Thanks, Smaxie!
Matt Wolf's review was published in the NYTimes --
>>>>The New York Times by Matt Wolf, 30 October 2012
“The River,” at the Royal Court Theatre Upstairs, tantalizes and teases and whets an audience’s appetites: An extended scene finds Dominic West preparing in real time a sea-trout dinner for two that should lead to a jump in sales for any fish merchants in or near the Chelsea playhouse.
Mr. Butterworth’s first play since “Jerusalem” in 2009 seared its way into the collective English cultural conscience, winning leading man Mark Rylance a second Tony Award along the way, “The River” provides a contrast in almost every way. This one takes place in a single continuous act, not three, and traffics in silence rather than making a furious noise. What it shares with its predecessor is a belief in the numinous and in personalities that defy ready analysis. One exits the theater asking questions, and enriched.
It’s perhaps best to regard this as only an interim report on what is sure to be the first of many experiences of this play and of Ian Rickson’s characteristically empathic staging of it. The tiny playing space seats a scant 93, and so intense has been demand that the Court is selling tickets only on the day, either online or in-person at the box office. Let’s just say that any effort to get in is abundantly repaid.
The pleasures begin with a bearded Mr. West playing (brilliantly) a sensualist and aesthete who inhabits a remote cabin near which runs the river of the title, as heard at the start and during scene changes. But just as waterways rarely follow a straight path, neither does a play that gradually accrues in pain and deception, self-directed as much as not, though to say much more would spoil the skin-prickling finish, which prompts a reconsideration of all that has gone before. I can’t wait to see it again. <<<<
I have read the play several times and, on each reading, I discover something new. I am seeing the show on Broadway more than once and I hope this Broadway staging further enhances what I already perceive as very mentally-stimulating piece of writing. Too bad someone posted a stolen photo of the curtain call somewhere, which discloses a major spoiler
I hope I am not writing about any SPOILER/SPOILER/SPOILER here -- but the fish references prod me to speculate, thus
Re the fish --
*Could catching fish be the symbol for someone who is obsessed with catching a prey? All those women as prey? Gutting and cooking them representing the act of discarding the one that got caught...until he moves on to the next prey? Something about what was written when he was 7 years old and had that encounter with his first fish?
*Could it be an allegory for the fish that got away ( the one someone loved but who got away), thus leaving him seeking another one...and another one? The Man also talked about that " fish story"
