John Steinbeck! The Richest Author in the Dust Bowl!The English Touring Theatre does not disappoint. The Hypochondriac was still a good production just of a slightly embarrassing script- I blame Roger McGough, though really Moliere is to blame, he loved toilet humour. Anyway, I saw the ETT do Uncle Vanya a couple of years ago and that was a wonderful production, it looked beautiful and everyone involved was suibtably beautifully tragic.
Here we have Steinbeck's classic American novel adapted for the stage and played out by a company of English actors... I had American Suzie with me and she loved it- and said everyone did really well with the accent, except some minor characters (Cockney guy in overalls springs to mind) and Pa played by Christopher Timothy. Otherwise Ma (Sorcha Cusack) Tom (Damian O'Hare) and Oliver Cotton were fantastic leads with convincing accents! And as always Oliver Cotton's hair and eyebrows were impressive.
This production was amazingly well done, wonderful set (though extremely minimal a hell of a lot was cleverly done within it!) and staging there was a real sense of the journey in the long first act, and even more sense of the utter hopelessness in the equally long second act! Anyway, it really puts this "depression" into perspective. I mean, we may have just lost our car and mortgage and pensions, but at least we're not all drinking somebody's tit-milk in an old barn.
"I mean, we may have just lost our car and mortgage and pensions, but at least we're not all drinking somebody's tit-milk in an old barn."
ReplyDelete...eww. I will certainly never complain about the recession.