[applesarenice]

Has anyone else booked for this play? I got an email about it this week, now the last time I got one from the Royal Court, it was advising me about Grasses of a Thousand Colours being 3 hours long so I should have known it wouldn't be good news.

This play will apparently only be 1 hour 45 minutes without interval which is fine, but they also tell me that due to the unique configuration of the seating, some of the seats will have no back rests! Now I know good posture is important but that seems an awful long time to have to sit up straight with no break. There could be Annie Get Your Gun-like stampedes to get the 'good' seats, something to look forward to...

[curzon]

My reaction to this thread title was "Not again?!"

Seb

[kjb]

I'm booked to see this in a couple of weeks and got that email too. If anyone goes before me, could you please report back so I know what the situation is.

Many thanks

kjb

[applesarenice]

I'm not going til December 7th, so will be interested to see what people have to say.

[kjb]

Just wanted to add, that I love the thread title, and smiled to myself at the addition of the theatre, as if to add explanation/context and/or avoid the use of just the word 'Cock'.

I find I'm doing this myself when talking about the play. I introduce it as 'It's a play at the Royal Court with Ben Wishaw. It's about a bloke who takes a break from his boyfriend and accidentally meets the girl of his dreams. It's actually called Cock"

I had to do the same a couple of months ago when I went to see Pornography.

Work colleagues: I bet you're off to the theatre this weekend aren't you. What are you seeing?

Me: It's a play about the London Tube bombings on 7/7 and a snap shot of how 6 people were affected in the week that followed.

Work colleagues: I've not heard of that one. What's it called?

Me: Er, Pornography.

Work colleagues: Oh [quizzical, slightly worried look]

[Weez]

Haha, you're like the opposite of me. While you're busy playing up innocuous descriptions and downplaying dubious titles, I'll do my best to ruin all innocuous titles with the most dubious descriptions I can think of. For me, it'd be almost worth going to see Cock *just* for the "what're you seeing?" conversation. XD

I think it's a holdover from the days when I only really saw musicals; a lot of people think all musicals are happy, jolly, romantic comedies with all the depth of a puddle, so I'd always go out of my way to emphasise that they weren't. :3

[art87]

Saw it this weekend:

Seating wise, they have built a small amphitheatre. There are only 3 rows and the rake is very steep. The back row can lean against the back wall, but for the front two rows, there is no backrest because the row behind's legs are there. It is basically 3 big stairs so there is no 'under the seat' to put anything so everyone was asked to use the (free) cloakroom. It wasn't too busy because The Priory hasn't started, but once the main house is open too, I can imagine the cloakroom queue will be pretty before 7:30 (and if you want the back row with backrests you'll need to queue to get into the upstairs theatre from about 7:25). It is, once again, an amazing transformation of the space, but it would be nice if everyone could lean against something.

Apart from the reconfiguration, there are no props or set and no miming of these things (for example if someone is handed a glass of wine, they say 'thank you' but never pretend to be handed one or holding one; similarly if they are at a dinner table, they will talk about how nice the food is, but be walking all over the place). There is one sound effect to denote time passing and just one big light on throughout (so a bit like the author, you can see everyone in the audience). It really focusses the drama on the characters and allows them to express emotions through gestures that otherwise would be impossible.

I thought the play was fantastic. Really funny and tragic and terrifically intimate. Andrew Scott was the absolute star of the show for me, his character revealing his insecurities through his need to be domineering and bitchy. His quick-fire delivery is very impressive, particularly considering I was only at the second preview. Ben Whishaw was also brilliant although I found the character rather wet. To be honest, if I have one main criticism of the play it is that none of the characters is particularly endearing.

However I thought it was an excellent exploration of what it means to be gay, straight or bisexual, whether these labels mean anything and whether nature or nurture is the cause of different sexual orientation. What I thought was particularly clever was that by focussing on whether it was necessary to define yourself and make a choice, rather than whether homosexuality is wrong full stop, the arguments aren't presented in a liberal-versus-conservative manner but rather through various liberal opinions. Therefore, rather than being a play preaching to the converted, you get a play that genuinely challenges theatregoers views and, at least in my case, made me think about issues that I hadn't considered before.