The Vertical Hour
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Posted 18 January 2008 - 11:46 AM
I think the first preview was last night - did anyone see it? There doesn't seem to have been much publicity or press interest yet which is surprising since the Broadway version was reported on exhaustively. I'm going next week and quite looking forward to it simply because it has just occurred to me that I can't remember the last time I saw Anton Lesser in stage in modern dress (if ever). Lot's of Shakespeare, obviously, and Private Lives a few years back and a bit of eighteenth century stuff. But he must have done something involving wearing a normal jacket and tie. Anybody?
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Posted 18 January 2008 - 02:19 PM
'Some Americans Abroad' by Richard Nelson at the RSC. He played an American academic - can't remember if he actually wore a tie, though....
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Guest_Art87_*
Posted 20 January 2008 - 01:26 AM
Saw it this evening and thought it was really good. The son was a slightly weaker link for me, but the two main parts (Anton Lesser and Indira Varma) were spot on. I was a bit worried that it would be overlong, dull and verbose, but it's actually very snappy - whilst it is basically a series of 3 conversations (breakfast, dinner, middle-of-the-night) with a prologue and epilogue, it never drags and is consistently amusing. The arguments portrayed are well considered and the whole thing is almost as much about the characters' relationships (with each other and other unseen people) as it is about Iraq. Highly recommended.
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Posted 20 January 2008 - 08:20 AM
QUOTE(foxa @ Jan 18 2008, 02:19 PM)  'Some Americans Abroad' by Richard Nelson at the RSC. He played an American academic - can't remember if he actually wore a tie, though.... Ah, yes. I actually saw that - it had a very clever reconstruction of the NT cafe. It must have been nearly 20 years ago?
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Posted 20 January 2008 - 09:19 AM
 Well, now I do feel old! Yes, it was before I had children, so it could have been that long ago! I really enjoyed it and it had a meta-theatrical experience of being in an audience with quite a few Americans watching a play about academic Americans seeing plays (among other things.)
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Posted 20 January 2008 - 01:24 PM
QUOTE(Art87 @ Jan 20 2008, 01:26 AM) Saw it this evening and thought it was really good. The son was a slightly weaker link for me, but the two main parts (Anton Lesser and Indira Varma) were spot on. I was a bit worried that it would be overlong, dull and verbose, but it's actually very snappy - whilst it is basically a series of 3 conversations (breakfast, dinner, middle-of-the-night) with a prologue and epilogue, it never drags and is consistently amusing. The arguments portrayed are well considered and the whole thing is almost as much about the characters' relationships (with each other and other unseen people) as it is about Iraq. Highly recommended.
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Posted 20 January 2008 - 01:26 PM
QUOTE(Art87 @ Jan 20 2008, 01:26 AM) Saw it this evening and thought it was really good. The son was a slightly weaker link for me, but the two main parts (Anton Lesser and Indira Varma) were spot on. I was a bit worried that it would be overlong, dull and verbose, but it's actually very snappy - whilst it is basically a series of 3 conversations (breakfast, dinner, middle-of-the-night) with a prologue and epilogue, it never drags and is consistently amusing. The arguments portrayed are well considered and the whole thing is almost as much about the characters' relationships (with each other and other unseen people) as it is about Iraq. Highly recommended. I also thought it was excellent. Saw the opening night. However, I thought all three leads were very evenly matched, which made it all the more riveting. Recommended.
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Posted 22 January 2008 - 05:02 AM
Bored, bored, bored - and the comments around me in the interval and after the show suggested that I wasn't alone. Do people really get into rows about Iraq within 3 minutes of meeting their jetlagged future daughter-in-law? Who waits until he and his girlfriend are staying with his father to explain in laborious detail why he hates him? And who opens a bottle of wine, pours out half an inch into three glasses and then announces that it's time for bed? And why don't they ever shut up? I suspect the reviews will be somewhat mixed.
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Posted 22 January 2008 - 10:31 AM
"And why don't they ever shut up?"  Isn't that kind of in the nature of a play? But they are annoying people, I agree. Still found it interesting though.
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Posted 22 January 2008 - 01:46 PM
Hare and Pinter seem to have single-handedly squeezed the life out of the British stage with their endlessly recycled flat dialogue, pompous metaphors and the silly army of imitators who file up behind them.
Like the dry as dust modern art we see everywhere, if you complain you're bored it's because you "don't get it". No and I don't want to get it, see it, or hear it - thank you.
I want these Emperor's New Clothes about as much as Jeremy Paxman wants a pair of Marks & Spencer underpants. It's French farces and Joe Orton for me all the way.
And maybe a bit of Alan Bennett. If he's in a naughty mood.
The lack of publicity on this play, may I venture to suggest, is because as soon as things started going better than they had been over there our anti-American media seem to have lost a lot of interest in Iraq. It doesn't really suit them to have stories about Iraqis turning on al-Qaeda (who are the people who've been doing all the killing since Saddam disappeared) because that doesn't fit the cant we've been fed for the last three to four years.
We seemed to move from hearing about Iraq as a whole to the top and the Kurdish problem. We had a little spate of stories about how Turkey might invade because instead that would help to show America in a bad light and then after that petered out, not very much these days.
It just wouldn't do would it to have too much of a spotlight on Iraqis saying they're sick of being bombed to bits by al-Qaeda, because there's nothing anti-Bush about that. Well, let's hope al-Qaeda don't bomb any London theatres during this run (I seem to be bag checked every time I go into one these days), especially not this one. I don't know if my sides would hold out at the irony. Chin, chin.
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