Mojo kriittikki parhaasta päästä

Arvostettu talouslehti Financial Times noteeraa myöskin Mojon - ja ennenkaikkea Ben Whishaw'n esityksen! 4 tähteä.

The play is overcooked in places, stalling under the weight of banter. But it is superbly delivered. Ben Whishaw is outstanding as Baby, giving a mesmerising, dangerously unpredictable performance. Daniel Mays makes a sweaty, motor-mouthed Potts with Rupert Grint as his panicky sidekick; Colin Morgan is a wiry, jumpy Skinny and Brendan Coyle is a brooding presence as Mickey. Meanwhile Tom Rhys Harries, as Silver Johnny, gamely brings a new meaning to hanging out in Soho.

(lihavointi ihan oma!)

Valokuvan copyright Geraint Lewis

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"Often I've played withdrawn or slightly shy characters.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

Ekat Macbeth promokuvat

Eilen julkaistiin ekat varsinaiset promokuvat Branaghin tähdittämästä Macbethistä, josta eilen siis nähtiin eka esityskin. Muuta ei ole näkynytkään kuin kehuja. Ja näyttää hienolta. huh!! Millään malttaisi odottaa paria viikkoa vielä.

Kuvat on Johan Perssonin käsialaa, mies joka ottaa todella hienoja teatteri(promo)kuvia.

Lisäksi BBC on ystävällisesti koostanut ekoista kriitikeistä pienen yhteenvedon. Ei muuta kun ylistystä, joka rintamalta! Esitykset pidetään vanhassa kirkossa ja luvassa on paljon mutaa!

Guardianin arvostelussa Michael Billington kehuu Branaghin näyttelijäntaitoja:

The production has many fine qualities as well as one or two dubious ones. With the audience seated on two sides of a tunnel-like, traverse stage, it has the great virtue of immediacy: we seem to be in the thick of the rain-soaked, mud-spattered opening battles. Cutting short all intermission also gives the action a hurtling momentum.

But what I admire about Branagh is that he is not afraid to do a spot of old-fashioned acting. The highest compliment I can pay him is that at times he evoked golden memories of Olivier in the role.

But this is an exciting production that shows why Branagh is such a fine Shakespearean actor. He can do the soaring vocal cries but he is also sensitive to the minutiae of language.
When he asks the doctor "Cans't thou not minister to a mind diseased?" he inserts a pause after the first syllable of the last word as if to prove that Macbeth's own problem is one of "dis-ease" and that he has never known the joys of peace and security. That's real acting.

Othello kritiikkejä

Arvostelut on olleet aika ylistäviä, eikä ihmekään...

Erityisesti Rory Kinnear saa ylistystä! Vai mitä sanotte tästä TimeOutin kritiikistä:

...but balding, babyfaced Rory Kinnear is apparently too normal-looking for the stardom that his talents surely deserve. Which is alright by me: every time he appears on stage is a bonus, and the NT’s much anticipated ‘Othello’ is no exception.

But it is Kinnear as Othello’s nemesis Iago who steals the show in Hytner’s modern dress military production, where most of the action takes place in the middle of the night, under disorientating arc lights or inside the sterile pre-fab army command buildings of Vicki Mortimer’s set.

 

"Mitä, minäkö?" ihmettelee Jago

Iago is often regarded as Shakespeare’s greatest villain, a trusted subordinate of Othello’s who wrecks his general’s life and marriage because he's been passed over for promotion. Usually he’s portrayed as unhinged; but Kinnear presents a far more unnerving interpretation.

His Iago is a blokey everyman whose demolition of his boss’s psyche via a drip feed of lies and innuendo seems to be more a response to the exaggerated tensions and chronic boredom of life in the field than any real psychosis. He is, in a very real sense, a workplace bully. The most chilling thing about his wisecracking, estuary-accented villain is how ordinary he is: at the play’s climax, there is a terrifying look of incomprehension on Kinnear’s face, as if he cannot fathom the devastation he has wrought, or what he got out of it.


Ja kyllä the Guardian kehui kanssa:

It has happened before, with Ian McKellen and Antony Sher: once you place Iago in a sharply defined military context you make him the play's pivot. And Rory Kinnear here gives a stunning study of a sociopath whose destructive tendencies have hitherto been held in check only by soldierly discipline.

It's a performance full of revealing moments: the sudden false smile Kinnear flashes at a colleague to check his inner rage, and the spontaneous flush of anger when Cassio patronisingly says to Desdemona: "You may relish him more in the soldier than in the scholar". But Kinnear gives us more than the outwardly blunt, inwardly resentful NCO: this Iago burns with a contempt for the human race and for the beauty in other men's lives, which he knows he can never possess.

Hamlet / (Old Vic) V&A Archive 7.3.2013

 

Tämä Trevor Nunnin ohjaama Hamlet Old Vic teatteriin oli ihan säkenöivän hieno. Tallennettu 21.7.2004 esityksessä. Ehkä paras Hamlet mitä olen koskaan nähnyt.  

Ben Whishaw on huikea, aivan mielettömän upea. 23-vuotiaana ja eka iso rooli (se eka rooli RADAsta valmistumisen jälkeen oli NT:n His Dark Materials, missä oli ne 2 pienehköä osaa).

Mistäköhän mä edes oikein aloittaisin... Mulla on paljon muistiinpanoja tästä, monta sivua muistikirjassa.

Versio on hyvin moderni, eli kaikilla on sellaiset 80-luvun tyyliset juppivaatteet päällä. Alussa kun on hautajaiset/häät niin kaikilla on valkoista päällä. Sitten kuvaan astuu Hamlet, kauhea kapinoiva teini jolla on musta pipo ja mustat vaatteet ja joka on laiha ja murjottava teinikapinallinen. Miten Whishaw osaakin murjottaa ja koko kropalla olla angstinen ja hieman ehkä krapulainenkin teini :-) Hirveän iso kontrasti vaaleisiin häävaatteisiin pukeutuneen muun seurueen kanssa. Hamlet nyppii paitaa ja pipoa ja vääntelehtii ja on hyvin epävarma ja räkä valuu...

Ofelialla (Samantha Whittaker) on koulupuku päällä ja muutenkin näyttää tosi nuorelta. Lopussa kun Ofelia sekoaa, niin näyttelee erinomaisesti. Rory Kinnear on hyvä ja hauska Laertes. Tykkäsin myös Nick Jonesin Poloniuksen tulkinnasta. Kohtaus missä Hamlet puhuu Poloniuksen kanssa ja Hamlet lukee samalla kirjaa, hulluna = tukka sekaisin, rähjäiset vaatteet, paita napitettu miten sattuu...

Se kohtaus missä Hamlet jättää Ofelian on aivan loistava! "Get thee to the nunnery". Aivan maaninen ja huikea. Ja se kohtaus missä Hamlet antaa ohjeita näyttelijäseurueelle, mielettömän upea! Hamletin maanisuus ja hulluus näkyy hyvin.

Hamletin tanssikohtaus kun Claudius lähtee katsomasta näytelmää (olen kirjoittanut muistiinpanoihini "Voi elämä miten hyvä"). Ja sitten Hamletin ja äitinsä välinen kohtaus, hyvin intensiivinen. BW on tosi ketterä ja notkea!

Yksi parhaita kohtauksia on se legendaarinen "to be or not to be" kohtaus. Hamlet istuu penkillä vesipullon, pilleripurkin ja linkkarin kanssa. Ottaa pillerin käteensä "to die, to sleep" -kohdassa ja sitten linkkarin. Eli ei pääkalloa lainkaan :-) Kun monologi loppuu niin laittaa pillerit takaisin purkkiin ja taittaa linkkarin pois. Oli tosi vakuuttavasti tehty.

Haudankaivajakohtauksessa saadaan vihdoin se pääkallokin kehiin, kun Hamlet puhuu Yorickin kallolle. Hamlet tämänkin kohtauksen varastaa täysin (päällään vaalean sininen kauluspaita, harmaat housut, harmaa pitkä takki, tukka sliipattuna taakse ja mustat kumitossut).

Ofelian hautajaisissa Laertes ja Ofelia tappelee haudassa, sitten halaavat. Juovat Eviania (tuotesijoittelua?). Hamletin hieno puhe ennen kaksintaistelua! Kaksintaistelu perinteisen pitkä ja näyttävä ja hienosti toteutettu taistelukoreografia. Hamlet kuolee hitaasti, mutta helvetin tyylikkäästi, Horation syliin.

Eka näytös oli 1,5 h pitkä ja toinen 2 tuntia. Olihan se pitkä, mutta kertaakaan ei tullut mieleen että hohhoijaa, voiskohan tätä lyhentää jostain. Esityksen jälkeen selailin lehtileikkeitä, mutta sitten aika loppui kesken... Pitää mennä takaisin vielä lukemaan niitä kritiikkejäkin, ja haluan nähdä esityksenkin vielä uudelleen.

Hah, tässä tuo ylläoleva Evening Standardin juttu vuodelta 2004:

Ben Whishaw is adamant. "I'm not anybody," he says. "I'm not a name. No one's coming to see Ben Whishaw 'do' Hamlet." The 23-year-old star of Trevor Nunn's production of the Danish play at the Old Vic was speaking, of course, before his triumph was declared on yesterday's front pages.  

In the first reviews the Standard's Nicholas de Jongh praised the previously unknown Whishaw's "magical impact" and "raw passion", while Charles Spencer of The Daily Telegraph said the young actor had "spectacularly earned his place" in the line-up of Old Vic Hamlets, alongside Gielgud, Olivier, Burton and O'Toole. 

When I tell him that his performance made the most sense I've ever seen of Hamlet's selfishness, he is taken aback. His spidery fingers fight a losing battle with a thicket-y forelock. "I'm not always aware of that sort of thing, perhaps because I'm still fairly close to that age," he says. "I still look at it from the inside." 

"I thought I was just going up for a small-ish part, Osric or something," Whishaw says. "But by the end of the first audition I'd picked up that Trevor might be thinking of me as Hamlet. I found that audition kind of gruelling and emotionally tough. I felt quite exposed. I phoned a friend and said I didn't think I could do the part if I were offered it." 

His expressive lips spread into a wide grin. "Of course, my friend just said, 'Shut up'." 

Kuvat on otettu käsiohjelmasta ja lehtileikkeistä, niin paitsi toi kuva mun katselupisteestä :-)

Näitä lehtileikkeitä ja -juttuja on hauska lukea nyt 2013, kun esityksestä on kulunut 9 vuotta ja nyt Whishaw on kaikkien tuntema näyttelijä.

The Curious Incident - kriitikoiden suosikki

Maaliskuussa ensi-illan Lontoon West Endillä sai NT:n loistonäytelmä The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, joka siis siirtyi pieneltä Cottesloe-näyttämöltä Apollo Theatreen. Osa näyttelijöistä vaihtui samaan syssyyn, eli mm. Una Stubbs jäi pois (harmi!).

Arvostelut myös Apollon versiosta ovat olleet henkeäsalpaavia! Tässä muutama näyte:

London Evening Standard (tai lähinä kriitikko Henry Hitchings) kehuu Lukea Treadaway:tä vuolaasti 13.3. peräti viiden tähden arvoisesti:

Treadaway was tremendous when the show premiered at the National Theatre in August, and he is now even better. Marianne Elliott’s production, which then felt dazzlingly inventive, has been rejigged to fit a larger West End space with different sightlines. No longer staged in the round, it makes a freshly powerful impression.

Ja:

The Curious Incident is a beautiful, eloquent show about the wonders of a life that initially seems hopelessly constrained. And Treadaway is thrillingly good: I don’t think there’s a better performance right now on the London stage.

Ei se 13.3. ilmestynyt Metrokaan kovin paljoa hauku (4 tähteä):

Luke Treadaway reprises his role as Christopher. In the book, the character can seduce you with his relentlessly logical thought processes. Here,  Treadaway’s performance works because he makes no concessions towards being liked. A fiddling mass of tics, groans and flailing anger, he speaks imperiously and with a heavy dose of petulance, completely unable to see beyond his own needs – and, of course, utterly unrepentant about it.

Teatterilippuja myyvä Last Minute Theatre Tickets-blogi kehuu myös:

Everybody can recognise something of themselves in him, and whilst the supremely talented Luke Treadwell’s Christopher is too belligerent and aloof to be quite likeable, he is extraordinarily believable and sympathetic.

Bunny Christie’s dramatically linear stage design is brilliantly evocative of Christopher’s thought patterns and mathematical rationale, even if it sits rather oddly against the gilded opulence of the Apollo; after all it was designed for The National and I imagine it fitted perfectly well there. Together with Paule Constable’s lighting, Fin Ross’s video, Adrian Sutton’s music and beautifully fluid movement direction by Frantic Assembly we felt as though we were actually in Christopher’s head, feeling his confusion, fear and isolation. The terrifying moment when he arrives in the hustle and bustle of London is particularly effective, almost taking your breath away, as is the dreamlike portrayal of Christopher contemplating the stars. Director Marianne Elliott steers her frenetic and volatile production safely through the rocks; in her hands every word, every movement feels as though it is landing in exactly the right place.

Googlettamalla löytyy tukuttain lisää arvosteluja, selkeästi yksi vuoden teatteritapauksista Lontoossa. Oli sitä toki jo viime vuonna kun sai alunperin ensi-iltansa.

Ja kehui sitä toki The Telegraphkin, joka antoi esitykselle 5 tähteä!

Still, there is, as Keats used to say, a beauty in truth, and it shines out in everything that Luke Treadaway’s Christopher Boone has to say in The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time. “I can’t tell lies,” the lad says, almost apologetically, as if it were a curse. He is very precise – he’s “15 years, three months and three days old” – and always compulsively logical. 

A lot of actors impress, but precious few can make an audience care about them. Treadaway, however, manages this to devastating effect. 



(Kuvat Apollon harjoituksista, Luke lentää!)

Macbethin ensi-iltabileet

Pian mä tän näenkin (eli 9.3.), mutta ensi-ilta oli 22.2. ja ekat kritiikit on olleet yhtä ylistystä...

The Guardian kehuu skottilaisuudella, mikä tietenkin on hyvin sopivaa... :-)

Be ready, too, for an excellent and harrowing performance from McAvoy. His Macbeth is possessed with manic brutality. We often glimpse, unnervingly, the whites of his eyes and the sudden blaze of his smile. He is a man of action whose words go awol: he chokes on "amen" and the names of the men he has killed. After murdering Duncan, he and his wife wear sleeves of blood up to their elbows.

Neljää tähteä suurin osa lehdistä on antanut... katotaan kohta mikä oli oma mielipide. Kaverini Marie kehui kanssa, kun kävi viime viikolla ennakossa katsomassa. Odotan kovasti...

James McAvoy ihanassa punaisessa parrassa 

sekä vaimonsa Anne-Marie Duff ensi-iltabileissä eilen

Lisää Frankenstein kritiikkejä

Aika monessa aikakauslehdessä on nyt ollut Kansallisteatterin Frankenstein-arvio, mutta tässä muutama sanomalehtikriitiikki. Mainontaa on myös aikalailla... Hyvä juttu.

Keskisuomalainen ja kriitikko Anu Puska

blogisti Valonkuvaaja
 
Turun Sanomat ja kriitikko Ilona Kangas

Tiedonantaja ja kriitikko Helena Häme

Satakunnan Kansa ja kriitikko Matti Linnavuori

Skenet-blogissa kriitikko Martti Mäkelä

HS:n Frankenstein arvio

Tänään Hesarissa Suna Vuoren kritiikki Frankensteinista.

Kansallisteatterin esitys näyttää ja kuulostaa sangen komealta.

Tyylikäs puvustus, hienovarainen mutta vaikuttava valosuunnittelu, näyttämöllä soivat urkupillit, tuli, jää ja pommeina putoilevat kirjat sekä sykähdyttävät näyttämökuvat luomiskertomusta kuvaavine fondeineen, kirkon holveineen ja palavine pienoismalleineen ovat sellaista visuaalista teatteria, jota ei turhan usein Suomessa nähdä.

Tapani Rinteen musiikki ja Esa Mattilan äänisuunnittelu maalaavat yhtä aikaa tiheää mutta hengittävää maisemaa, jossa lyhyet kohtaukset etenevät elokuvamaisesti virraten, alkuun kokonaan ilman sanoja. Kuvat puhuvat.