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Still having Arcadia joy. Even though the production was lacking in various parts, which I will enumerate below.
1. Black outs. Constant black outs between scenes. Why? The whole point of the play (well, part of the point of the play; the theme, if you will) is the tick-tocking between different time periods: it’s the same room, sometimes it feels like the same people – it shouldn’t *have* el giant black outs to delineate past and present: the point is that there *isn’t* a huge black line between them. And there’s no need for it: there’s no scene change – any props etc which should be on the table can be brought on by the actors (as Stoppard states *explicitly* in the introduction to the play).
2. The acting. Hmm. Most of the women were quite good: I wasn’t quite sure about Thomasina at the beginning, but I think it was how they’d done her 13-year-old hair more than her acting, and I thought she was better later on. Lady Croom was good, as was Chloe, and Hannah was *generally* good though she felt a little self-conscious in places – lots of waving her hands around unnecessarily, that sort of thing. She tended to speak a little too quickly at times, as well, and some of her speeches got a little lost, which was a shame, but mostly she did it well, and I thought her characterisation was good. The men were not so good. Chater was entertaining, and Gus was fairly inoffensive (though I thought his second section as Lord Augustus was a bit too tentative), as was Noakes, but Brice was a touch too pantomime-y for my taste, and Jellaby seemed to be a bit out of it. Sadly, neither Bernard nor Septimus, the two male leads, worked for me. Septimus had that sardonic humour thing working, but generally he was too wooden – at the beginning, for example, I didn’t think it was obvious at all that it was he who had been engaging in carnal embrace with Mrs Chater in the gazebo. And Bernard couldn’t remember half of his lines. Now, actually, it almost worked in a way – instead of lines he was just throwing random words out there, which sort of tied in with Bernard’s occasional incoherent enthusiasm, so that you might almost think that it was *supposed* to be like that – but the point about Bernard is that he is an English don, and wooooords and cultcha and lan-gwidge are his bread and butter. It *is* a very wordy part, and losing that loses a great deal of Bernard’s character. Fortunately he managed to get through the ‘it’s all trivial’ speech, but that felt like pretty much the only one.
3. It was one of those plays where you have no confidence in the actors as a whole – where, if there’s a pause, you’re not sure if it’s for dramatic effect or because someone’s forgotten their line – which always makes it difficult to entirely submerse oneself in the play. Which is a shame.
4. There was a lot of unnecessary toing and froing, which was rather distracting. Less might have been more when it came to the blocking, I think.
Anyway, notwithstanding all that, I did enjoy it, because it is such a brilliant, brilliant play that even slightly dodgy setting (oh, and the stage was too small for the blocking) and slightly dodgy acting couldn’t marr my enjoyment. Stoppard is a genius. But why, oh why can’t someone revive it properly?
But still, it wasn’t bad and, at £6.50, it was much cheaper than proper theatre (except the blessed Almeida, I should point out), so if anyone fancies going to see it (and if you’re at a loose end in London, why not?) it’s on at the Union Concert Hall, on the second floor of the Student Union at Imperial College, on Prince Consort Road in South Ken. Doors open at 7, tickets on the door, performance starts at 7.30.
1. Black outs. Constant black outs between scenes. Why? The whole point of the play (well, part of the point of the play; the theme, if you will) is the tick-tocking between different time periods: it’s the same room, sometimes it feels like the same people – it shouldn’t *have* el giant black outs to delineate past and present: the point is that there *isn’t* a huge black line between them. And there’s no need for it: there’s no scene change – any props etc which should be on the table can be brought on by the actors (as Stoppard states *explicitly* in the introduction to the play).
2. The acting. Hmm. Most of the women were quite good: I wasn’t quite sure about Thomasina at the beginning, but I think it was how they’d done her 13-year-old hair more than her acting, and I thought she was better later on. Lady Croom was good, as was Chloe, and Hannah was *generally* good though she felt a little self-conscious in places – lots of waving her hands around unnecessarily, that sort of thing. She tended to speak a little too quickly at times, as well, and some of her speeches got a little lost, which was a shame, but mostly she did it well, and I thought her characterisation was good. The men were not so good. Chater was entertaining, and Gus was fairly inoffensive (though I thought his second section as Lord Augustus was a bit too tentative), as was Noakes, but Brice was a touch too pantomime-y for my taste, and Jellaby seemed to be a bit out of it. Sadly, neither Bernard nor Septimus, the two male leads, worked for me. Septimus had that sardonic humour thing working, but generally he was too wooden – at the beginning, for example, I didn’t think it was obvious at all that it was he who had been engaging in carnal embrace with Mrs Chater in the gazebo. And Bernard couldn’t remember half of his lines. Now, actually, it almost worked in a way – instead of lines he was just throwing random words out there, which sort of tied in with Bernard’s occasional incoherent enthusiasm, so that you might almost think that it was *supposed* to be like that – but the point about Bernard is that he is an English don, and wooooords and cultcha and lan-gwidge are his bread and butter. It *is* a very wordy part, and losing that loses a great deal of Bernard’s character. Fortunately he managed to get through the ‘it’s all trivial’ speech, but that felt like pretty much the only one.
3. It was one of those plays where you have no confidence in the actors as a whole – where, if there’s a pause, you’re not sure if it’s for dramatic effect or because someone’s forgotten their line – which always makes it difficult to entirely submerse oneself in the play. Which is a shame.
4. There was a lot of unnecessary toing and froing, which was rather distracting. Less might have been more when it came to the blocking, I think.
Anyway, notwithstanding all that, I did enjoy it, because it is such a brilliant, brilliant play that even slightly dodgy setting (oh, and the stage was too small for the blocking) and slightly dodgy acting couldn’t marr my enjoyment. Stoppard is a genius. But why, oh why can’t someone revive it properly?
But still, it wasn’t bad and, at £6.50, it was much cheaper than proper theatre (except the blessed Almeida, I should point out), so if anyone fancies going to see it (and if you’re at a loose end in London, why not?) it’s on at the Union Concert Hall, on the second floor of the Student Union at Imperial College, on Prince Consort Road in South Ken. Doors open at 7, tickets on the door, performance starts at 7.30.
