The cottage smells like an old chip shop and I am sick to the back teeth of the colour purple.
So it was nice to lock up the hens at 6.30, spray the vinegar out of my skin with a liberal squirt of Clinique "Happy" and drive to Llandudno to meet Chris at Venue Cymru to see the National Theatre touring production of the Alan Bennett play The Habit of Art .
North Wales has just two main theatres. Theatre Clwyd in Mold is the more "arthouse" and Nationally recognizable theatre of the two and produces its own, often very well received productions whereas the more populist Venue Cymru in Llandudno caters more for the "variety" holiday and senior market and mainstream travelling productions...Personally I prefer Theatre Clwyd but occasionally something more interesting turns up at the llandudno venue...so tonight's night out was a bit of a treat.
Bennett's play was interesting....it's a play ( about the latter day relationship between the irascible,putrid old W.H Auden and a self doubting Benjamin Britten) within a play, and it has plenty to say about the public and private faces of the artistic. However it is the playful way the play(s) explore the sexual proclivities of poet and composer that allows the audience to enjoy Bennett's waspish and very funny one liners. unfortunately for me, some of the in between wordy speeches lacks a bit of pace and interest.
Desmond Barrit (below), with his over stretched cardigan and booming voice makes for a somewhat likable if not grubby Auden and a wickedly funny character actor playing him. His performance as well as the quietly waspish turn from Selina Cadell as the assistant stage director were real standouts.
A play, that's so nice - time for you two to get out and away from the farm. You do realize that I am jealous that you got to go! Color me green ;-)
ReplyDeleteSounds good to me. The last play I saw was an outdoor production of Macbeth by a touring company in the summer. Backdrop Highcliff Castle - wonderful.
ReplyDeleteAlan Bennet has turned into a real national institution, hasn't he? He is so multi-talented, that I think he is a real one-off. His script for 'The Madness of King George' was wonderful too. I loved that story about when he had the old lady living in a caravan in his garden, and Vincent Price (a good friend, apparently) was leaving the house. She jumped out at him in the darkness, and scared the daylights out of the famous horror film actor!
ReplyDeleteDid you know that Selina Cadell's mother Jean played the wife of WC Fields in the glorious 1930s version of David Copperfield?
ReplyDeleteI love this play. I was lucky enough to see it at the National with Richard Griffiths playing Fitz/Auden (hence the baggy cardigan when worn by someone slimmer, and Griffiths was grubby). I laughed immoderately then and again when I saw the NT Live broadcast at the Scala. I still laughed in Llandudno although the touring cast wasn't quite as sharply nuanced as the original. I liked Malcolm Sinclair as Henry/Britten but Alex Jennings was sheer perfection. I too liked Selina Cadell and it's no criticism of her very fine performance to say the Frances de la Tour in London was actually gasp-makingly brilliant. But the play, which is also about theatre, biography, words v music, approaches to gayness and why some people are invisible no matter how good they are at what they do, is one of Bennett's best and a rich cornucopia of great lines and good jokes.
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