Reader Reviews
Gross und Klein (Big and Small) (Barbican Centre, West End)
Back to Show Details| Score | Comment | Date |
 | Big & Small’s big draw is its movie star lead – Cate Blanchette – and she is an extraordinarily good stage actor. Sadly, her vehicle here is a load of pretentious bollocks about a woman searching for meaning in her life. I will allow the director’s quotes in the programme to sum it up as I can’t – ‘It alludes simultaneously to the spiritual and political dimensions of life; macro / micro, cosmos / cell, state / individual, history / present, eternity / now. The expansion and contraction of being…..the seemingly fragmented de-centred dramatrugy…..the slow-motion detonation of character and narrative…..the existential puzzle…..the play offers a radical perspective on society. Lotte’s odyssey confronts us with the limits of rational order. She is a stranger in her own culture. A fool and a saint dancing on the rim of the abyss. As I said, bollocks. - Gareth James | 02 May 12 |
| Baffled by this review but then Michael has seen it before (and far more other stuff besides). Blanchett is phenomenal but I loved the play too, and what one other commenter here calls his "reduced" reading I not only shared but also think it is actually a more expansive and universal reading. I can't understand why more theatre here doesn't play around with ideas of how we tell stories like this did, given that it was both strange and absurd yet thoroughly clear and heartbreaking too. I can't think of anyone I wouldn't take to see it. - Jon Bradfield | 27 Apr 12 |
| The play is absurdist nonsense that tries to make a few very dated and heavy-handed points about middle class life that, at least in 2012 Britain, provoke more eye rolling than thought. But the entire cast is terrific, the staging wonderful, and Blanchett gives the most amazing performance I have ever seen. She is funny and sad and uses her physicality in ways I never knew she had. People bandy about the term 'revelation' such that it seems hollow now, but she blew me away- and everyone else I noticed in the audience. A two star play (it has a few nicely observed moments and more humour than I expected, mostly in the first half) genuinely deserves four stars do to a cast that punches way beyond the light weight of the material. - Scott A | 26 Apr 12 |
| Can't add any more than my tweet is just posted Saw worst play ever last night #bigandsmall at #barbican only #cateblanchett any good #incomprehensible classic case of #emperorsclothes - Jeff Barnes | 22 Apr 12 |
| I was far more engaged with this play than other Whatsonstage readers below. Possibly because I had a somewhat reductive reading of it. Yes, I know it's a picaresque study of one gobby woman's inability to make a connection with anybody. I know it's meant to be an existential wander through a post war disaffected alienated Germany. I know it's about the loneliness we all feel, and just can't quite bridge. So in this play, everybody just gets fed up of poor Lotte. Even you may want her to stop saying everything is "amazing" if you see this. But for me, this is what asperger's syndrome is often like, where a person can't stop talking about their obsessions while everybody else gets bored and turned off, and unfortunately the speaker has not the sensitivity to know she is boring her audience. So on account of making that link in my mind, the play assumed a richness I assume other theatregoers did not feel. I'll be interested to see what the National's upcoming "Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time" has to say about aspergers too. And Cate Blanchett is excellent in this. The way she physically and psychically breaches the boundaries of the characters she comes across (including Lotte's own family members) makes for fascinating, and occasionally heartbreaking viewing. She is also very funny. Maybe I just like Blanchett, but she made this play, in which there are no real emotional connections between any characters at all (and hence little internal drama) seem quite excellent. :) - steveatplays | 21 Apr 12 |
| I didn't enjoy it... Cate must be doing it to fill the coffers of her Sydney Theatre Company, I guess. - David | 20 Apr 12 |
| I recently read an article bemoaning the fact that we don't see much modern European theatre over here. The problem is that when we do it's dreadful stuff like Fram, the unspeakable I Am the Wind and now this incomprehensible, pretentiouis arthouse rubbish. Cate Blanchett is joint Artistic Director of the Sydney Theatre Company where this terible production originated so she has to accept her share of the blame even if her performance was the only decent thing on display. Presumably her presence was the reason for putting this on at such a large theatre and it might have been interesting to see how many bothered to come back after the interval. I'll never know as I could not face any more of a play that made no attempt to convey any form of meaningful narrative. - David Baxter | 19 Apr 12 |
| I am so tired of star vehicles! Yes Cate Blanchet is good and the play could have benefited from a much smaller intimate space I love surreal plays but this is shallow and pretentious crap! Could bare to stay for second half - ruth posner | 19 Apr 12 |
| Quite, quite dreadful. Emperor's new clothes. A complete waste of time and money. - F Hill | 19 Apr 12 |
| I simply could not keep my eyes off Blanchett. True the play is a tough one: are we supposed to buy into the existential high-art that no doubt many people believe this is? Still 5 stars though: superb, purely based on her phenomenal performance. - John de Vos | 17 Apr 12 |
