Saw this new play at the Lyric Hammersmith on Friday night and I can't stop thinking about it. Catch it while you can.
An amazing insight and comment on middle class kids beautifully acted.
Go.
I was quite disappointed by it - the first Simon Stephens I haven't thought was excellent. Tom Sturridge is superb, but there's a few dodgy performances and some fundamental problems with the play itself which really, really bug me. I don't think it says as much as it thinks it does about kids - I was at a school like this doing my A levels 2 years ago, and it didn't ring true for me at all, the way they interacted, grouped themselves etc. And I don't want to spoil it but the thing that annoys me most - he's properly, genuinely mentally ill, right? Anyone, anytime, any age, any class, etc, can suffer from a mental illness and do something irrational and uncontrollable - so what he does could happen anywhere. It doesn't really have anything to do with the 'state of the youth' and so on, because mental illness affects you regardless of circumstances...I don't think I've explained that very well.
Saw this new play at the Lyric Hammersmith on Friday night and I can't stop thinking about it. Catch it while you can.
An amazing insight and comment on middle class kids beautifully acted.
Go.
I could not agree more. We saw the show last Friday night (4th Septemebr - its second performance). I thought the cast were really good. It is a disturbing play – totally gripping. All the characters were really believable.
The action happens in a school and, being a teacher myself, at times I found the story a little TOO real for comfort. I felt that I had taught at least two of the characters in the play. When Harry McEntire (Chadwick and who we knew from his time in “Spring Awakening”) asked afterwards what I thought about the play I was lost for words. It took me about 30 minutes to take it all in.
We have booked again – it is definitely worth seeing more than once.
Agree with you both there. Saw it on wednesday night and was just mesmorized. Brilliantly written, but the actors were just perfect. It is disturbing but very real and I think it's one of the best plays I've seen for a while. I also think the fact it had no interval was really rewarding especially to a play like Punk Rock. Even though it was about 2 hrs with no interval, it meant that you were right in there with the action. I don't think it would have worked with an interval anyway.
I also met Harry McEntire (Chadwick) afterwards and was praising it up just as much.
And I don't want to spoil it but the thing that annoys me most - he's properly, genuinely mentally ill, right? Anyone, anytime, any age, any class, etc, can suffer from a mental illness and do something irrational and uncontrollable - so what he does could happen anywhere. It doesn't really have anything to do with the 'state of the youth' and so on, because mental illness affects you regardless of circumstances...I don't think I've explained that very well.
SPOILERS
yes but surely to do something like tom's character does you have to be mentally ill to some degree...
Last night it went up about 10 mins late due to seating returns in a full house, and finished about 9:30, no interval.
Thoughts on the show: I thought the cast were uniformly excellent. I agree with a lot of the press that it is great to have a play in which the six main parts (and they're all big parts) are played by actors at the very beginnings of their careers and I really hope to see all of them in something equally good in the near future. I particularly liked Tanya and hope she goes on to great things. The audience was definitely skewed to the young end of the spectrum and while I felt that perhaps the laughter was sometimes in places that I'm pretty sure were not intended to be funny (particularly during the bullying - it seems that simply hearing swearing on stage is still funny to some 16 year olds), I applaud any theatre that consciously nurtures the next generation of theatregoers (including myself!) with ticket prices and relevant material - we are their bread and butter for the next 50 years after all.
Comparisons with Spring Awakening are obvious but whereas I found that show to be trite, commercialised and desperately trying to be "shocking", I thought this was, for the most part, completely convincing (see spoiler for more details) and pretty traumatising to be honest. I found the interactions between all of the characters to ring true (I was in 6th form 7 years ago) and while the stereotypes were perhaps slightly too pronounced, I do think that clichés only exist because they are - in the main - true. The script was intelligent, witty and very snappily directed so that it never dragged for a second. Highly recommended.
Which brings me to my main (and spoiler-filled) problem with the piece:
Spoiler
I found the build up to the shooting realistic and William's mental illness very convincing. I thought that the way the characters (and the audience!) reacted to a lunatic with a gun in a school similarly convincing. However, I just don't believe that shooting them would have been the natural course of events. He is a middle-class loner at grammar school - where does this gun come from? Why not stab them with a kitchen knife or attack them with something readily available. One night he is depressed about his teacher dying which seems to send him over the edge. The next day he has an automatic weapon and is loosing it off willy-nilly... It's not that I don't think he would have shot them - I'm sure he would - but it just seemed a bit far fetched that he ever had a gun, particularly in the UK where they are pretty rare.
Also, he says to Lily, who has just said that she thinks he's mentally ill and needs help, "Don't go to school tomorrow". Either she believes he's going to do something crazy in which case she would try and intercept him and certainly tell her boyfriend not to go in either, or she doesn't believe him, in which case she would just go to school. To not go, but not warn anyone was the least likely scenario in my head.
Anyway, it really was very good overall, I just found the transition from the scene before the incident to the shooting itself a little jarring.
I agree with a lot of what you say, Art87, indeed I said as much on my own blog especially about the audience. The constant laughing at the swear words was quite annoying, and the reaction to one of the racist remarks from one of the characters was simply shocking.
In terms of the play though, I have to say I was not too impressed. It felt a bit Dawson's Creek-like with some heavy-handed speechifying with no interruptions from other people that really didn't ring true. And I didn't really believe that this group would meet up with each other, given its diversity.
And the coda ruined the atmosphere for me: had it finished at the end of the climactic scene I think I would have liked it more, but the coda went on for too long, dissipated all the tension that had been built up and I didn't feel it added anything to our knowledge.
We saw the play again on Friday night and it just got better! Sian Thomas (The adult female from Spring Awakening) was there with her partner. It was lovely to see Harry and Sian together again (after their sucess in Spring Awakening) in the bar after the show!
I saw this yesterday at the Royal Exchange Theatre. I agree with most posts on the play. It's well written and the tension is racked up well. The dialogue is snappy and realistic and performed by a terrific group of actors. The young cast really make this play and Tom Sturridge and his suggestion of mental illness is excellent. I agree with the earlier comment on the coda. Instead of the play ending on a tense, dramatic high, it fizzles out over a scene that is far too long and, as has been mentioned, it really doesn't add anything whatsoever to the play. All the tension built up effectively over the first one and a half hours is lost over the final minutes and I found myself clapping half-heartedly because of this. It's a shame. The play should have finished after the dramatic events near the end and the audience would be hit hard and left leaving the theatre feeling hit. Despite this, it's still a cracking play performed by a superb cast.
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