![]() I also felt there were way too many people on stage, and that the laborious, penetrating rhyme - although presumably intended to imitate the meticulous rigidity of the French original - added nothing to the story. I found the introduction of the characters contrived and faky (it counterintuitively emphasized the in-your-face, diversity-minded casting, which is actually supposed to remove race as a category from one’s mind rather than highlighting it). Let’s be clear that I didn’t miss the fake nose or the period costumes one bit, but when the play started with techno-influenced chant (think Enigma) and then segued into rapping, I thought “this will get tedious fast.” It did. Why this reaction? Because even apart from a very distinctive adaptation written by Martin Crimp, this is clearly Regietheater, a genre that I experience a fair amount of impatience with. I was thankfully able to see this one in my hometown cinema instead of having to drive to the capital city. ![]() ![]() I could have seen this play - with James McAvoy in the title role - while I was in London, and chose not to, and I think that turned out to have been the right decision - although I would see this again if there were another transmission in reasonable driving distance. Tonight I went to the latest NT Live transmission (it’s apparently going to be a very sparse spring as the next one is in May). ![]()
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