Spotted: Samuel Barnett, AA Gill, Michael Grandage and...

When: last night
Where: at the National Theatre

Ahh, press nights at the National. I never fail to be impressed and goggle-eyed at all the various theatrey, actorly types that show up on opening night.

At last night's performance of Danton's Death, I spotted History Boy Samuel Barnett, Olivia Williams (I think), critics galore including AA Gill, and directors Michael Grandage and Rupert Goold. (The latter was almost comically tanned.)

Funnily enough, I'd spotted lots and lots of boys who looked like the could've been History Boys at one point or another throughout the evening.

Then, on the way out, I spotted Samuel Barnett, chatting to another couple in the foyer. "Ooh, look! A History Boy," I whispered to JC.

Two minutes later, he wakes up and says "Was that guy in the white shirt famous?" Ye-es. "He looked cool - very down-to-earth, and not at all showy" was JC's reaction.

Image shows Samuel Barnett, photo © Joseph Marzullo from here.

King Lear and Liverpool

So, last time I lamented a missed opportunity from Rupert Goold and his King Lear which was part of Liverpool08, the capital of culture year.

I really strugged to capture everything I saw and how I felt about it with my review of the play. Despite the amazing acting, it was a bit of a mess, all in all. (And as I sometimes think happens, the messy play comes out as a messy review.)

I can't help thinking that a Lear for Liverpool, which took in something from the history and culture of that city, would've been much more interesting, more suitable than the mismatched muddle I saw at the Young Vic.

There's this from the Independent:

Goold's interpretation, we were promised, would "capture the spirit and atmosphere of an extraordinary city"

But also this:

Goold: "Lear is more resistant to the conceptual buggering around that I normally do."

Fair enough. But couldn't we have had something of the city? I mean, Liverpool does provide a pretty rich seam of history, culture, politics and more to mine for "conceptual buggery," doesn't it?

We could have had a Lear about football (much more serious than life or death!), a team divided into three, awful, uninterested daughters taking over the finances of a club; a Lear about business, trade, shipping, slavery; a Lear where the docks stand for the non-existent heath... It could've been about a scouse patriarch in clubland, if you want to make it really modern, the sons-in-law determined to fight for their piece of a club and drug culture, ready to extend petty gangster injuries on those in opposition to them.

I don't know. Perhaps all that sounds too preposterous. I just wish it didn't feel like Goold really wasted an opportunity; and totally failed to get to know the city, the culture, the history and the people the play was, basically, performed for in 2008.

Last night's Lear and Rupert's Goolden Crown Slips

Rupert, Rupert, Rupert: what were you doing?

Ahh, the disappointment. I can't work out quite what the precise problem was, or what he thought he was doing...

Was the text too much? Is Rupert Goold somehow not old enough to direct a Lear? (Seems a silly thing to suggest, but...) Was it the pressure of a key capital of culture production, with a key Liverpudlian figure, in the city itself enough to send him off on an odd, odd tangent? Did he struggle to make an impact after such a great Macbeth? "Rupert Goold is the future of Shakespeare" said the Independent. Not here he isn't.

Has he never been to Liverpool?

Was he messing around with the gang in Oliver, the luvvies in Pinter, some other project while he should've been working on a masterpiece?

Maybe we'll never know.

He was at the show last night. Walked across the stage somewhat purposefully during the first interval. I couldn't help worrying he'd caught a bit of Kevin's need to be in the spotlight. Normally I see him skulking around at the back.

Oh, I need my faith reassuring. Where's the next Six Characters for me to get obsessed with, please?

Londonist: Donmar Dominates Evening Standard Theatre Awards Shortlist

The Evening Standard Theatre Awards shortlist has been announced, and the Donmar Warehouse tops the bill with six nominations for three shows.

Today's announcement cuts down on the longlist released earlier this week to three nominations in each category.

Donmar Artistic Director Michael Grandage is nominated for Best Director for three productions (Othello, The Chalk Garden and Ivanov).

And those same three shows dominate the acting categories. Kenneth Branagh (Ivanov) and Chiwetel Ejiofor (Othello) compete in the Best Actor category, and Margaret Tyzack and Penelope Wilton (both The Chalk Garden) are up for Best Actress. They're joined by David Calder for Lear at Shakespeare's Globe, and Lesley Sharp for Harper Regan at the National.

Rupert Goold's been dropped, as those up for Best Director include Michaels Grandage and Boyd, and John Tiffany for Black Watch at the Barbican.

The same Black Watch is up for Best Play, alongside The Pitmen Painters, and Christopher Shinn’s Now Or Later at the Royal Court.

Eurobeat and Jersey Boys miss out on Best Musical; the shortlist now contains Street Scene, La Cage Aux Folles, and Marguerite.

See the Standard's full shortlist, and let us know what you think below.

Image from cormac70's photostream via the Creative Commons Attribution licence.

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Londonist: Arts Ahead 5-12 November

Arts Ahead, Londonist's sporadic(!) weekly guide to getting you cultured is back this week, with exciting events breaking out all over the city.

Openings in London this week:

We've seen a few happy endings over the last couple of days (Lewis, Barack, Steven).

Why not make a fourth with Mark Morris Dance Group's Romeo and Juliet which opens today at the Barbican? It's being performed as the composer, Sergey Prokofiev, originally intended complete with a happy ending where Juliet wakes up. Hurrah.

This week sees a chunk of diverse theatre shows raising their curtains. Alan Bennett's Enjoy with everyone's favourite costume-drama-mum, Alison Steadman, opens in Richmond on Friday. Previews of Lily's dad in Treasure Island also hobble, peg-legged into the Theatre Royal Haymarket on Friday. Saturday brings Damon Albarn and co's modern acrobatic opera Monkey: Journey To The West to Monkey's World at The O2.

On Tuesday, take your pick between the opening night of Gesthsemane by David Hare featuring Lawrence Award-winning, Black Books/Love Soup/Green Wing star Tamsin Grieg at the National, and Bill Bailey's Tinselworm at the Gielgud. We warned you it was a mixed bag.

In the art world, check out some lovely British impressionism at Sisley in England and Wales when it opens at the National next Tuesday. And fans of the British Museum's Statuephilia should check out their Statuephilia Late on Friday.

Last Chance:

In theatreland, Come Dancing closes on Saturday, so this is your last chance to see The Kinks' Ray Davies' musical about love set around the Ilford Palais in 1950s London. The critically acclaimed In The Red and Brown Water from American playwright Tarell Alvin McCraney also closes this weekend.

Finally, Rupert Goold's utterly astounding, teeth-clenchingly brilliant head-fuck of a show, Six Characters in Search of an Author is all over on Saturday.

Catch 'em while you can. Read the original post on londonist.

Image shows David Leventhal and Rita Donahue in Romeo and Juliet, On Motifs of Shakespeare. Photo credit Gene Schiavone.

Read the original post on londonist.

Londonist: Theatre Review: No Man's Land

The new production of No Man's Land at the Duke of York's Theatre has all the right ingredients.

It's a play by Harold Pinter, whom everyone seems obliged to describe as "our greatest living playwright".

It's directed by the award-winning Rupert Goold, Theatreland's man of the moment. (Not content with getting an Olivier for his Macbeth with Patrick Stewart last year, he's also behind the stunning 6 Characters in Search of an Authour, Liverpool's King Lear with Pete Postlethwaite, and the forthcoming Oliver!)

It stars the fabulous Michael Gambon as the aging writer, Hirst. We don't know about you, but we'd pay to listen to Mr Gambon read the telephone directory, let alone act parts deemed tailor-made for him by the writer.

It's even got the celeb box ticked, in the form of Little Britain's David Walliams, playing one of Hirst's sinister henchmen.

What's not to like?

Well, it's long, it's slow and it's kind of hard work. Sure, you're seeing some of the greatest acting you'll ever witness in the West End (and therefore anywhere), but this Londonista couldn't get over the fact that she was aware of her aching, theatre-weary arse, occasionally immune to the lines that were eliciting guffaws from the middle-aged, middle-posh, smug audience, and everso slightly wishing the play would, well, hurry up a bit.

There are gorgeous moments – Spooner's (David Bradley) description of a painting he never made; a wonderfully absurd set of directions around a one-way system from Nick Dunning as Briggs, sounding like something out of a particularly dark episode of Only Fools and Horses; and Gambon's frequent, lyrical dream-like reminiscences.

These are the flashes of sunlight in an otherwise shadow-filled evening's entertainment. To a non-scholar of Pinter (confession: this is the first Pinter play I've seen), this play was more like watching a very well-acted video installation in a gallery than a spending a life-affirming night in the theatre.

But what do we know: Michael Billington loved it.

No Man's Land is playing at the Duke of York's Theatre until 3 January 2009.
Image by Jeremy Whelehan shows Michael Gambon as Hirst, and David Bradley as Spooner.

Read the original post on londonist