Reader Reviews
Collaboration (Duchess Theatre, West End)
Back to Show Details| Score | Comment | Date |
 | I agree with David Baxter that the first half was slow and dull, but even though the second half does deliver an intersting debate, I'm afraid for me it never really recovered enough to make me feel gald that I went to see it. It isn't a patch on Harwood's earlier plays and the production is poorly paced and fusty. The performances were OK, but in the end I think the audience cheers are for the sentiments than it is for the play or the production. - Gareth James | 20 Aug 09 |
| At the interval I was ready to write Collaboration off as a dud but fortunately the second half delivered the promised moral conundrum of "what would you do". An excellent ensemble fully capture the appalling situation Richard Strauss was placed in by the Nazis as he initially tried to defend his Jewish librettist. There are still drawbacks: Philip Franks' direction is pedestrian, the scene changes clunky, Zweig's suicide is unexplained and it would have worked better as a one act 90-minute play but for all that Collaboration is brilliantly acted and thought provoking. - David Baxter | 17 Jun 09 |
