Quote: Griff @ December 26 2008, 9:30 AM GMTAlan Bennett is completely brilliant.
Edward Bond is beyond me. I sat through The Sea last year. Dear God.
What did you not understand about The Sea Griff, Bond's most accessible play. Tell me, I'll hold your hand.. 
Godot and his unending quest for intellectual superiority.
Any way all plays are just films that weren't good enough to record.
As you can't have a decent car chase in a play they are an intrinsically weak medium.
Except Grease the musical, that's got a car chase in it.
Quote: sootyj @ December 26 2008, 4:28 PM GMTGodot and his unending quest for intellectual superiority.
The Sea is widely acknowledged as Bond's most accessible play - that's why it's the only one to have been presented in the West End. I was surprised by Griff's comment because he's no dullard and the play is very straightforward. I'm even more surprised by your comment.
He said he's trying on a comedy persona.
I think it's time to try a new one! 
I thought he'd gone camp now?
Quote: zooo @ December 27 2008, 12:34 AM GMTHe said he's trying on a comedy persona.
I think it's time to try a new one!
Who, Griff? 
Quote: Godot Taxis @ December 27 2008, 12:30 AM GMTThe Sea is widely acknowledged as Bond's most accessible play - that's why it's the only one to have been presented in the West End. I was surprised by Griff's comment because he's no dullard and the play is very straightforward. I'm even more surprised by your comment.
Come now Godot how often have you chided some poor neonate on this forum for not getting a cultural reference?
You took me to task for not knowing about Warren Zevron.
And I was thinking of experimenting with camp Sootyj, but doesn't seem to be a goer as yet.
I didn't see this production but I saw it in 1990 with Judy Dench in the Eileen Atkins role and Ken Stott as Hatch. The play is very light and came straight after Bond's reworking of Lear which is full of cruelty and violence. As to the point of it - I suppose Bond would want you to ask yourself why you would tolerate the sort of society that the play presents. Evens has only managed it by living away from everyone, in the dunes, Hatch goes mad. The last line doesn't really work and I'm glad they omitted it. The last line is Willy speaking to Rose:
"I came to say goodbye and I'm glad you-"
The point is he doesn't finish his line. In the Mendes production, they played a sound of the sea swelling to cover the silence, but it doesn't really work. The audience just thinks what did he say? Bond claimed he couldn't end Willy's speech because there was nothing for Willy to say at this time. He has since moved to a position of saying that this should be the point that the cast hand over the play to the audience. I can imagine this working if it's played right.
Bond would probably say that the Sea should no longer be performed - he is quite self effacing about his own work - he once said he would prefer it if all plays were anonymous... But he's a massively respected writer - widely regarded as the most important living playwright - and you should tackle his plays if you can find the time. None of them are like the Sea, incidentally, and the most recent ones are quite socially abstract. He has theorised a theatrical technique called the 'Theatre Event' which is an event in the play that takes the audience outside of the narrative and 'comments' on the action. A good example of this is in his play Human Canon, set in the Spanish Civil war, where a revolutionary activist is being manhandled by guards. As the villagers grapple to free her there is a sudden brief theatrical image created whereby the villagers resemble soldiers limbering around a canon. The woman becomes identified as the Human Canon of the title and her true role in the drama is revealed to the audience in that one brief second.
In another play a character who doesn't take sugar puts all of the available sugar cubes into their own coffee and then drinks it, with great discomfort, thereby showing how much they hate that person. His plays are highly theatrical and the antithesis of talky shit like Stoppard.
I've seen the homecoming twice and it's the best play on family life, showing all of the bitterness and hatred between people who are obliged by circumstances to rely on each other. It also includes some classic Pinter bile, like the speech where Lenny goes to help an OAP shift a mangle and ends up punching her in the stomach and telling her 'why don't you shove this mangle up your arse. It's out of date, you should get a spin drier.'
I've never heard of Steve Thompson, but any play about a chief whip with whip in the title is de facto shite. And to be honest it sounds like it could be on the radio and the theatre should be where things are shown not told. In my view.
Shit, I was about to join in the puns about dogs (barking mad, pathetic) but you've all gone intellectual and serious.
He was the top story on BBC World news out here. Eartha Kitt got in at no. 4 on Boxing Day, when the lead was the funeral of the former president of Guinea...
Sometimes it's hard getting your priorities right.
I do love the Homecoming it's hilarious especially the speech about thumping the pensioner.
As a human being he was really rather malignant and a hypocrite and as an actor he only ever played one role.
But that role he played well and was an iconic figure.
Quote: zooo @ December 27 2008, 3:53 PM GMTAw, sorry Ned!
I'll forgive you, season of goodwill and all.
