Last night Steve and I piled
into the little local Windmill Theatre yet again for one of the latest fashion
for film/theatre goers that I find to be a generous gift to me in my own tiny
quirky world. This newish idea of showing a show directly form the West End or
a Grande Opera House somewhere in the world and allowing ordinary beings who
could not afford an outing to a top ranking performance such as these in their
wildest dreams. Theatre prices need saving up for these days and here at last is
a way of bringing the worlds greatest performers to small town arts buffs for a
fraction of the prices ‘Up West’. The cost of our seats for this production of
The Entertainer by John Osborne starring Kenneth Branagh was £14 each which is
a fraction of the price the people who were actually in the Garrick Theatre
last night had paid; for us the Windmill price of entry had doubled on the day
to day cost of a movie visit. Seemed like a win to me.
Looking around the audience
before the show started I saw that it was almost the same audience as the other
‘Direct From’ treats that we had been to see in our small seaside town of late.
So in fact I am incorrect saying that this is top theatre at bargain price for
the masses, the ordinary people. They don’t want to see this wonder; they would
rather pay double the cinema price to see some trash action movie/horror/sci-fi
in the Imax cinema. Yet it is a way for the cinema to make a little out of this
new fashion and that is fair enough by my book. These are diamonds for glass
prices.
Steve hated it from the
first moment but he doesn’t like Branagh anyway. For myself, I realised too
late to pop out to the car park, that I had left my distance glasses in the car
which left me squinting at the screen for the hour and sixteen minutes of the first
act that left me feeling slightly sickly. I thought Kenneth Branagh was
brilliant as Archie Rice but found the play itself seeming not so much retro
and dated and not yet classic, as sort of in the wrong time frame of reproduction
rather than antique. I can see that I run the risk or finding myself in the
same position as the small child who saw that the King did not have wonderful
new clothes but that he was in truth completely starkers! Nobody can make me
say I liked it because they think one should only heap praise great writers and
actors and all their works. It brought me no pleasure and certainly not
satisfaction at seeing their greatness.
I do find it fascinating the
professionals like Kenneth Branagh can cope with the learning of new specialist
skills for part such as this and I was more then a little distracted with his
nicely stylised dancing, that was soft and pretty with lovely head, body and
arm lines that cannot have been easy to get to grips with for a man who does
not have Fred Astaire’s frame. Good job Ken!
Today I found myself cruelly
comparing Kenneth Branagh and this production to the TV series of Goliath that
we have been watching on Amazon Prime of late and fearless of criticism of my intellectual
state and equally fearless of making this strange comparison, must admit that
the performance that gave the greatest pleasure was Billy Bob Thornton’s by a country
mile. Playing a drunken, washed up lawyer living in a motel room next door to
the closest bar who gets to grips with a really nasty case and against all odds
blah, blah, blah. The story of a very rich company getting away with evil doings
is heavy going. Billy Bob Thornton playing the down and not quite out, legal
eagle Billy McBride is utterly astonishing; gosh he looks awful in this part
and at least ten years older than he actually is though, I must add, still strangely
appealing. William Hurt also gets my admiration as the head of the rich law
firm who also looks awful and actually plays a really truly unbelievably awful power
crazy person.
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