David J

I am glad I am not the only one on this PN2. Now I like this musical more since I last commented having listened to the CD, but I still think you loose the magic sitting in a row like L in the stalls. A smaller theatre or a better sound system is needed.

This production was good, but it is lacking

Jonathan Slinger showed humor and malice when he was mad, and the "get thee to a nunnery" was ferocious. I liked the moment when he accidently broke the jaw off Yorick's skull and then begrudgingly tossed it to an audience member. His delivery however was bogged down by extenuating the words, especially "All...is...not...well".

The performances I liked were Charlotte Cornwell as a majestic Gertrude, Greg Hicks' touching performance as the ghost, Robin Soans' Polonius, and Alex Waldmann was charming as ever as Horatio.

Is it me or is Greg Hicks just being Greg Hicks. As much as I enjoyed him in the Winters Tale, he seems to be giving the same performance in Julius Caesar, King Lear and now as Claudius, and I thought he lacked presence in this.

Pippa Nixon was an obedient and shy Ophelia, and I enjoyed her madness scene, but I thought she held back. Not that I was expecting the Bastard, or Rosalind for that matter, but I warmed to Mariah Gale more than Pippa.

David Farr's production is chock full of ideas, most of which I thought did not gel well. Apart from foreshadowing the duel there was no reason why the play needed to be set in a run down fencing hall. I liked the stripping away of the floor boards and Ophelia's grave, but there was no reason to keep a backdrop of a misty moor after the funeral.

Basically there were some good moments but there isn't anything really special about the production

Matinee.

OT, but there is a new Arden Shakespeare book being sold at the RSC called A Year of Shakespeare: Re-living the World Shakespeare Festival. A lot of it includes reviews of the productions involved, RSC, Globe Theatre, NT and so on. The Troilus and Cressida review is worth a giggle.

"Let us plunge down the postmodern rabbit hole of having White-Actors-As-'Trojans'-As-White-Actors-As-Ersatz-Native-Americans". The Wooster Group said in post-talk that they chose the accent when looking at the council scene in 2.2, where they were trying to get beyond the difficulty of the speeches to something "more naive" and "simple", less pretentious. Mark Ravenhill meanwhile insisted in producing something "inconsistent in tone, unreliable in information and driven by contradiction (so that) maybe we can create the realistic theatre that Shakespeare was looking for"

Are concession seats at the front for any Menier production?

What is seating like for someone over 6 feet?

I do not know whether this is bad behavior but I was at a post show talk for Rutherford and Son and we got onto this subject

The leading actor, Barrie Rutter, recounted when he was performing in the Derek Jacobi production of Hamlet. They were performing in China when a shocked audience suddenly got up and started shouting at the moment when Hamlet stabbed Polonius until the show was stopped.

Okay call me morbid but I absolutely enjoyed this production. As I watched this I kept thinking "yes it is grim but I did not see that coming". Perhaps this is coming after I saw a new, but absolutely predictable, play, but there is no denying this is well written

What is more it has some of the best performances I have seen so far this year from Barrie Rutter as John Rutherford and Sara Poyzer as Janet.