"Official" reviews and pics

[jamolivej]

Absolutely robela. Would definitely be good for Rufus to star in another of William Boyd's thrilling books. Or more......

[nell]

Mar 4, 2013 13:47:13 GMT robela said:

Awesome photos Adina!!!

Thanks for posting. Never too many times, never get tired of seeing!

Very interesting that William Boyd has seen the play and acknowledges Rufus' talent.

Would be good for Rufus to star in another of his thrilling books made into a film???

I couldn't agree more with all of the above! I've just finished William Boyd's "Ordinary Thunderstorms" it was a great read and I could see Rufus making a great Adam. Even though he grows a beard and shaves his hair Where's Nell I hear you say?.....what have you done with her!?

I actually laughed out loud on the train when 1 character was talking about something and the other didn't have a clue what he was talking about. He wrote it was just like a Harold Pinter play ;D

Anyway - The following article in the New York times has been brought to my attention (thanking you kindly ). Ask Ben Brantley About London theatre, There's the opportunity to post comments and questions

Ask Ben Brantley About London Theater
By THE NEW YORK TIMES
This week Ben Brantley, chief theater critic for The New York Times, will be reporting on the London theater scene. Among the shows he’ll be writing about are Ian Rickson’s West End production of Harold Pinter’s “Old Times,” starring Rufus Sewell and Kristin Scott Thomas, and a revival of the Stephen Sondheim and George Furth musical “Merrily We Roll Along” at the Menier Chocolate Factory.

Mr. Brantley is taking readers’ questions about what’s happening in the West End and elsewhere in London. Please post your queries in the comments below — we’ll pose some of them to Mr. Brantley and publish his answers here later this week.


artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/03/04/ask-ben-brantley-about-london-theater/#postComment

[rueful]

Thanks Nell (and anonymous finder) for the info about Ben Brantley of the New York Times going to see OT. I don't know when they'll be posting answers to questions, but they have published his review, which is fabulous, especially for Rufus!

Some SPOILERS in the review, but the bold type bits about Rufus are not spoilers. ;D

artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/03/05/london-theater-journal-memory-plays/

London Theater Journal: Memory Plays

By BEN BRANTLEY

LONDON — One thing, at least, is certain in both the fascinating new versions of Harold Pinter’s “Old Times” that are keeping audiences in a rapt state of perplexity here: The man loses.

Admittedly, he loses in two very different ways, even though he is played by the same actor, a marvelous Rufus Sewell. But there’s no doubt that by the end of the matinee and evening performances I saw on Saturday, he was a thoroughly defeated soul.

As for the victor, well, it’s the wife, not the other woman – isn’t it? — whether she is played (with such tantalizing dissimilarities) by Kristin Scott Thomas or Lia Williams. Yes, I’d say that the real power definitely lies with the wife. Oh, scratch that “definitely,” and scratch “real,” too. We are discussing a Pinter play.

I assure that you will long continue that discussion, even if only in your mind, if you’re lucky enough to see Ian Rickson’s productions of “Old Times” — the 1971 portrait of reminiscence as a high-stakes competition among a husband, a wife and her best friend — at the Harold Pinter Theater in the West End. And if you see it twice — which means seeing Ms. Thomas and Ms. Williams in both female roles — you’ll find you have even more to talk about.

Like how radically the chemistry can alter among the same three people, and how words change shape and color when spoken by different performers. And how infinitely mutable and distortable memory is. That includes your recollections of what you think you saw and heard when you last experienced this play.

My first weekend of theater-going in London this season was all about old times and old friends, you might say, though it was hardly old hat. I had assumed I was very well acquainted with “Old Times,” which I caught (twice) on Saturday and the 1981 Stephen Sondheim-George Furth musical “Merrily We Roll Along,” which I saw in a heart-clutching revival at the Menier Chocolate Factory on Sunday.

But I should have learned by now that assuming you know any play (like any person) inside-out is just arrogant. “Old Times” — which I had often regarded as a ravishing, melancholy conundrum– comes across this time as a vibrant, sometimes achingly clear comedy of the war that is waged in any relationship.

“Merrily” is work that I (like many Sondheim-ophiles) had consigned to the file of shows that, however flecked with brilliance, were too burdened by unfixable flaws to take flight.Yet this production, the maiden professional directorial effort of the actress (and frequent Sondheim interpreter) Maria Friedman, feels utterly and improbably airborne.

It seems apposite that these shows, which I saw back-to-back, should both be about revisiting the past. And more or less the same period, too: the mid-20th century, when the characters portrayed were hopeful and unformed and reveled, as a character in “Old Times” says, in “the sheer expectation of it all, the looking forwardness of it all.”

Not that you can take those words, or any words in “Old Times,” on trust. Which brings us to the essential difference between these works, aside from the obvious distinction that one involves singing and the other doesn’t. (O.K., there is some singing in “Old Times,” but you know what I mean.) In “Merrily” – which uses reverse chronology to explore the dissolution of a triangular friendship – hindsight is painfully 20/20; in “Old Times,” it is, at best, astigmatic and, at worst, downright hallucinatory.

“There are things I remember which may never have happened but as I recall them so they take place,” Anna says in “Old Times.” Anna was the best – and possibly only – friend of Kate, whom she hasn’t seen in years. Now she has chosen to renew that acquaintance by visiting Kate and her husband, Deeley (Mr. Sewell), in their remote, ocean-side house, and to revisit a past that they did or didn’t share.

The past is always a shifting and murky landscape in Pinter. What this production brings out so vividly is how that ambiguity means the past is also up for grabs. The person who presents the most persuasive version of it is the one who’s in control. “Old Times” is, like every Pinter drama, a power play. And Mr. Rickson’s interpretation resonates with the clash of memories as weapons, as Deeley and the worldly Anna stake their claims to the ownership of the passive Kate.

“I shall be watching you to see if she’s the same person,” Deeley says to Kate before Anna arrives, in a declaration that can be read several ways. When I heard that Ms. Scott Thomas and Ms. Williams would be switching roles in alternating performances of “Old Times,” I figured the idea of the women as somehow interchangeable would be the production’s fulcrum.

But that’s not what has happened. No matter which role they play, the inwardly centered Ms. Scott Thomas and the more visibly anxious Ms. Williams project almost opposite stage presences. This means that though the play always arrives at the same point, the road to that conclusion winds in different directions.

With Ms. Scott Thomas as an impenetrably self-assured, predatory Anna to Ms. Williams’s prickly, waifish Kate, “Old Times” feels darkly suspenseful. Ms. Williams’s more improvisatory and defensive Anna – opposite Ms. Scott Thomas’s distanced, abstracted Kate — makes the play more obviously a comedy.

And in the middle, Mr. Sewell adjusts his posture, his walk, the rhythms and emphases of his speech with wonderfully fine calibration to suit the change of actresses. (As fine as the women are, his performance is for me the most complex of the three – or five.) Seeing both versions, I found it especially gratifying to hear the changes in all three characters’ line readings. Who knew there could so many, and such revelatory, ways of pronouncing the word “gaze”?


{I snipped off the rest of the review about "Merrily we roll along"}

[nell]

Thanks for posting Rue!

Quite a glowing review there for all concerned especially Rufus. Well said Ben Brantley.

[lovethemanrs]

Excellent review. Thanks Rueful x

'And in the middle, Mr. Sewell adjusts his posture, his walk, the rhythms and emphases of his speech with wonderfully fine calibration to suit the change of actresses. (As fine as the women are, his performance is for me the most complex of the three – or five.)'

Couldn't have put it better myself, well done young man.

[kygal]

That is a nice review!

[GreenEyesToo]

What a great review! Thanks for that, Rueful!

[jamolivej]

For me best review yet.

[walt]

:(Thanks for finding and posting this remarkable review, Rueful!

>:(As time goes by, it looks like the reviews are even getting better, although some are hard to be topped off!

[robela]

Thanks Nell for posting the Ben Brantley link.
I have read Ordinary Thunderstorms too. That would be a brilliant part for Rufus I agree! I was also browsing in a bookshop and came across another spy novel by WB, based in London during the war and thought 'Oh my! Yes, another good part for Rufus'. If only.......

Thanks also Rueful for posting that excellent review!
What an excellent critic he is! ;D

[Petruchio - Good God]

2 new pics of Rufus yesterday leaving HPT

[GreenEyesToo]

Found some pics which I don't think we have already - but it's too late for me to check (I'm sure no-one will mind seeing them again if we have!)

 

(Darn those watermarks! )

[kissmekate]

Very nice finds, GE2! (And I don't think I've seen any of those before.)

[adina]

Oh, GE2, Rufus pictures are always greeted with a warm welcome on the Rooftop!

The second one with the Restless-screening photo could be a nice pair for a 'Find 10 Differences Between The Pictures' game.



The coat is buttoned up.
The scarf has a second loop.
Half-smile = What, no chocolate?




P.S. And 4 Annand photos: link - just because they are huge.    (click on 'High Res')

Peter Mumford:"Apart from in three very obvious places, I didn't want the audience to be aware of lighting changes – but I did want to create quite specific and ‘painterly’ images at certain points in the play. This meant working closely with the actors with regard to timing and positioning."



Well, not "just because they are huge".

[kygal]

Great pics! Thank you GE2 and Adina.