National Theatre's 50th Anniversary Gala

Hope you all don't mind but bumping this post. Wondering if anyone is going to be watching or going to a screening?

Clip of rehearsals below

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E6Cbtg5-jxI

I'll be watching it on TV. Apparently the National are seeing this as their equivalent to the Olympics opening ceremony.

I was stuck getting home from Newark Airport yesterday so I missed the local NT Live screening in Queens. I really wanted to see it.

(Though on a related note, I'm still annoyed that they cancelled the Macbeth in our area, I'm guessing because the production is coming to NYC in the spring.)

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Anyone else catch this on PBS last night? I'm glad I saw it, but also glad I didn't pay to see it at the cinema. The staging and transitions were very fluid, but the constant stop-start-stop-start of unrelated, out-of-context scenes doesn't make for a dramatically satisfying evening. Still, I thought there was much to admire and enjoy. I'm really not a fan of Shakespeare soliloquies delivered out of context. It reminds me of my high school and college theatre competitions or a series of auditions. Auditions, of course, with some of the greatest actors in the theatre.

Beyond the wonderful archival footage, my personal highlights were:

A wickedly funny Ralph Fiennes and company in PRAVDA (this show seems to be screaming for a revival, doesn't it?)

Derek Jacobi and Michael Gambon in a crackling selection from NO MAN'S LAND

A very funny scene from BEDROOM FARCE with Penelope Wilton,

The reunion of THE HISTORY BOYS (and Dominic Cooper's thighs) with the playwright himself stepping in for the late Richard Griffiths,

And a pitch perfect and incredibly moving scene from ANGELS IN AMERICA with Dominic Cooper and a truly superb Andrew Scott.


Unfortunately, I thought nearly all of the musical selections were hugely disappointing and poorly orchestrated. Dame Judi's "Send in the Clowns" felt rushed (they upped the tempo I believe) and barely scratched the surface of what she achieved in her performances of this same number at the Hey, Mr. Producer and Sondheim 80th Birthday BBC concerts. "Sit Down You're Rocking the Boat" was perfectly adequate, "The Rain in Spain" was pretty charmless--was that the original Eliza from the National Theatre revival? She seemed completely wrong for the part.

I was surprised to find that the one musical number they seemed to get really right was from LONDON ROAD, a show I'm not familiar with. What started out as a headscratcher of a "why on earth are they wasting time on a song about a few pretty flowers?" moment, grew and grew in harmonic and textural complexity into a strangely moving piece. Not traditionally "pretty", but nonetheless, beautiful and understated. Now I'm curious to see more from this show.

A mixed bag, but well worth it to see those wonderful highlights. Unfortunately, doesn't look like its been added to the PBS ipad app.

Updated On: 2/15/14 at 01:11 PM

No the actress playing Eliza was Rosalie Craig who is currently in The Light Princess at the National. And I agree, she was completely miscast

I saw this in December in the cinema, and I ADORED it. I agree that the musical portions were the weakest parts, but I was still pretty much enthralled throughout the entire thing. The clip of Maggie Smith in Hay Fever had me guffawing.

The version on PBS online is great. So wonderful to see those old clips against how the actors looked now as they did their live scenes. And so great to see the legs that made Dominic Cooper a star back again. (On a related note, you can see those legs and more on BBC America's current Fleming miniseries.)

Seeing that damn horse Joey never fails to bring me to open sobbing, I miss that show on Broadway.


But I thought I read it was longer, so I looked up the DVD and there's 40 minutes we missed here. I wonder what was cut for time - I guess that means I'll have to buy the DVD. (Hopefully it's Region compatible but I do have a Region 2 player in a closet somwhere.)

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Enjoyed the show. Was perplexed, however, by the National's claim to ANGELS IN AMERICA. Richard Eyre's intro:

"The luckiest thing that happened to me while I was running the National Theater — I received a play from an American friend, and it was a play that had never been performed in America. And I started to read it, and after I got to page three, I realized I had to put this play on"

This ended with production photos titled "Original Production 1988"

Huh?

I was in California when ANGELS was being co-developed by L.A.'s Mark Taper Forum and San Francisco's Eureka Theater in 1990/1991, after having been commissioned by Oskar Eustis at the Eureka in 1988. MILLENNIUM APPROACHES premiered in 1991 at the Eureka (and was subsequently produced by London's National that same year). PERESTROIKA premiered in 1992 at the Taper. Both plays were then produced together in 1993 by London's National and on Broadway.

Any "Original Production 1988" would be impossible, and I've never heard of the National's involvement at all in the plays' development.

It's certainly possible that Eyre read the plays before their premieres, validating his quote above, and also possible that he gave a promise of a National production while the Eureka/Taper productions were still workshopping. But I'm still confused by the "Original Production 1988" title — and, frankly, by the inference that the National discovered and originated ANGELS. Both plays were commissioned, developed, workshopped, and premiered in the U.S.

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Updated On: 2/16/14 at 03:14 PM

I'm glad I checked out this thread--I see it's being repeated on my PBS at 2am tonight. I missed the cinema showing, but was concerned it might be disconcerting to just see a string of quick excerpts, but I can't wait to check it out.