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Synopsis "Sad single teachers get together. Drink tequilla, get very pissed and reveal secrets and then stagger home at four in the morning, with some dim light in your brain saying 'Shit. Year seven first lesson'." It's the end of a century, a time for people to look back and try to make sense of who they are. Across six connected lives, repressed emotions are brought to the fore in an attempt to settle the score with the world around them.
Eight years after it first appeared at the Royal Court Jerwood Theatre Upstairs, Under the Blue Sky opened at the Duke of York’s Theatre on Friday night (25 July 2008, previews from 14 July), featuring a stellar cast including comedienne Catherine Tate and Francesca Annis (See News, 9 May 2008). Following the press night performance, the cast were joined by playwright David Eldridge and other star guests at a glitzy post-show party at Soho’s Studio Valbonne (See Today’s 1st Night Photos).
Under the Blue Sky was first seen at the Royal Court Jerwood Theatre Upstairs in September 2000 in a production directed by Rufus Norris with a cast including Sheila Hancock. This new West End premiere production is directed by Anna Mackmin, who directed Orlando Bloom in a revival of another Royal Court play, David Storey’s In Celebration, at the Duke of York’s last summer.
In the darkly comic play, a group of teachers get together for a long evening of drinking tequila and revealing secrets about friendship and love, both shared and unrequited.
Critics had mixed opinions on the success of this West End transfer, with some applauding the decision to bring the play “to a wider audience” while others lamented that the script was “crushingly simple” and out of its depth on a West End stage, being “middlebrow, schematic and undemanding”. The actors were largely hailed as “uniformly top class”, and Tate in particular was singled out as “splendid” in her “no-holds-barred performance”. Director Anna Mackmin was given credit for creating a “fine revival”, but critics just couldn't agree on whether Under the Blue Sky “defiantly waves the flag for bold new drama”, or is simply an “adolescent schoolboy comedy”.
Michael Coveney on Whatsonstage.com (four stars) – “Eight years ago, David Eldridge’s Under the Blue Sky was acclaimed in the Royal Court’s Theatre Upstairs as a thoroughly engaging, poetic, ninety-minute triptych of interlocking erotic duets for three pairs of teachers in the East End, Essex and finally on a Devon beach. Anna Mackmin’s fine revival at the Duke of York’s, with an entirely different cast led by Catherine Tate as a slatternly maths teacher in the second section and Francesca Annis as a wistful senior in the third, is cause for double celebration: the play is rightfully restored to a wider audience and proves the West End is not yet a graveyard for serious new drama as bruited abroad by one or two critics and Alan Ayckbourn … The acting is uniformly top class, starred A-grade status, three superbly constructed and nuanced duets of casual callousness and emotional dependency, with Tate projecting a portrait of monstrous vulgarity to match the proud flaunting of her breasts in the face of Rowan’s mixed-up stalker, while the imperishably beautiful Annis and Lindsay resolve their tension in a karaoke dance to ‘Breaking Up Is Hard To Do’ and an impassioned embrace before the Last Post sounds in the historic distance.”
Lyn Gardner in the Guardian (three stars) – “Those who complain of a lack of serious plays in the West End should look no further. Of course, although it is new writing, it's not actually new, having premiered at the Royal Court Upstairs in 2000. But the emotions here are never second hand, and the final segment - exquisitely performed by Annis and Lindsay - is as compassionate, luminous and delicately written an examination of the difficulty of acknowledging and embracing love as you are ever likely to see. In an era when all our personal relationships are conducted in the shadow of wars being fought in our name, Eldridge's play takes on new resonance; and if Anna Mackmin's production doesn't yet quite negotiate the balance between pain and comedy, this quietly thoughtful evening reminds that the wars conducted behind closed doors also maim and mutilate.”
Charles Spencer in the Daily Telegraph – “All credit to the producer, Sonia Friedman, for taking the plunge with a piece which richly deserves a second run and which defiantly waves the flag for bold new drama in a theatrical landscape dominated by musicals. The big draw here is Catherine Tate, although this is certainly not an evening for children who admired her performance as Donna Noble in Doctor Who … There's a dramatic courage in Tate's explicit, no-holds-barred performance that bodes well for her career as a serious actress … Dillon's vulnerable, breathless intensity powerfully captures the pain of unrequited love, though quite why she should have fallen so hard for O'Dowd's charmless beardie of a pedagogue is beyond me. In the final act, Eldridge does something exceptionally rare in modern drama - he writes a piece with a happy ending that rings absolutely true, suggesting that life can suddenly be blessed by late-flowering love … Anna Mackmin directs this superb tripartite play with satisfying depth and psychological detail, while Lez Brotherston supplies stylish designs. In the efficiently air-cooled Duke of York's, Under the Blue Sky proves a dramatically provocative, sexually hot and ultimately heart-warming summer treat.”
Deborah Orr in the Independent (two stars) – "… The staging of this play may rely on few props – a kitchen unit, a table, a bed. But the stage is cluttered with great chunks of spoken lumber, plonked down around the place, haphazard and unanchored, neither divorced from the action, nor central to it. Not that there is much in the way of action, or interaction. The formal staging of the play is crushingly simple also – three two-handers, of half-an-hour each. They are competently described sketches of messed up human relationships, but nothing more. The most comic and pathetic pairing is that of Graham and Michelle, an inadequate and unattractive pair played with heavy-handed humour by Catherine Tate and Dominic Rowan. The most touching and warm pairing is of Anne and Robert, played by Francesca Annis and Nigel Lindsay. But even here the script is laughably familiar. Annis is even obliged to deliver a long meditation on her Auntie May, whose young love died on (who'd have imagined) Flanders Field. The reference is to Jean Brodie, but Muriel Spark did it all many years ago, and so very much more brilliantly, that Eldridge's nod is nothing less than a self-immolating insult. This is an awesomely middlebrow, schematic and undemanding piece of work.”
Benedict Nightingale in The Times (five stars) – “And you thought that teachers at secondary schools spent their time in the common room earnestly discussing grades, exams, league tables, university entrance and such? Think again. If David Eldridge is to be believed - and he writes with an authority that surely comes from first-hand experience - you won't find such sex-crazed places outside heaving basements in Soho or King's Cross … The play was first staged at the Royal Court's Theatre Upstairs in 2000 and, though it is sometimes ugly and (less deliberately) repetitive, is well enough observed and written to deserve its belated appearance in the West End … Why does the evening begin with the IRA bombing at Canary Wharf and contain so many references to war and the military? To put these private anguishings into some perspective? Perhaps. But all I know is that Anna Mackmin's cast is exceptionally strong and Eldridge's play unnerving proof that the body of the teacher is at least as fallible as the mind of the child.”
Nicholas de Jongh in the Evening Standard (three stars) – “Seriously over-valued at its Royal Court Upstairs premiere in 2000, this David Eldridge triptych about the psycho-sexual hang-ups and problematic tie-ups of three schoolteacher couples is oddly chosen for West End revival. Under the Blue Sky 's trio of two character, half-hour plays, linked by direct or indirect sexual associations, seeks to show how emotionally retarded and repressed schoolteachers can be when involved with each other. The same charge might similarly be leveled against any professional, roughly middle-class grouping - journalists or even playwrights for example. About teachers' professional problems, which might cast light on their private tensions, Eldridge offers no insights … In Nick's smart kitchen, Eldridge stirs an unlikely plot. Lisa Dillon's attractive Helen is so masochistically smitten by this exploitative man that, although he has slept with her just once in three years, she still tries to occupy his life and bed. A pathetic situation is effortfully milked for laughs, though not as much as in the farcial excesses of the second play, where Catherine Tate's splendid, razor-tongued, sexual opportunist, Michelle tries vainly to get more than a rise out of Dominic Rowan's unpopular teacher, Graham - a virginal, prematurely ejaculating, voyeuristic stalker. Such adolescent schoolboy comedy yields to an equally preposterous scenario.”
Eight years ago, David Eldridge’s Under the Blue Sky was acclaimed in the Royal Court’s Theatre Upstairs as a thoroughly engaging, poetic, ninety-minute triptych of interlocking erotic duets for three pairs of teachers in the East End, Essex and finally on a Devon beach.
Anna Mackmin’s fine revival at the Duke of York’s, with an entirely different cast led by Catherine Tate as a slatternly maths teacher in the second section and Francesca Annis as a wistful senior in the third, is cause for double celebration: the play is rightfully restored to a wider audience and proves the West End is not yet a graveyard for serious new drama as bruited abroad by one or two critics and Alan Ayckbourn.
First, we see the charismatic Nick (Chris O'Dowd) attempting to close down his relationship with needy Helen (Lisa Dillon) while cooking up a chilli dinner and revealing that he is moving from their state school in Leyton to the private sector. Next, two teachers at Nick’s new school in Chingford, drunken Michelle (Tate) and her staff room colleague Graham (Dominic Rowan) play sex games, underpinned with mutual loathing.
Finally, as Lez Brotherston’s functional but sleek sliding design gives way to a neutral Devon vista of sun and sky, Annis’s Anne -- a Tiverton teacher who takes platonic summer holidays with Nigel Lindsay’s much younger Robert, a colleague of Nick and Michelle, with sad tidings from Leytonstone -- wrestles with memories of a war-time tragedy, her sense of duty and the prospect of a late-flowering physical relationship.
Eldridge’s skilful, economical writing moves from early 1996 across eighteen months, from the moment of the IRA bomb in Canary Wharf to the shadow of Armistice Day, with these war-time realities punctured by Graham’s sex-toy-soldier who submerges his real-life inadequacies on the parade ground of the school cadet force.
The acting is uniformly top class, starred A-grade status, three superbly constructed and nuanced duets of casual callousness and emotional dependency, with Tate projecting a portrait of monstrous vulgarity to match the proud flaunting of her breasts in the face of Rowan’s mixed-up stalker, while the imperishably beautiful Annis and Lindsay resolve their tension in a karaoke dance to “Breaking Up Is Hard To Do” and an impassioned embrace before the Last Post sounds in the historic distance.
How does Sycamore Flint know that "Nigel Lindsay was Nigel Lindsay". Does she know him? I thought his performance was exquisitely judged and naturalistic opposite the sometimes hammy but occasionally excellent Ms Annis. The third section was easily the best written and best performed. - Kensal Rise
03 Oct 08
I was about to give one star but decided it just about lurched into the 2-star rating thanks to a relatively engaging 1st act from Chris O'Dowd & Lisa Dillon, bar a really silly unbelievable incident. The other 2 acts were terrible, the 2nd in particular an embarrassing mess. I'm all for differing opinions but this is one case where I genuinely don't understand what anyone can have liked about it. Tate was like a caricature from one her sketches and I agree that Rowan was badly miscast. Annis was annoyingly wistful and Nigel Lindsay was Nigel Lindsay. Themes relating to the teaching profession and war were shakily tacked on to dull scenes of uninteresting relationships being tediously discussed. A kind of story-arc was attached in a pin-the-tail-on-the-donkey fashion. 90 minutes is shorter than many current productions but it felt a lot longer. - Sycamore Flint
19 Sep 08
I'm a bit puzzled why someone thought that these three short plays about the personal lives of six teachers in the 90's belonged in the West End in 2008.
The first two are OK, but its only the third that fully satisfies. On an empty stage, this is entirely due to the performances of Francesca Annis and Nigel Lindsay who turn the tale of a mis-matched couple into a heart-warming, charming and moving 40 minutes. It is in this play that we find out the tenuous link between the three. In the second play, Catherine Tate morphs into all of her characters and proves totally mis-cast and out-classed. It's hard to believe in a 30-something teacher who's speaking exactly like foul-mouthed Nan whilst trying to seduce a 30-something virgin, both of whom are drunk ! - Gareth James
19 Sep 08
Surprisingly interesting play with fantastic performances from the real actors, doing their utmost to make the mugging TV comics look good. Catherine Tate did all her lovable monsters, complete with knowing looks to the audience. You'd think she'd be more careful as she must already be on several death lists, after ruining an entire season of Dr Who. - Joesmith
01 Sep 08
Clearly not the sum of it's parts and not all of those parts were able to cut the mustard either. The final act was the best with the oh! so talented Fancesca Annis and the equally talented Nigel Lindsay valiantly struggling on to make something of it. I'm not really sure what the fuck the writer was trying to say, I missed the point completely. Maybe because it flagged so often! Moments of strained, almost embarrassing silence persisted, eventually leading to.....well..... nothing? Did I miss something? It looked good though and tonight the audience seemed to be enjoying themselves even if they were somewhat muted at the curtain call. I wonder sometimes how a play like this gets staged in the first place? It's a complete mystery to me. Is there some big omnipotent Angel out there somewhere in Soho ready to dish out the readies to any old person who comes a calling? I don't know, I wish I did? It seems a pity that such obvious talent, evident in some of the cast, is so under used in this seemingly banal play. Better luck next time then -one would hope so! - rds
26 Aug 08
A very enjoyable 90 minutes with a contrast of different storylines which were well linked. Great casting, good direction and a mix of emotions throughout. - Michelle
22 Aug 08
A very well acted play- in particular Chris O Dowd, Dominic Rowan and Catherine Tate deserve praise, particularly the latter in a scene that veers between funny and disturbing. That being said, the first scene drags on too long and is at times too frantic, and the third scene, while well acted tries too hard to give the piece a happy-ending, to the extent it feels tacked on. A case, one thinks, of the cast putting on a good show despite the material. - lbjb
22 Aug 08
Under the Blue Sky is a collection of tenuously linked half-hour scenes which happen to be about teachers but could be any middle class professionals. The first is a very ordinary sitcom but what followed was far from plesant. Catherine Tate is a hideously vulgar slapper, mentally torturing an inadequate colleague (a hopelessly miscast Dominic Rowan). 30 minutes in their company was about 29 too many but quite unexpectedly the final scene was a delightful vignette of a May - December romance. Exquisitely performed by Francesca Annis and Nigel Lindsay it was tender and funny and brought the play to a warm and happy end quite out of character with what went before. - David Baxter
21 Aug 08
I hate to say this, but in the words of one of Catherine Tate's best characters "What a load of old S%£* ! I honestly think that if Catherine Tate was not in this the show would fold after a couple of weeks, each of the three scenes is too long, no interval act makes for a very uncomfortable two hours and it's a crying shame that the producers fail, except in the flimsiest of manners, to bring all three scenes together at the end.
No less than 5 people walked out the night I was there, and that was from the royal circle that only has 6 rows!
Maybe their discomfort was compounded by the unbearable heat in the theatre, who knows, to which the management showed no interest in whatsoever.
I would be surprised to see this show last it's predicted run, I doubt even 2 big names can save it. If there had been an interval I would have been getting my money back ! (and I am normally pretty tolerant of poor theatre). - Tom Murray
25 Jul 08
Not entirely what I expected from the description but found this play quite engrossing. It was quite dark rather than a comedy. Impressed by the performances and I was completely drawn in. - Caroline
Opened 10 Sep 1892 as the Trafalgar Square Theatre,name changed in 1895. Major refurbishment 79/80. Taken over by the Royal Court during their two year refurbishment starting in 1996, called the Royal Court downstairs. 650 seats. Society of London Theatre member. An [ATG] member.
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