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Showing posts with the label lost plays

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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...
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Double Indemnity: The Coral @ Finborough

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Coral can weather all sorts of undersea turbulence. Small and adaptable, it survives in its watery world. And so 100 years from when it last performed in the UK, we have The Coral. A piece about the forces of capitalism in a dystopian dog-eat-dog world. It's currently playing at the Finborough Theatre. Whether it has survived the forces of change over the last 100 years might be a topic of post-theatre debate on your way home. There are no names in the piece. There are just people with characteristics such as the secretary, the daughters and the millionaire. The focus of the piece is on the millionaire. A play from 100 years ago will not keep up with inflation, but he is wealthy and powerful in this world. It is also a dangerous world. And so he also uses his secretary, his doppelgänger, so he can be everywhere while also sitting back on his yacht with his daughters.  But besides the troubles at his factories and pamphlets calling for change, he has other problems. When his daughte...
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Stuck on you: Quaint Honour @Finborough

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It’s a boys life in Quaint Honour. It’s currently having a sold-out run at the Finborough Theatre . It’s set in a boarding school in 1950s England. Where among the study, cricket and Shakespearian productions, homosexual activity is rampant. It’s not encouraged, but its seen as something to pass the time between all that study and sport. And there’s enough ambiguity about these relationships for the house master to turn a blind eye. The premise is that Tully (Harley Viveash), a prefect, accepts a challenge to seduce younger pupil Hamilton (Jack Archer). It’s all meant to be harmless fun but the pair develop stronger feelings for each other. And even as the play reaches its predictable conclusions, you can’t help but enjoy the time you spent with these characters.
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Carpe diem: Mr Gillie @Finborough

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Poor Mr Gillie. A headmaster at a small village  school railing against the norms and expectations of the time. It's like a poor mans Dead Poets Society... Without the privileged young men, the cliches or the sentimentality. It's funny too which makes this piece enjoyable even if it is a little long. Here life is the pits, and Mr Gillie was the only hope for anyone who didn't care for that. It's playing at the Finborough Theatre and is the first London production in over 60 years of James Bridie's work. It opens with the a judge and barrister discussing the life of Mr Gillie. Mr Gillie and his wife had been evicted from their schoolmaster's house after the closing down of the school. The furniture van was coming to clear out his things but had run over and killed him. Now the  judge and barrister would have to decide whether his life had any point.
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