May theatre round up - kicking bad theatre in the balls
31/05/2011
May certainly kicked in the theatre stakes and with size tens - the second best month this year so far.
It was Much Ado month, the hot ticket with accompanying brouhaha. Mr Tennant and Ms Tate et al were very good, shame the audience wasn't quite so and it lost a star because of it. Harsh perhaps but I'm seeing it again so there is ample opportunity for the audience to redeem itself and allow the play to fully shine.
It took equal top spot with One Man Two Guvnors (pictured above) a similar play in tone - lots of physical comedy and farcical elements neither of which are usually my thing but which just seemed to have tickled the right rib.
May didn't have any stinkers so there are no bad memories to purge, fortunately:
= 1 Much Ado About Nothing, Wyndhams Theatre 79%
= 1 One Man Two Guvnors, Lyttleton Theatre 79%
3 I Am The Wind, Young Vic 77%
Looking forward, there is much to excite, even with Much Ado out of the way. I'll be making my debut visit to the Arcola Theatre to see my first ever production of The Seagull which I'm particularly looking forward to, especially as Al Weaver is in it (RS/BW 6DS already done for that one then).
I'm also seeing Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead for the first time which is highly anticipated not least because the lovely Samuel Barnett is in it and he was marvellous in last year's The Man at the Finborough.
June is also going to be a bit of a Shakespeare-fest - four plays in less than two weeks, three of them in 24 hours - I fear I may start speaking in verse. It's my annual Stratford trip and we are doing a double bill: The Merchant of Venice and Macbeth. These will be bookended by London-based productions of Richard III and Comedy of Errors at Hampstead. Might have to do a separate list for the best Shakespeare in June.