.  A little on the brief side, perhaps, but very fast-moving and apart from finding the final scene rather drawn out and unconvincing, flawless.  So funny, too - shame I then saw (the first half of) an interminably turgid play in the evening...

[dude-1981]

Do tell fringefan.

[Punk Rock]

fringefan, on 17 November 2012 - 11:02 PM, said:

I really enjoyed this and thought it was one of the best plays I've seen this year.  A little on the brief side, perhaps, but very fast-moving and apart from finding the final scene rather drawn out and unconvincing, flawless.  So funny, too - shame I then saw (the first half of) an interminably turgid play in the evening...

Agreed.

[fringefan]

dude-1981, on 18 November 2012 - 01:08 AM, said:

Do tell fringefan.

dude-1981, I can cope with the inevitable accusations of philistinism once others go to see the dud play and I add my opinion, but I am trying to spare those of you about to see it!