helenistic, Author at Helen McCrory

In a Little World of Our Own at the Donmar Warehouse – Review

On March 3, 1998May 14, 2021 By helenistic No Comments

A Protestant Northern Ireland Family Drama

by David Benedict | March 3, 1998 | The Independent

When a hardman in a play tells another character to stop worrying because he’ll take care of it, you know he’s in for a nasty surprise. Even if you know nothing about it before taking your seat at Gary Mitchell’s In a little World of Our Own, it doesn’t take long to realise what’s afoot. It may come on like a Protestant Northern Ireland family drama but it quickly becomes clear that what we’re really watching is a whodunnit.

Ray (cold and threatening Stuart Graham) has a well-founded reputation for violence off-set by his fierce concern for his mentally retarded kid brother Richard. Gordon, the third brother, is engaged to devout Deborah and together they’re on the brink of buying a house in which they can look after Richard, whose crush on the 15-year-old daughter of Ray’s rival threatens to land everyone in trouble. Ray returns from taking Richard to a party to meet her, but their stories don’t match, suspicions are aroused,and cover-ups, threats and reprisals rear their ugly heads.

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In a Little World of Our Own Interviews Print Media Stand and Deliver

Theatre: In a World of Whose Own?

On March 3, 1998May 8, 2021 By helenistic No Comments

She is an actress with a chameleon-like ability to swap accents, he is a writer whose work is anchored in his native Belfast. Together, they are on stage at the Donmar

by Jasper Rees | March 3, 1998 | The Independent

ACTORS fall into two broad categories: those who play themselves and those who play other people. One type gets recognised in the street rather more than the other. Last year, while Lynda La Plante’s Trial and Retribution was being screened, Helen McCrory found herself dragged into a pub debate about the moral issues thrown up by the series. “I assumed arrogantly that this conversation had been sparked off by the fact that they knew who I was. They asked me my opinion and I realised after about 10 minutes they had no idea.”

You can see why. McCrory is currently at the Donmar in In a Little World of Our Own, a new play by Gary Mitchell in which she puts on an Ulster accent to play a born-again Christian in the heart of Protestant Belfast. In Stand and Deliver, a BBC film by Les Blair, she plays a feckless English photographer in Glasgow. In The James Gang, a road movie directed by Mike Barker, she’s a Scot who fetches up in Wales. The Donmar play opens the theatre’s annual “Four Corners” season: it sounds as if McCrory could play all four corners herself.

The Fragile Heart Video

Video: The Fragile Heart

On November 6, 1996May 7, 2021 By helenistic No Comments

Official Trailer and Episodes 1-3

by Helenistic | You Tube / Wikipedia | November 6, 1996

The Fragile Heart is a BAFTA award-winning British medical drama television series created by Paula Milne and first aired on Channel 4 from 6 to 20 November 1996. The series was nominated for the Royal Television Society award for Best Drama Serial.

Helen McCrory received a nomination for Actress of the Year by London’s Film Critics Circle with her role in The Fragile Heart.

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Les Enfants Du Paradis

Les Enfants Du Paradis at the Barbican – Review

On February 11, 1996April 30, 2021 By helenistic No Comments

McCrory is throatily confident as Garance

by Matt Wolf | February 11, 1996 | Variety

Marcel Carne’s great 1945 film “Les Enfants du Paradis” is a hymn to actors, to the luxuriant power of art, and to France itself, whose spirit — the film was made during the German Occupation — remains as unvanquished as that of the simultaneously pervasive and elusive Garance, the courtesan who best embodies it. Simon Callow’s stage adaptation for the Royal Shakespeare Company is about a revolve, and a creaky one at that. Ten minutes in, and your heart sinks. Four hours later, you revolve out of the theater, dizzy and happy to get some air.

Robin Don’s calamitous turntable design is perhaps the most obvious failing of an enterprise that seems noble and foolish in equal measure. Callow is by no means the first to see in Jacques Prevert’s script the possibility of a stage epic, and what better troupe to attempt such a task than the RSC, which proved undaunted by heftier sources; Dickens and Hugo? In our time of abased emotion, why not restore to the theater the heightened sentiment that “Les Enfants” celebrates, folded into a narrative often compared to “Gone With the Wind”?

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Macbeth Print Media Reviews

Macbeth at Tricycle Theatre – Review

On October 31, 1995May 9, 2021 By helenistic No Comments

A Round Up of Reviews

by BBAShakespeare.co.uk | 1995

PRINCIPAL CAST: Tom Chadbon (Duncan); Ewen Cummins (Banquo); Lennie James (Macbeth); John Keegan (Macduff); Helen McCrory (Lady Macbeth).

This production ran from 20 October – 18 November 1995.

“Nicholas Kent’s production of a play that could hardly be better suited to the Tricycle’s intimate auditorium is pacy and racy but patchily acted….Christine Marfleet’s set of curved, beaten metal panels that gleam in the firelight suggest both the distant path but also some future state, and a canny use of percussion adds to the atmosphere….But too many of the actors are ill at ease with the verse. Not so Helen McCrory’s Lady Macbeth, whose performance is in a different league to the rest – passionate, focused and artfully spoken. A great classical career beckons.” ~ Lyn Gardner, The Guardian, 1 November 1995

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