Saturday 13 September 2003 Sticky Jubilee Gardens, South Bank
It hadn't really decided who it was aiming itself at - kids or adults, it hadn't decided whether it was a great fireworks display or a narrative performance piece. So although some of the effects were lovely it at times seemed slow and somewhat confusing. It was a spider that was eating a fly and the fly was in the belly of the spider, or something. It wasn't helped by the fact that the audience felt it was a fireworks display and two dads just behind us kept up a running commentary of what was happening so the kids sitting on their shoulders kept watching and everyone went oooo and aahhhh when the fireworks burst. Performance or fireworks display - it wasn't the best of either. But it was interesting.
Thursday 4 September 2003 His Girl Friday National Theatre
Great adaptation (by John Guare) of The Front Page by Ben Hecht & Charles MacArthur.
Set was great - about 10 minutes before the beginning of the play actors were milling around on the stage with stagehands who were erecting walls and putting in sugar windows etc. Actors pretending to be makeup girls were doing makeup and others pretending to be set staff or directors instructed. And then the play began but almost didn't realise it.
There's a group of reporters hanging out in the press room of the court house waiting for a story to break about a hanging, possibly the last hanging in Chicago. Wise cracking, card playing, alcholic reporters who all talk at 110mph. A couple of keystone cops. A bent mayor and sherif trying to rig the election. A newspaperman-woman who has left the profession and found a nice insurance salesman to get married to (who sadly has one of those mothers) but who once was married to the best reporter of the bunch. So there's going to be a hanging. But the prisoner escapes during the assessment of his mental state. His reprieve is covered up by the bent mayor and sherif and they try to bribe the messenger. The escaped murderer finally breaks into the press room onto the returned newpaperman-woman. They try to get him out of the building in a roll-top desk. And it all ends happily ever after.
Part way into the very beginning I began to notice that they were producing a black and white play - the whole set, costumes and everything were only in black, white and shades of grey. Speed of the dialogue was fast. Cleverly staged. Funny. They captured the quirkiness of films of the time, the jovialness and the comedy.
Starring Zoe Wannamaker (who is great), Alex Jennings (also great) and many other familiar actors who all managed to portray the historic nature of the play and the story without it seeming weird.
I really enjoyed it. A gripping yarn. And a very good exit from all the cast at the end.
