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Prayers and thoughts: The Inseparables @Finboroughtheatre

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The Inseparables brings Simone de Beauvoir’s posthumously published novel to life. It traces a lifelong friendship between Sylve and Andrée, two unconventional girls who grew up in a stifling world where being a woman meant getting married or entering a convent. With a quick pace and engaging performances from the two leads, it is a journey back into the 20th century that captures two unconventional women trapped in a conventional world that will have you reflecting on how much or little things have moved on in the last century. It’s currently playing at the Finborough Theatre .  We’re introduced to Sylve praying for her country, France, to be saved from the war and indoctrinated into the world of faith and obedience. But too smart for all that, her life was full of detached guilt and boredom. But when she meets Andrée, a new arrival at her school, she is struck by how different she is from everyone else. She was burned in a fire and had a passion for life that nobody else she knew...

Theatre: Enemies

In keeping with a week of corporate greed, I had the opportunity to see Gorky's play Enemies performed at the Almeida Theatre on Thursday. It is a new translation by David Hare and it was fantastic (the critics seem to think so as well). As an ensemble piece the actors worked so well together, and they were rather pleasing on the eye as well but I digress…

Gorky's play is about trouble at a Russian factory. When the managing directory of the family-run factory is shot and killed is it the start of a worker uprising or was it just an accident? The family is split between those who see conspiracies and those who sympathise with the oppressed workers, so the drama is set. This translation keeps thing going at a brisk pace and there is enough fiery dialogue in it to keep anybody's attention focussed on the action at hand. The final scene although a tad abrupt, did really sum it all up well (and was accompanied with a slight amount of theatrical flourish)…  It was enough to make you go "oooh". I think I did as I had had too much red wine by this point on an empty stomach…

It is also worth pointing out that the drama takes place on a stage that was gorgeously set - a garden with trees and grass and woodland. Not at all like the cheap set thrown together for the National Theatre's Voysey Inheritance.  

Interestingly at drinks following the play not everyone who saw the play loved it. One rather famous theatre person was pouring shit over the production in between hoovering down the canapés. Perhaps it wasn't his cup of tea as he prefers his Gorky embalmed rather than injected with real drama.  There's no pleasing some people I suppose.

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