Profile for MariusPontmercy

It's not a song, but knowing that in Shakespeare's era "nothing" was slang for vagina suddenly reveals a whole lot of now-obscure punnage - the title Much Ado About Nothing being the most obvious, but there are plenty of others that went completely over my heard before I knew. Like this one from Hamlet (that also has the more obvious "country matters" pun): Hamlet: Lady, shall I lie in your lap? Ophelia: No, my lord. Hamlet: I mean, my head upon your lap? Ophelia: Ay, my lord. Hamlet: Do you ...

Yes you have to lean forward and concentrate to hear what's going on in un-miked plays, but are you concentrating on what's goinging on or just straining to hear? The former, actually. Is it really that difficult to hear? The only times I've struggled to hear actors in a play is when the performer themselves has a weak voice, and that's just as bad from anywhere in the auditorium. The vast majority of plays I've seen have been unmiked, and audibility problems are - in my experience, at least ...

Genuine question since I've not seen a play on Broadway, but have seen many in the West End: are mikes commonly used for plays (as opposed to musicals) on Broadway? Aside from a few plays like War Horse that make very heavy use of music and sound effects, I'm struggling to think of very many plays that I've seen that have been miked, unless you count the odd moment done for effect - for example the ghost in the National Theatre's Hamlet, or Derek Jacobi's Lear in the storm scene. And frankly,...

"A voice like a jaguar hiding in a cello" is how one British journalist described it - the phrase makes no sense at all, but if you've heard him you'll know exactly what it means. Scripps: There was an interview with Adrian Scarborough recently that said he was leaving Betty Blue Eyes to do more Upstairs Downstairs later this year, and that he was heading to Broadway *next* year with After the Dance. That was the journalist writing rather than a direct quote, though, so could be wrong.

Interested to see how this does in New York. It's very quaintly English in a way, all about the emotional repression of the upper classes. Parts of it do seem a little stilted now, especially the dialogue, but the relationships between the central characters are so beautifully and truthfully written that that didn't matter for me. Cumberbatch was superb in the NT production (THAT VOICE!), but for me the most memorable performances came from Nancy Carroll and Adrian Scarborough (as Joan and Jo...

As well as Imelda Staunton, A Delicate Balance also has Penelope Wilton and Tim Pigott-Smith. I'm really looking forward to seeing that. In addition to those mentioned there's also The Cherry Orchard and Ibsen's Emperor and Galilean at the NT which both have great casts. The two all-male Shakespeares at Hampstead Theatre are apparently excellent - they've been on tour for a while - The Comedy of Errors and Richard III. Government Inspector at the Young Vic sounds like it could be good, but I ...

There seems to be some confusion over the dates for this - first it was announced as per that article to be coming to London in 2012 (on the usual Bridge Project schedule, i.e. New York early in the year, international tour, then London in the Summer), but now the Old Vic has announced that it's coming to London a year before that - June to September 2011, and tickets are on sale next month. Maybe it's just the London dates that have changed and it's just playing there first with a gap before...

I agree with wonkit - I suspect this was written as a general article rather than a review as such, but the editor published it as a review. Since she's not a theatre critic in any sense I assume she bought her own ticket, and that being the case I don't see anything particularly wrong (morally, I mean) with writing this sort of article. The things she talks about are not things that are likely to change in the last few days/weeks of previews. And though this is hardly the point, I shouldn't ...

If Leveaux does half as good a job as he did with the West End production I can't imagine you'll be disappointed. Plenty of substance in this one - admittedly mostly thanks to the play itself, but it came across perfectly in this staging.

Recently, Simon Russell Beale in London Assurance. He actually got entrance applause, which is pretty rare for anyone in London and almost unheard of at places like the National. It was very simple, a pair of doors swung open and he slowly walked on accompanied by stately music, but it was brilliant. I think it was the costume/wig that did it: Another one that got a good round of applause recently was Roger Allam (as Falstaff) in Henry IV Part 2 at the Globe. No applause for Mark Rylance in J...

I really liked this play - in a way it's about people trying to find meaning and depth in a play that has none whatsoever, and the same is true of us the audience and La Bete itself - it's nonsense really, and I loved not being quite sure whether the playwright realised it was nonsense or thought he had written something genuinely profound. It sends up pretentious theatre and pretentious theatregoers while at the same time being just that and appealing to just that kind of audience (a categor...

I totally get why people might not like Stoppard generally (though I disagree), but I don't know how anyone could fail to see the genius of Arcadia. The London production last year was wonderful. Samantha Bond (Hannah) and Dan Stevens (Septimus) particularly so.

The Donmar has, as far as I know, only ever transferred one musical to Broadway (Cabaret), and that was years ago. It's not the Menier or anything! The Donmar is leagues ahead in my opinion. If you want something to worry about regarding this production, forget the venue and try the director. I've only seen two productions he's done, but they were two of the dullest things I've ever sat through.

Kerry Ellis was great when I saw her - a bit neat and tidy-looking for Nancy, maybe, but her singing was terrific. The production itself is visually stunning but rather too big for this cute little show, I think. It's a fun musical, but not a great one, and a production on this scale really shows up a lot of its weaknesses. The film is a far better version of the musical than any I've seen on stage.

It is a bit of a pain, but if you want to see older search results, just have a look at when the oldest result showing is from (i.e. the one at the bottom of the page), and re-do the search with that as the "Optional End Date".

I'd be surprised if Hanson leaves this gig, but I haven't heard anything on the subject. Well, he's doing a play in London starting in November this year, so presumably he'll be leaving NY in October (or maybe even earlier) for rehearsals.

It's running at 3hrs-ish? Wow. This same production in London came in at just under 2:45 when I saw it. It seemed longer, though...

In terms of the really high-tech ones, the house in the Stephen Daldry production of An Inspector Calls has to be the winner. Wow! Also, everything involving the horses in War Horse, but most of all the transformation from the foal into the adult horse. And the final tableau in Every Good Boy Deserves Favour, also at the National Theatre - with the zig-zag walkway seemingly going on forever. It was actually quite shocking (in a good way). But a lot of the most "magical" moments for me come fr...

^ I'm not denying that he's done some (or a lot of) awful work over the years, but could the best director in the world have made Gone with the Wind's book and score into a good piece of theatre? And yes, to any Nunn-haters out there, watch Nicholas Nickleby and see how a great director can turn what should be an unmanageably long and episodic story into a gripping, coherent and genuinely brilliant piece of theatre. Whereas now he seems better at doing the opposite: making genuinely brilliant...

^ It's made up of lots of very good and well-staged scenes, but for me it suffered from the same lack of coherency that the score itself does and that the original production so skillfully avoided. It just seems to jump around from scene to scene with no real sense of pacing. (But, to be fair, a lot of people seem to think that about the original, especially in its current incarnation which has been cut heavily.) It is nice to hear the score played by a decent-sized orchestra though, even if ...