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Birdsong at the Comedy Theatre
Review time!
I am...full of mixed feelings about this play. I was wincing all through the first act because of the writing, although honestly I don't think anyone could have managed to shove all the descriptions and complexity of relationships into that short a time. Compared to the first section of the book, it just seemed very flat. (I DID like that it was changed so that Jeanne and Stephen met before the war. It went a long way towards making their interactions in the third act seem logical despite their briefness.) Part of it was also that Genevieve O'Reilly, though a good actress, did not play Isabelle much like I'd imagined her.
Ben Barnes did a Stephen that was very much like my mental Stephen, though, and he was very compelling all the way through.
However! Just as I was wondering if it was going to be a very long three hours, ALONG CAME THE WAR. All of the scenes between soldiers were beautifully done: the humour, the pathos, the tension, the fear, the friendships, all of them. And Lee Ross's Jack Firebrace was the absolute highlight of the play for me -- he was just amazing.
I was sad that Weir was cut as a speaking role, because his friendship with Stephen was one of my favourite things in the book, but I could see the point in it: they'd kept one intense male friendship with Jack and Arthur, and wouldn't have had time for more. But the ways in which that omission changed the experience and thus the person of Stephen were interesting, and at least they kept in a lot of the stuff with Gray.
Jeanne. Hmm. I wasn't so keen on how she became the Mystic Voice Of Reason, because the whole thing about interconnectedness was such a powerful, private moment for Stephen in the book. But I thought Zoe Waites did a great job with the material, and with the character's physicality especially. Actually, the physical direction in this was FANTASTIC, all of the blocking and the body language...really effective.
I loved the set design enormously; I went into it wondering how the hell they would do the tunnels, and was very impressed with how they used the space.
Overall: I'm trying hard not to compare it too harshly against the book, but so much of what I loved ABOUT the book -- Weir, Ellis, all the 1970s stuff with Elizabeth -- was cut. And the script, while on the whole solid and occasionally brilliant, was full of things that made me twitch as being too obvious, or too sentimentalised, or just a bit rough. A lot of the scenes were just SO short and choppy, which interfered with the play's flow despite some very neat work by the cast and crew to keep things moving along without pause. But it would be a hugely daunting book to even BEGIN to adapt for the stage, I imagine, so props to Rachel Wagstaff for doing it as well as she did.
Anyway, all the acting was faultless, and I DID enjoy the hell out of the second two acts. I would recommend it to you if it weren't for the fact that, er, the performance I saw was the final one.
~
I must say, the West End on a Saturday night is not designed to make single people feel good about themselves :( THE WORLD IS MADE UP OF COUPLES. COUPLES HAVING DINNER AND GOING TO THE THEATRE AND DISCUSSING IT AFTERWARDS OVER WINE. BUT NOT YOU. SCURRY ON HOME, UNLOVED PEONS.
I am...full of mixed feelings about this play. I was wincing all through the first act because of the writing, although honestly I don't think anyone could have managed to shove all the descriptions and complexity of relationships into that short a time. Compared to the first section of the book, it just seemed very flat. (I DID like that it was changed so that Jeanne and Stephen met before the war. It went a long way towards making their interactions in the third act seem logical despite their briefness.) Part of it was also that Genevieve O'Reilly, though a good actress, did not play Isabelle much like I'd imagined her.
Ben Barnes did a Stephen that was very much like my mental Stephen, though, and he was very compelling all the way through.
However! Just as I was wondering if it was going to be a very long three hours, ALONG CAME THE WAR. All of the scenes between soldiers were beautifully done: the humour, the pathos, the tension, the fear, the friendships, all of them. And Lee Ross's Jack Firebrace was the absolute highlight of the play for me -- he was just amazing.
I was sad that Weir was cut as a speaking role, because his friendship with Stephen was one of my favourite things in the book, but I could see the point in it: they'd kept one intense male friendship with Jack and Arthur, and wouldn't have had time for more. But the ways in which that omission changed the experience and thus the person of Stephen were interesting, and at least they kept in a lot of the stuff with Gray.
Jeanne. Hmm. I wasn't so keen on how she became the Mystic Voice Of Reason, because the whole thing about interconnectedness was such a powerful, private moment for Stephen in the book. But I thought Zoe Waites did a great job with the material, and with the character's physicality especially. Actually, the physical direction in this was FANTASTIC, all of the blocking and the body language...really effective.
I loved the set design enormously; I went into it wondering how the hell they would do the tunnels, and was very impressed with how they used the space.
Overall: I'm trying hard not to compare it too harshly against the book, but so much of what I loved ABOUT the book -- Weir, Ellis, all the 1970s stuff with Elizabeth -- was cut. And the script, while on the whole solid and occasionally brilliant, was full of things that made me twitch as being too obvious, or too sentimentalised, or just a bit rough. A lot of the scenes were just SO short and choppy, which interfered with the play's flow despite some very neat work by the cast and crew to keep things moving along without pause. But it would be a hugely daunting book to even BEGIN to adapt for the stage, I imagine, so props to Rachel Wagstaff for doing it as well as she did.
Anyway, all the acting was faultless, and I DID enjoy the hell out of the second two acts. I would recommend it to you if it weren't for the fact that, er, the performance I saw was the final one.
~
I must say, the West End on a Saturday night is not designed to make single people feel good about themselves :( THE WORLD IS MADE UP OF COUPLES. COUPLES HAVING DINNER AND GOING TO THE THEATRE AND DISCUSSING IT AFTERWARDS OVER WINE. BUT NOT YOU. SCURRY ON HOME, UNLOVED PEONS.