Sive

Druid return to John B Keane after 2011’s coruscating Big Maggie, and the result is another potent blend of riotous comedy and barbed social commentary.

Tommy Tiernan as Thomasheen Sean Rua. Image Ros Kavanagh

Before I saw this show I had wondered if Garry Hynes could tame Tommy Tiernan. But it turns out he was perfectly cast as Thomasheen Sean Rua. There was no need to tame him, merely to wind him up and point him in the right direction. The way Tiernan played the character was positively Dickensian, a creepy moment in which he moves his head closer to Sive akin to Uriah Heep and the vim he displayed the rest of the time two steps from Fagin.

5/5

The Psychological 10 Euro Mark: Part II

I howled about the price of cinema tickets 7 years ago, but now they’ve really gone thru the roof. What a difference 7 years makes…

 

January 2013 saw this price comparison between notable Dublin cinemas:

 

Light House €9 (€7.50 matinee) [3D +€1 – active 3D; glasses loaned free]

Dundrum: €9.50 (€6.80 matinee) [3D +€1, +€0.90 matinee]

Stillorgan: €9.80 (€7.70 matinee and weekend morning; €5 Wednesdays) [3D +€1, glasses supplied for €1]

IFI: €9.90 (€8.50 matinee) (membership discount)

Cineworld: €11.30 (€8.70 Mon/Tue/Wed and matinee Thur/Fri; €6.60 morning) [3D +€2]

 

And now the 2018 prices!

 

Light House 11.00e (9.50e matinee)

Dundrum: 11.20e (9.50e early evening, 8.50e matinee) 1.00e premium for Screen 1

Stillorgan: 12.75e  (9.25e matinee)

14.50e for 3D

6.00e all day Wednesday

IFI: 9.50e (8.50e matinee) [membership discount]

Cineworld: 13.30e/12.04e logged-in (10.80e/9.79e for matinee)

15.60e/14.11e for Saturday Night Black Panther 3-D

19.80e/17.89e for Saturday Night Black Panther 3-D in IMAX

 

A Bluffer’s Guide to Phantom Thread

Life is too short to watch the films nominated for the Oscars, but how else can one join in on conversations about the films nominated for the Oscars? Fear not, for here is your manual for being in the know.

Not having seen Phantom Thread should not stop you indulging in in-jokes about it, or making obscure references to scenes to cut out from the chatter people who also haven’t seen it, but haven’t read this piece either. There are three obscure things you simply must do. You must say, “Ah Fitzrovia, all shot on location there, as you recognised I’m sure” and then sigh wistfully, leaving your listeners discomfited at their lack of Old London chic. You must praise Brian Gleeson’s upper-crust English accent, and compare it to Day-Lewis’ cut-glass accent in 1985’s A Room with a View. You must impress upon people the extravagance of Paul Thomas Anderson hiring a 1950s red London double-decker bus for an entire day, only to drive it past a window, out of focus in the background of a shot, for two seconds; and then crush them by saying “Ah, yes, but it is indispensable. Phantom Thread isn’t just set in the 1950s, in that scene for those seconds it embodies the 1950s.”

Now then, quotable quotes; some of which are damned hard to work naturally into a conversation unless you find yourself in a kitchen or eating breakfast. If you do find yourself near some food, clatter the cutlery about, and make a noisy show of scraping your knife on toast; and then mutter “Entirely too much activity at breakfast” or “It’s like you rode a horse across the room” with a knowing wink. To completely dispel any doubt that you have no idea what you’re actually referencing then deadpan very seriously, “If his breakfast gets upset he finds it very hard to recover for the rest of the day.” To chide someone, shush them away, and then bark “The tea is going out, but the interruption is staying right here with me”. To exit in high dudgeon, say “There is an air of quiet death about this house, and I do not like how it smells”. If all this is too much to remember you could just offer to cook someone your famous mushroom omelette and then degenerate into helpless laughter.

So far so good, but you can layer your faux familiarity further. You should comment loudly on the omnipresence of Jonny Greenwood’s score and say that it puts one in mind of Shostakovich, but then of course the driving strings of Plainview’s theme in There Will Be Blood owed much to the 2^nd movement of Shostakovich’s 10^th Symphony, allegedly depicting Stalin’s ruthless energy. And then add in that a new note struck by Greenwood this time was the gorgeous piano cues, reminiscent of Debussy at his most gorgeous and minimal. As a feint you can feign ignorance if you think people are getting suspicious, note that you don’t fully (feign ignorance, never admit to ignorance) understand the purpose of the Clockwork Orange reference when Daniel Day-Lewis drives in the countryside at night. But then trump these sceptics by saying that this move’s ‘milkshake scene’ is surely the ‘asparagus scene’. Compare it to Pinter, compare it to Mamet, compare it to Le Carre as a joke because Day-Lewis raves about spies, and then seem to struggle to remember the words “You know that I like my asparagus cooked in butter and salt, yet you have cooked it in oil. Were the circumstances different I might be able to pretend to like it, but as they are I’m simply admiring my own gallantry for eating it in the way you prepared it.”

Now you are in the know. Go forth and bluster.

Any Other Business: Part XIV

What is one to do with thoughts that are too long for Twitter but too short for a proper blog post? Why round them up and turn them into a fourteenth portmanteau post of course!

Hair today, gone out of style tomorrow

2016 saw me asking everybody what the name of the haircut that everybody under the age of 25 was seemingly legally obliged to have was. Nobody seemed to know. Eventually I got sick of not knowing what it was called and decided to name it myself, the Snowflake; appropriate for the generation that was sporting it. Well it turns out my name was a damn sight better than the ‘official’ name, because this week a school in England banned the style and had to name it to shame it. They called it the ‘Meet me at McDonald’s’. … I think The Snowflake is an infinitely better name. The curious thing about the Snowflake is not that it is a ridiculous hairstyle, but that it is so obviously a ridiculous hairstyle. There are certain styles that date and certain styles that do not. Bell bottoms dated, shoulder pads dated. But if you want to laugh at a Sixties suit it would be hard to do, because you’d have to pin down what defined a 60s suit, and if you have to think about it you can’t laugh at it. So with hairstyles, the more outré the style the worse it will date. The 70s perms and 80s mullets dated far worse than the 90s curtains because it was possible to do the curtain with some subtlety. It is not possible to a Snowflake with subtlety. At 00:01 1/1/2020 the generation which has taken an unprecedented number of self-portraits will shudder at how ‘last decade’ their hair looks in all of them, but it is incredibly dated right now because of its omnipresence and absurdity, and everybody who doesn’t have it can see that fact. We’re just waiting for them to.

Seasonal Clothes for the wrong season

As we await with mingled amusement and trepidation the arrival of the ‘Beast from the East’, itself almost another piece on the deliberate decline of journalistic formality, it was interesting to see the huge amount of hats and scarves being sported at Lansdowne Road today. While the poor rugby players ran about in shorts the spectators huddled together for warmth. And it’s going to get colder, much colder… Yet if you walk into Dundrum Town Centre right now and mooch through Penneys or M & S you won’t find woolly hats and rugged scarves, oh no. You will find shorts, bikinis, polo shirts, and sun-hats. Because the clothes on sale in our shops have changed seasons, as always, well in advance of the actual weather. We are about to hit the coldest stretch of the winter and the clothes offered for sale at this moment will be wearable in high summer. I need a practising economist to explain to me how this makes sense – do people really buy their wardrobes that far in advance? – doesn’t anybody suddenly need a new scarf or a heavier hat in February or March when it snows after the shops have shifted seasons? – do the shops not take a commercial beating selling clothes that won’t be needed for another five months? What’s going on, in short, and why does this happen season after season?

Emergency services are the last refuge of the scoundrel

Cinema is the last bastion of advertisements, because you can’t skip them or escape them, and boy does that lead to some punishment. I have sat too many times now thru a PSA about how emergency services won’t be able to find you, you will die, you hear, die, if you don’t use your Eircode; because an ambulance will be fruitlessly roaming rural Ireland trying to find you. I will never use my Eircode. I don’t even know what it is. And I know that this choice will not lead to my death. If people were really dying because ambulances couldn’t find them, why didn’t they lead with that when Eircodes were first being proposed? The minister couldn’t support this assertion with any facts in 2016, and yet we still are suffering thru these preposterous claims! Eircodes are an unnecessary imposition, useful for and desired by businesses for the purpose of junkmail, nothing else. We don’t need postcodes because technology advanced beyond that point before we thought about introducing them. For heaven’s sake, look at the ridiculous addresses people write that somehow, despite eschewing Eircodes, still get delivered. Remember when Phantom and other pirates were forcibly taken off air in 2003? Remember how McDowell thundered his latest killjoy antics were necessary because those stations were interfering with emergency services? Remember how not long after mobile phone companies offered next generation services not interfering with emergency services? Yeah. Emergency services are the last refuge of the scoundrel.

Lady Bird

On an avalanche of hype Greta Gerwig’s second film as director finally arrives here, depicting the senior high school year of Christine ‘Lady Bird’ McPherson.

Sacramento native Christine (Saoirse Ronan), who insists on referring to herself by her new self-given given name of Lady Bird, is returning from scouting California colleges with her mother Marion (Laurie Metcalf) when she breaks her arm being melodramatic. Further misadventures involve falling out with her fat best friend Julie (Beanie Feldstein) and falling in with the rich, pretty, vacuous Jenna (Odeya Rush) while she goes from romancing charming co-star Danny (Lucas Hedges) to moody musician Kyle (Timothee Chalamet). She is determined to go to college on the East Coast despite money worries caused by her father Larry (Tracy Letts) being let go, and further family tension owing to her brother Miguel (Jordan Rodrigues) and his live-in girlfriend Shelly (Marielle Scott) working checkouts despite having Berkeley degrees because of the ‘jobless recovery’. This is 2002/3, you see. 

Among the baneful distortions of reality the Oscars cause is the unrealistic hype that can destroy some films, which can never live up to expectations like ‘the greatest screen performance of all time’ Daniel Day-Lewis supposedly gave in There Will Be Blood. Lady Bird is at 99% on Rotten Tomatoes among critics, it’s meant to be the feminist film of our times, the antidote to Trump’s America, take your pick of whatever hyperbole attaches to it online. But after Frances Ha and Mistress America this film is a disappointment. Sam Levy, who shot those two as well as Maggie’s Plan, casts a hazier light over proceedings here which matches Gerwig’s impressionistic portrait of a year with vignettes and montages. But too much of Lady Bird is populated by stock characters, a vague backdrop outside the only carefully etched relationship: mother-daughter.

It’s odd that, after Twilight (!), Gerwig sees fit to also rehash Gilmore Girls’ exemplar: the dull dependable boyfriend versus the edgy erratic boyfriend. More predictable is that, like Wish I Was Here or Middlesex, Lady Bird presents an artist’s abandoned religion as ancient nonsense/psychotic cult. In this case juvenile anti-Catholicism leads directly to a terrible misstep. Lady Bird is horrible to her best friend when she’s chorus and Julie lead in their school musical, she’s horrible to her brother when failing at college admission, and, in one of the most repellent scenes I’ve ever seen, especially for a ‘charming indie’, she’s horrible to anti-abortion speaker Casey (Bayne Gibby) whose very existence she dismisses as a joke. Lady Bird isn’t very funny, talented, smart, or nice. And as this film is steadfastly uninterested in developing anyone else that’s a problem…

‘Important’ films are rarely good, and sadly it seems Gerwig is being feted for making an important film, because this falls short of what she’s done in the past.

3/5

ADIFF: Paul Schrader recieves Volta

Acclaimed director and screenwriter Paul Schrader tonight receives the Audi Dublin International Film Festival’s prestigious Volta Award at the Irish Premiere of First Reformed.

Paul Schrader, renowned director of films such as Blue Collar, Hardcore, American Gigolo, Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters, The Comfort of Strangers, Light Sleeper, Patty Hearst, and Affliction among many others, and screenwriter of Taxi Driver and Raging Bull, tonight receives the Audi Dublin International Film Festival’s highest honour, the Volta Award, at the Irish Premiere of his new film First Reformed. The Volta Award celebrates the careers of individuals who have made a significant contribution to the world of film. Paul Schrader’s visit to ADIFF will include an in-depth Public Interview in the O’Reilly Theatre, broadcast live as an RTÉ Radio 1 Arena Special, and will introduce a series of screenings of films that have inspired him. Tickets are available to book now at www.diff.ie.

Gráinne Humphreys, Festival Director, said “I’m thrilled that the Audi Dublin International Film Festival will tonight bestow our highest honour, the Volta Award, to one of the great writer-directors at the Irish Premiere of his new film First Reformed. Paul Schrader started his career as one of the talented young filmmakers who were at the centre of an extraordinary renaissance of American cinema in the 1970s. Schrader has also had a remarkable career as a director and, as a critic, he’s a passionate advocate and interrogator of film culture.”

In First Reformed, ex-military chaplain Toller (Ethan Hawke) is tortured by the loss of the son he encouraged to enlist and struggles with his faith. A faith that’s challenged by befriending a radical environmentalist, Michael, and upon learning of his church’s complicity with unscrupulous corporations.

Previous winners of Audi Dublin International Film Festival’s Volta Award include Al Pacino, Julie Andrews, Danny DeVito, Daniel Day-Lewis, Joss Whedon, Brendan Gleeson, Angela Lansbury, Stanley Tucci, Stellan Skarsgård, Kristin Scott Thomas and Ennio Morricone. The Volta Award is named after Ireland’s first dedicated cinema, the Volta Picture Theatre on Mary Street in Dublin, which was opened on the 20^th December 1909 by an enterprising young novelist named James Joyce.

Schrader will be this year’s ADIFF Guest Curator, selecting and introducing three films that have inspired his own work as a filmmaker including Robert Bresson’s Pickpocket (1959), Yasujirō Ozu’s An Autumn Afternoon (1962), and Donald Cammell & Nicolas Roeg’s Performance (1970).

Tickets for the Public Interview and the Paul Schrader season are available now via the ADIFF Box Office (www.diff.ie or 01 687 7974). 

SCHEDULE Paul Schrader – ADIFF 2018 Guest Curator 

Thursday 22^nd February
18.00 (Cineworld) First Reformed (Irish Premiere with Q&A and Volta Award Presentation)

Friday 23^rd February 
14.00 (Lighthouse Cinema)  – Pickpocket (1959), introduced by Paul Schrader
16.00 (Lighthouse Cinema) – Performance (1970), introduced by Paul Schrader
18.45 (O’Reilly Theatre) – Paul Schrader Public Talk 

Saturday 24^th February
14.00 (Lighthouse Cinema) – An Autumn Afternoon (1962), introduced by Paul Schrader

ADIFF 2018: Nikolaj Coster-Waldau

Game of Thrones and Headhunters star Nikolaj Coster-Waldau is a late addition to the Audi Dublin International Film Festival 2018, presenting his new Nordic thriller 3 THINGS.

Danish star Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, best-known as Jaime Lannister in HBO’s Game of Thrones, will no doubt be raising an army of fans for the Gala screening of suspenseful Scandinavian thriller 3 THINGS at ADIFF 2018 in Cineworld at 6.30pm on Tuesday 27^th February. Tickets for 3 THINGS  have just gone on sale so snap them up fast at www.diff.ie!

ADIFF Festival Director Gráinne Humphreys said ‘With the start of the festival just hours away, I’m really excited to announce Game of Thrones stalwart Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, also known for his roles in Mama, Shotcaller, and A Second Chance, will be joining us for ADIFF 2018. Coster-Waldau’s new film, which he both stars in and of which he is an Executive Producer, 3 THINGS is a tense and claustrophobic thriller, packed with twists and turns and he shines as the master criminal who believes that he can charm his way out of any situation.’

3 THINGS takes place in a hotel where the police are negotiating the terms of a witness protection deal with the prime suspect of a robbery and an expert on explosives, Mikael (Nikolaj Coster-Waldau). In order to agree to the deal, Mikael demands three things from the police: that his former girlfriend is brought to him, that the police bring him the contents of a box he has stored, and that he is served butter chicken from his favourite restaurant. The police, under heavy time pressure to get him to testify the following day, agree.

3 Things joins ADIFF’s line-up of the world’s best films coming to Dublin 21^st Feb -4^th March, featuring special guests including Paul Schrader (First Reformed, Paul Schrader Public Talk), Vanessa Redgrave (Sea Sorrow, Public Talk & Volta Award Presentation); Joaquin Phoenix and Rooney Mara at a Gala Screening ofMary Magdalene.

ADIFF also includes the Immersive Stories Virtual Reality Conference & Exhibition bringing top names in VR to Dublin for a two-day exploration of the future of filmed entertainment.

Tickets for the Gala screening of 3 THINGS (with Nikolaj Coster-Waldau) at 6.30pm on Tuesday 27^th Feb at Cineworld are on sale now at the Box Office at 12 East Essex Street Temple Bar, by phone on 01 687 7974 or online at www.diff.ie.

Ecuador plots daring escape for Julian Assange

A drunken Ambassador who is shamelessly junketing in South Korea to support Ecuador’s sole entrant in the Winter Olympics has accidentally let slip an elaborate long-term plan to get Wikileaks founder Julian Assange out of their London embassy without being arrested by the Met, writes B. Bradley Bradlee from Pyeongchang.

Julian Assange met with Noam Chomsky to discuss the ethics of selling the movie rights to his forthcoming escape. Mr Chomsky insisted he be played only by philosopher Sam Harris.

Hugo de Bradias, speaking on condition of anonymity, revealed over his seventeenth tequila that the Ecuadorean embassy in London had had enough. “You think we really had a package delivered of mysterious white powder last week? Mystery white powder?! We were just, testing, hiccup, the response time of the Met. All our white powder comes from the Bolivian embassy’s chauffeur. Don’t print that. I’ll deeeny I shaid shit.” Ambassador de Bradias then flourished a piece of paper which was headed ‘Julian Assange Escape Plan’ ™. When pressed on why it was trademarked he mumbled about various copyright infringements, and ‘out-chutzpah’.

The document, which will no doubt be of especial interest to London’s Metropolitan Police, details an elaborate escape plan for Julian Assange – to take place on Hallowe’en night 2018. Ambassador de Bradias laughed so hard he fell off his barstool explaining that the final version of the plan had come together after Assange had gone to bed for the night and the embassy staff stayed up and watched recent episodes of Longmire and Blindspot after Olly Murs had caused chaos on Twitter by implying Oxford Street’s Selfridges had become Nakatomi Plaza with Murs himself as an all-singing all-dancing John McClane.

The plan involves a huge amount of simultaneous Tube platform altercations and minor vandalism on busy shopping streets to divert police resources all over London. The Ecuadorean embassy will be hosting a masked ball for some 10,000 partygoers, flooding the building and grounds. Assange will make a speech from his usual balcony, and get a coughing fit mid-tedious tirade. He will duck inside to get a glass of water, a light bulb will blow, but he will soldier on, giving the speech in half-light. But, and Ambassador de Bradias hooted with glee – this will not be the real Assange.

The real Assange will have disappeared when he went for his glass of water, replaced by a double. At this moment of subterfuge all 10,000 partygoers will flood out of the Ecuadorean embassy; and the mask that everyone is wearing will be revealed to be the face of – Julian Assange. The real Assange escapes because the Met are stretched too thin from all the mayhem to search so many civilians without probable cause. That at least is the plan. Obviously such a massive subterfuge, requiring so much materiel and so many personnel, and, strictly confidential, an outlay for a fake party and gunbattle in Harrods to inspire panicked tweets from an influential useful idiot like Kim Kardashian, would be hugely costly for troubled Ecuador.

When pressed on how the embassy would pay for all this Ambassador de Bradias tapped his nose and alluded to the presence in Pyeongchang of Kim Jong-Un’s diabolical sister, the Livia of North Korea. He was more forthcoming on the plan’s urgency, “This man, Assange, he must go. At first, yay, stick it to the Americans. Now, no. Now he pain in ass. BBC 2 make sitcom about him. What do we get? Nada. We try to interest Aaron Sorkin. Hey, come do research, make movie, Assange he is like Man who come to dinner, no? No. Sorkin, no.” When asked if he was not concerned that Assange, a digital Tom Paine, could end up being beaten with sticks about the kidneys in a floating black site not unlike the prison in Stallone/Schwarzenegger vehicle Escape Plan, the Ambassador gave me a withering look and called for more Ferrero Rocher.

B. Bradley Bradlee is fictional editor emeritus of The New York Times. He is currently covering the Winter Olympics for the German weekly Die Emmerich-Zeitung.

ADIFF: Immersive Stories

The final line-up and schedule has been released for the Immersive Stories: Virtual Reality Conference & Exhibition, which takes place at the Round Room in the Mansion House, Dublin on 24^th & 25^th February 2018 as part of the Audi Dublin International Film Festival.

The Immersive Stories Conference brings pioneering international and Irish thought leaders on Virtual and Augmented Reality to Dublin to chart new ways of storytelling on immersive platforms; developments that are already revolutionising the way we produce and consume entertainment.

The finalised line-up includes Resh Sidhu, Creative Director of Two Species VR; Ian Bowie, Experience Designer at the ILMxLAB and Lead Designer on STAR WARS: SECRETS OF THE EMPIRE; Curtis Hickman: Co-Founder and Chief Creative Officer of critically-acclaimed immersive entertainment company TheVOID; Sol Rogers, CEO & Founder, REWIND; Colum Slevin, Head of Experiences at Oculus VR; Andrew Melchior, Founder of 3^rd Space Agency and Executive Producer of Björk Digital; Davor Krvavac, Executive Creative Director at B-Reel London, (creators of the Gorrilaz AR app), and many more. The Immersive Stories Conference and Exhibition is curated by Eoghan Cunneen, a Senior Software Engineer at Lucasfilm Ltd.

Immersive Stories –  Exhibition: Running alongside the conference, this is a chance for both attendees and the general public to experience some of the best Virtual and Augmented Reality experiences including BladeRunner 2049: Memory Lab; a showcase of Gorrilaz’s multiplatform campaign that accompanied the Humanz album; Björk’s VR music video NotGet that was showcased at MoMA and Somerset House; The Guardian’s detective documentary Crime Scene; Fable Studio’s adaptation of Neil Gaiman’s Wolves in the Walls; and a selection of VR content from RTÉ.

Receiving its World Premiere, Pink Kong Studio’s short VR film Aurora, that was specially commissioned by ADIFF, Audi Ireland and Screen Training Ireland,  will be screened at the exhibition and will be accompanied by a case study at the conference.

Immersive Stories: Conference runs 9am-5pm across 24^th & 25^th Feb.
Immersive Stories: Exhibition runs at 6pm & 8pm on both 24^th & 25^th Feb.

Tickets for the Immersive Stories Conference (€95/€55 Concs, including exhibition & lunch) and tickets for the Exhibition (€10) available at www.diff.ie or 01 687 7974.

Look Back in Anger

The Gate advertise the hell out of their doing John Osborne’s seminal 1956 play, and then refuse on point of principle to actually do it.

Jimmy Porter (Ian Toner) is an angry young man, indeed he is the angry young man. He watched his father die from wounds sustained in the Spanish Civil War, and now despite his college education he finds himself manning a sweet stall down the market, unable to escape his working class roots in this post-war Midlands city despite his formidable, vituperative mental and linguistic agility. His rage against the establishment lashes against his upper-middle-class wife Alison (Clare Dunne), and to a lesser degree their Welsh Irish lodger Cliff (Lloyd Cooney). But when Jimmy eventually pushes Alison too far, a visit from her snobbish friend Helena (Vanessa Emme) sees Alison finally desert her stormy marriage. Only for the damndest thing to happen in the continuing war of contempt, class consciousness, and the desire for a worthy opponent between Jimmy and Helena…

While the audience is coming in the actors amble onto Paul O’Mahony’s curious canted stage of a realistic attic apartment, as a box within the exposed walls of the Gate’s backstage area. Emme reads the stage directions while the others take their places, and Dunne is reluctant to don the particular shirt specified. So far so Brecht, kind of. But then it continues, on and on and on, adding God knows how long to the endless 2 hour 45 minute running time, and for one purpose, so that Alison and Helena can eschew the stated directions, even when they’re emphatically repeated. The female characters, like Taylor Swift, would like to be excluded from this narrative. Which doesn’t do much for the narrative. Jimmy ends on his knees cooing a redemptive moment to nobody, as Alison refuses to follow Osborne’s directions.

I saw Kenneth Branagh star in Osborne’s 1957 play The Entertainer on the West End in 2016. Some sequences were melodramatic, but mostly it was very effective; startlingly so indeed because, despite being about the post-imperial crisis of confidence the Suez crisis amplified, one line drew gasps from the crowd because it seemed about Brexit. I expected director Annabelle Comyn would do something of the same here; pare down Osborne’s text like her lean 2015 Hedda Gabler, and bring out the impotent rage against an aloof establishment that would seem apposite to the Brexit moment. Instead I got leaden pacing, and a bad academic workshop exercise gone rogue. Give me a few days and I can furnish you with a version of Hamlet focused on his abusiveness towards Gertrude and Ophelia. But then we wouldn’t have Hamlet anymore would we?

Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? and The Homecoming would not exist without this play. When Toner leans into Michael Caine in his characterisation of Porter he unconsciously directs attention to how this play aided the explosion of the working class into British culture in the 1950s and 1960s. In short Osborne’s work deserves a modicum of respect. Instead gags and clues to Porter’s left-wing politics are clipped, so Toner is left in the bizarre, thankless and pointless position of playing a charismatic character who is purposefully being denied laughs or attraction by the disapproving staging, while Tom Lane’s sound design and Chahine Yavroyan’s harsh lighting is used to accentuate the most malicious of his rants, and Alison’s father is no-platformed (with his part being read from a script) because he sympathises with Jimmy’s frustration. Dunne kisses Cooney on the lips far too passionately to deny Osborne’s script its intent, while you suspect Cooney and Emme are being deliberately theatrical in their delivery as a further distancing measure. But why bother?

If you are so contemptuous of this play, and contempt comes washing off the stage in great waves, then for heaven’s sake why are you doing it? Who exactly is forcing Selina Cartmell and Annabelle Comyn to do this (sigh) problematic play? Why not do The Children’s Hour or A Taste of Honey or Oh! What a Lovely War or Our Country’s Good or Blasted or Enron or Posh or The Flick instead? It is odd to prioritise doing a ‘bad’ play by a male playwright over doing a good play by a female playwright. It is odder to ask people to pay 35e to see a play deliberately done poorly because the company wishes to complain about its place in the canon. The Gate is not doing itself any favours with this tedious approach to its commercial stock-in-trade, revivals.

This is easily the worst production I have ever seen at the Gate, and sadly it is also the worst show I have ever seen directed by Comyn.

1/5

Look Back in Anger continues its run at the Gate until the 24th of March.