What a brilliant show. Billie Piper gave a tour de force performance, and Brendan Cowell was also excellent. Very dark material, but ingeniously staged.
Armory is a beautiful venue too. Our seats were halfway up, and we clearly saw and heard everything going on in the glass box.
Another question--being only familiar with the NTL broadcast--does the live show include the chapters & titles during the interludes (and if so, how so)?
bowtie7 said: "Another question--being only familiar with the NTL broadcast--does the live show include the chapters & titles during the interludes (and if so, how so)?"
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Yes it does, there’s a TV screen on top of the box that displays the information.
I saw it on the second to last row and I have to agree that the view and the sound were not an issue at all, if anything it was too loud as there was a speaker right above us. I loved how crisp the sound was, there was almost this movie like quality to it, you could hear every little small sound and movement.
I sat in the second to last row and the sound quality was amazing up there as well. I also felt like I could see everything clearly. I'm glad I took a chance on this and bought cheap tickets through TodayTix for first American performance before it has become a hard-to-find ticket. This will probably be the highlight of the season for me.
LxGstv said: "there was almost this movie like quality to it, you could heaer every little small sound and movement."
Agree. Part of the sound design's creating this impression was the set itself. The glass box acting almost as a proxy for a movie screen. Also based on an interview I saw with Piper, the cast only partially hears the audience because the sound coming from the house reaches them only from above through the set's open ceiling. I wonder if that also helped create the impression of watching a movie.
This thread is why I love BroadwayWorld. To see such a passionate response out of the majority of posters makes me want to see this so badly. Unfortunately, my next trip to NYC isn’t until 10 days after it closes. Fingers crossed this extends.
Also, I’m thrilled Glenda Jackson is getting such positive reviews but she has little to no competition outside of Condola Rashad. The kind of reviews Billie Piper is garnering for makes me wonder if she would have won the Tony over Jackson had “Yerma” gone to Broadway.
FutureDirector said: "Any chance this transfers? It's selling out the armory and that's close to a midsize Broadway Theater (around 800 seats)"
I think a transfer would normally be a no-brainer, but the way this production is designed, there truly isn't a space this could work in on Broadway. Even if they kept the design as-is and did on stage seating, I think sightlines from a Broadway house's mezzanine would be too partial for this to work (since the proscenium height/viewing window for this production is so short).
Slightly off-topic, but I'm still praying for a People, Places & Things transfer once Denise Gough wins her Tony for Angels in America. That successfully transferred to a proscenium house in the West End, and is the more probable of the two productions.
Agree that the challenges in finding a Broadway house where this show would have anywhere near the impact it delivers at the Armory would probably prove prohibitive (how's that for alliteration?).
The more pressing question might be when we will see the ingenious Simon Stone, the marvelous Brendan Cowell and the phenomenally talented Billie Piper return to the New York stage with something else - on Broadway or off.
(Speaking of Cowell, anyone else find him insanely sexy?)
Good god, what a theatrical experience. Each moment was perfection. The cast was uniformly excellent, especially Billie Piper. That performance will haunt me. The final moments had me simultaneously holding my breath and resisting the urge to throw up.
Had this production played across and down town, Piper would be winning herself a Tony to go with the hardware she has already collected for this triumphant portrayal of yearning and utter disappointment.
Piper won the Olivier. Her fellow nominees were Cherry Jones as Amanda Wingfield, Ruth Wilson as Hedda Gabler and Glenda Jackson as King Lear. Good thing Piper is not eligible for a Tony, because if she were, her "Her" might very well have "bested" Jackson"s "A," (a most semantically interesting rivalry) just as it did over her Lear. And there might have been something very sad about that, given Jackson's age and recent return in two triumphs after a two decades plus absence from the stage.