Scenes From the Big Picture

Synopsis

It's a joke that's all - stick yer finger in yer coat pocket - give it some verbals - then on yer way out the door take yer hand out a yer pocket and wave at him - what's the problem there - he'll even find that funny himself. 24 hours. 20 characters. 40 scenes. Belfast City. An urban story.

Our Review:

11 April 2003

In the midst of the culture of tiny studio plays that we now live in (and which has even spread to the West End, with a proliferation of one and two person shows), it seems amazing to find a big, public play for a cast of no less than 21 actors. But it's precisely the kind of play that the National should be getting behind, and marking the opening shot for Nicholas Hytner's new South Bank regime in the Cottesloe, makes a bold statement of intent and even better, of realisation in Peter Gill's totally absorbed and absorbing production.

Owen McCafferty, the Irish writer whose Closing Time was one of the few dramatic successes of last year's Loft season, has moved from that play's beautifully detailed portrait of overlapping lives in a Belfast pub to take on the more ambitious, wider city landscape. Scenes from the Big Picture provides fragmentary snapshots of life and lives in different Belfast locations, some of it again in a pub but elsewhere g...

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Latest User Review

194.165.220.92) - 3 February 2005:

This is a stunning play, not only for the breadth but also for the speed of the action. The superb dialogue ranges from the stacato rapidity of machine gun exchanges to lyric simlicitity....

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