Gross und Klein (Big and Small)

Synopsis

Whisking us down a rabbit hole and into a wonderland-like world, Gross und Klein transports us to a hotel dining room in Morocco where Lotte (Blanchett) sits alone. Courageously optimistic and perpetually disappointed Lotte is in constant search for human connection. She is rejected by her husband, unrecognised by old friends and unfamiliar with her family. Whether she is outside a window peeping in or buzzing on an unanswered intercom this iconic protagonist never quite fits. Like Carroll's Alice, sometimes Lotte is too big for her surroundings and sometimes too small to be noticed within them.

Our Review:

Michael Coveney - 16 April 2012

Feeling at ease with alienation is such fun, especially when Cate Blanchett is back on the London stage leading the Sydney Theatre Company in a new version by Martin Crimp of Big & Small, Botho Strauss’s story of a graphic designer called Lotte, all at sea in modern Germany.

Blanchett is one of the great actors of our day. On stage as well as on screen, she is like a thoroughbred hunting horse, a Grand National favourite, whinnying at the start and leaping the hurdles with grace and beauty throughout a show that, while testing, is not really all that rewarding. Is it not really all a little vieux chapeau?

I acclaimed the 1978 play when it was a surprising and adventurous West End vehicle for Glenda Jackson in 1983. Glenda, not yet my Labour MP, ran the gamut of disoriented victim, social misfit and grumbling old bag lady pushed from pillar to post by an uncaring society in a production which had great beauty and eloquence.

...

Read more of the review

Latest User Review

Gareth James - 2 May 2012:

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....

Read more and add your own review