Mojon ensi-ilta 13.11.2013

Aikamoisia arvosteluja Mojo on saanut! Keskiviikkona siis press night. Yleensä nyt näytelmillä on vaan 2-5 ennakkonäytöstä Lontoossa, mutta Mojolla niitä on ollut jo muutaman viikon (19 kpl) :-O Älkää kysykö miksi.

Ja hei, lisää näitä upeita tuotantokuvia löytyy Geraint Lewisin Mojo-kansiosta.

BBC:n sivuilla tänään myös juttua/haastatteluja Mojosta:

Ben Whishaw, now known on screen as MI6's Q, says he accepted the role in part because it's the total opposite of what he's usually offered.

"Often I've played withdrawn or slightly shy characters. Earlier this year I played Peter Llewelyn Davies in the play Peter and Alice: it was a lovely part but I knew I needed to take on something utterly different afterwards. My character Baby seems extrovert and initially comic - but as the play proceeds he gets more ambiguous. So this was a chance to explore something different in myself.

"But in my performance I try not to categorise him as a psychopath. People need to recognise a real human being there. And Jez's slightly heightened dialogue actually helps that process. The language is so rich it seduces the audience."

Ben Whishaw’s performance as corpse-eyed, unhinged Baby dominates the production. As gorgeous as he is terrifying, he embodies that switchblade danger and pill-buzzed sensuality to perfection. He’s a character who’s so badly damaged you can hardly make him out for the jagged, mangled edges, and his scenes with Colin Morgan’s pitiable Skinny are the production’s best. 

Rickson’s direction in the later scenes is fantastic, however, and things improve immeasurably when the action moves downstairs into the bar of Ultz’s evocative, unflashy set. It is, at the end of the day, Baby’s play, and Rickson and Whishaw work in quick-step synch to deliver what must surely be one of the year’s best performances. 

4 tähteä Exeunt Magazineltä.

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There's also an impressive turn from Ben Whishaw as Baby, the son Ezra sexually abused. It is a role which requires a vulnerability mixed with psychopathic fury, and Whishaw’s superbly modulated performance does not disappoint.

Radio Times ei anna tähtiä... ja keskittyy jutussaan muutenkin Rupert Grintin roolin analysoimiseen.

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What's On Stage antaa viisi tähteä:

Ezra's son Baby, played with dangerous psychotic charge by an utterly mesmerising Ben Whishaw, has seen a Buick on the street outside.

Baby's at the centre of this mythic, mockingly male, highly comic and exhilaratingly violent story, a sort of self-conscious combined rip-off tribute to Pinter, Mamet and Tarantino with odd patter-style echoes of music hall and the loosening of old East End values in the new rock and roll and criminality. 

And it's painted in stark, unforgettable imagery: the opening, explosive strut of the pre-show Johnny (Tom Rhys Harries) in the rooms above the club, echoed in a weird jukebox jelly-limbed jive by Whishaw later on; the shock of a post-party punch up with broken furniture and a sabre-wielding Baby; the Beckettian bins wheeled onstage, dead Ezra divided; the delivery of a silver jacket glinting in the stage lights; the upside-down captive. 

Other surprises abound. I don't remember Tom Hollander in the original version singing as well, or as howlingly, as Whishaw; or Andy Serkis being quite as boobyish as Mays, who is as slippery and shocking as an electric eel. Stephen Warbeck's soundtrack is a sly and atmospheric decoration of the rock and roll centre, too, and there's the best gunshot effect since the splattered wallpaper in Christopher Hampton's The Philanthropist. Unmissable.

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Neljä tähteä antoi myös The Guardianin Michael Billington.

Ben Whishaw as Baby radiates a toxic stillness, yet never lets you forget that the character is a victim of paternal abuse.

You won't find much better ensemble acting than this, nor a play that so effectively punctures the pretensions of a hermetic gangland culture.

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Pakko laittaa myös Evening Standardin kritiikkilinkki. Silti vain 3 tähteä.

Hehkutus alkaa jo ingressissä: The dominant member of the cast is the superb Ben Whishaw, but Rupert Grint, making his stage debut, holds his own in this revival of Jez Butterworth’s first play.

The dominant member of the cast is the superb Ben Whishaw, coolly sensual as vain and dangerous Baby, a borderline psychopath. Rupert Grint, making his stage debut, holds his own as drug-addled fool Sweets. As his pal Potts, Daniel Mays delivers a skilful and exuberant performance that’s full of quirks and twitches, while Colin Morgan impresses as the hapless Skinny. And Brendan Coyle stamps his authority on Mickey, the one older figure in a world that seems infatuated with youth.

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Telegraphilta myös ne 4 tähteä.

Now Mojo is back, once again directed by Ian Rickson, and the show looks set to become a smash hit all over again, with a cast that includes Rupert Grint of Harry Potter fame in his stage debut, the mesmerising Ben Whishaw, and Daniel Mays, an actor of compelling virtuosity who is at the top of his game here. 

It is the combination of strong plotting and zinging dialogue that makes this play so addictive and disconcerting. And as well as the stunning turn from Mays and Grint, whose initial jubilation gives way to mounting terror, there is a superb performance from Whishaw, who brings a drop-dead arrogance and a chilling touch of the psycho to the late club-owner’s abused son, Baby. Colin Morgan is both wonderfully funny and desperately poignant as the club’s dim-witted cloakroom attendant, while Brendan Coyle, fresh from Downton Abbey, plays a devious heavy with terrifying authority. 

You might complain that this is a play up to its ears in debt to other writers, most notably Pinter and Tarantino, and that it lacks anything resembling a human heart. But boy is it fun in its impudent panache.

 

Mua muuten pikkasen naurattaa tää, mitä Time Out kirjoittaa:

Yes, if you’ve ever fantasised about TV’s Merlin, Ron Weasley and ‘Q’ from James Bond going mental with knives, guns and speed pills then this is the show for you. But Ian Rickson’s subtle West End production has a lot more to offer than thrills for the fangirls (and boys).

But the night belongs to Ben Whishaw. As abused young Baby, whose dead dad ‘did the funny on him’, he channels all the ambiguous sexual menace of the quiffs-and-blades era. His feline progress from reckless joker to gangster is completely riveting – and his singing bodes well for that forthcoming Freddie Mercury movie. Like its heroes, Butterworth’s play sometimes has more mouth than trousers. But it makes up for it in thrills and spills: this is as sharp as the West End gets.


Ensi-iltakuva Dan Wooller, muut Geraint Lewis