34 replies to this topic

[Parsley]

Did anyone notice the one star review from Libby Purves in The Times.....?

It make quite a strange read and I have to say I think she is an odd choice for a theatre critic anyway!

[fringefan]

Slightly off-topic - sorry - but I missed Tusk Tusk through being too slow to try to book and so far as I know, unlike That Face, it didn't transfer anywhere, nor has it been revived.  Is that right, though?  It seems odd, given Polly Stenham's obvious popularity and bankabilty; also, I would like to see what I missed and complete the set.

[xanderl]

I think you're right. I didn't see Tusk Tusk either.

I guess the very young main cast makes it difficult to stage?

[Nosferatu777]

fringefan, on 20 January 2013 - 04:45 AM, said:

Slightly off-topic - sorry - but I missed Tusk Tusk through being too slow to try to book and so far as I know, unlike That Face, it didn't transfer anywhere, nor has it been revived.  Is that right, though?  It seems odd, given Polly Stenham's obvious popularity and bankabilty; also, I would like to see what I missed and complete the set.

Stenham was apparently working on a screen adaptation of it for Channel 4 but it seems to have gotten lost in the wilderness somewhere.

[Honoured Guest]

Director Adam Smith was attached to Tusk Tusk and also to Dope Girls, an original Polly Stenham screenplay, both for Film4 / Origin Pictures. Tusk Tusk is due to shoot this year...

[Parsley]

I thought Tusk Tusk was the best of her 3 plays...likely due to the utterly outstanding children that spent the whole of their time onstage...haven't ever quite seen anything like that again (apart from perhaps Kin in the same venue).

However, I think most of the critics are also getting a bit bored of Stenham repeatedly revisiting the same themes...in many ways No Quarter is the weakest of the 3 plays she has done and some of the review and sunday papers have been quite harsh on her writing...

[Lynette]

Honoured Guest, on 20 January 2013 - 10:32 AM, said:

Director Adam Smith was attached to Tusk Tusk and also to Dope Girls, an original Polly Stenham screenplay, both for Film4 / Origin Pictures. Tusk Tusk is due to shoot this year...

Interesting. I thought her work was leading to film scripts. A younger audience!

[young offender]

I never saw That Face or Tusk Tusk, so can’t say whether Stenham is repeating herself, but there was a jumble of themes here which never seemed to cohere – care of the elderly, the weight of privilege, unemployment/recession, underage relationships, etc.  Ultimately it boils down to the 'well-to-do' young and their angst of engagement or retreat from a difficult world, but much of the writing is as thin and gauche as Robin. The later characters in particular are empty archetypes, and one seems to exist only for a flat punchline – you don’t see young ladies called Esme training for that profession.

There was talk of this play two years ago, so you wonder whether the author herself found it unsatisfactory and was only coaxed into letting it out to round off Cooke’s tenure. The filmmaker Joanna Hogg has done much more satisfying work on upper-middle class crisis – check out Archipelago.

You know when you spot an actor in the audience and can’t for the life of you remember who they are? This happened on Saturday pm. I have only just twigged that it was Douglas Booth, Pip in the BBC’s recent Great Expectations.

[xanderl]

I was there too - was Booth the chap that came in with the guy from Jerusalem and Three Sisters?

Good call on Archipelago - Unrelated is fantastic too

[Nosferatu777]

Parsley, on 19 January 2013 - 09:21 PM, said:

Did anyone notice the one star review from Libby Purves in The Times.....?

It make quite a strange read and I have to say I think she is an odd choice for a theatre critic anyway!

It was certainly a strange one but certainly not as bizarre as Quentin Letts' review for the Mail, the "spin" he puts on Stenham's work and intentions verges on the idiotic.

To an extent I can see where people are coming from in comparing Stenham's work to Joanna Hogg but I think the huge difference there is that whilst Stenham is primarily interested in youth, she does also make an effort to say something interesting about older characters as well, whereas the reverse can not be said of Hogg's films, in fact its hard to imagine anyone under the age of 30/40 being anything but bored to tears by them.