Rosmersholm at the Almeida – Review

On May 23, 2008April 30, 2021 By helenistic No Comments

Spellbinding Performances

by Michael Billington | May 23, 2008 | The Guardian

The Ibsen boom continues. And it is a measure of our theatre’s confidence in dealing with the old Norwegian ironist that even a dark, difficult late play like this can be bathed, both in Anthony Page’s production and Mike Poulton’s new translation, in such physical and psychological light.

More than most of Ibsen’s plays, this one is about the weight of the past. Rosmer, a former pastor, is oppressed by a whole series of factors: his conservative ancestry, guilt over his wife’s suicide and loss of religious faith. But, aided by his companion, Rebecca West, he believes he can set out on a new path of missionary idealism. This, however, turns out to be a fond dream as he alienates his allies, becomes a subject of scandal, and as Rebecca turns out to be haunted by incestuous demons.

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TV Review: Messiah – The Harrowing

On September 3, 2005May 18, 2021 By helenistic No Comments

Helen McCrory and Maxine Peake help elevate Messiah – The Harrowing to arguably series’ devastatingly effective high point

by Ian | September 3, 2005 | thereoughttobeclowns

“See beyond the victim, see the killer”

The first series of Messiah is certainly one of the best, setting the wheels in motion for an effective crime series, but I’d argue that it is the fourth instalment Messiah – The Harrowing that is the best of them all. The arrival of a new writer – Terry Cafolla – releases the show from the baggage of its legacy which seemed to weigh the last series one and produces something that is really, well, harrowing.

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As You Like It Print Media Reviews

As You Like It at Wyndham’s Theatre – Review

On June 22, 2005April 30, 2021 By helenistic No Comments

Call off the phones : Sienna Miller as Celia and Helen McCrory as Rosalind in As You Like It

Michael Billington | June 22, 2005 | The Guardian

Hymen sings of “most strange events” and this is certainly one of them: a piece of star-driven, West End Shakespeare full of whimsical absurdities and coarse acting. Yet I can forgive almost everything for the sake of a Rosalind as vibrant and compelling as Helen McCrory.

But let’s start with the bad news. David Lan has chosen to set the action in France in the 1940s. This means the show starts with accordions and berets, though mercifully without an onion-seller on a bicycle. Rosalind and Celia (Sienna Miller) exchange court news while sitting in the kind of cafe supposedly frequented by Jean-Paul Sartre. And, when the action moves to the country, we discover the banished Duke has gone into exile with a four-strong musical combo as if he were on leave from the Café de Paris rather than a political refugee.

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Old Times Reviews

Old Times at the Donmar Warehouse – Review

On October 10, 2004May 13, 2021 By helenistic No Comments

A Sleek and Assured Revival

by Paul Taylor | October 10, 2004 | The Independent

It’s a fact seldom remarked on that the two women are never seen alone together in Harold Pinter’s 1971 three-hander Old Times. Why? Is it because an all-female conversation would blow the whole brilliant, artificial construction to bits? Would any private talk between them give the lie to the exaggeration in the play’s fundamental idea: that the past can be reinvented at will according to the needs of the present moment and that “memories” are merely weapons in a deadly battle over current contested territory?

The female characters interact with each other entirely under the eyes of Deeley, a film-maker who is forced into a duel over possession of his wife, Kate, when her old friend Anna, with whom she once shared a flat in London, visits them at their farmhouse near the sea. If the liberating twist is that Kate eventually sees off both claimants, the play uses the women as agents in a disturbing study of male insecurity, and of the savage operations of retrospective jealousy.

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Old Times Reviews

Old Times at the Donmar Warehouse – Review

On July 18, 2004May 13, 2021 By helenistic No Comments

That rare performer who can simultaneously play intelligence and desire, a woman at once on the prowl and gently pained, McCrory turns out to be the Harold Pinter interpreter of one’s dreams.

by Matt Wolf | July 18, 2004 | Variety

Mandatory Credit: Photo by Alastair Muir/Shutterstock (510620hd)
‘Old Times’ play at The Donmar Warehouse – Helen McCrory (Anna)
VARIOUS

It takes a real gift to make the mere question “Do you?” at once sexy, funny and mysterious, but it long ago became clear that Helen McCrory is no mere actress. That rare performer who can simultaneously play intelligence and desire, a woman at once on the prowl and gently pained, McCrory turns out to be the Harold Pinter interpreter of one’s dreams. Those same qualities were on show, triumphantly, in the Donmar’s “How I Learned to Drive” and in McCrory’s Yelena two years ago in “Uncle Vanya,” directed by Sam Mendes. And they prove crucial to a play like Pinter’s 1971 “Old Times,” which turns on issues of absence, abandonment and loss, and whether a supremely malleable drama’s two female characters might in fact be one.

On the other hand, “in fact” isn’t a phrase readily applied to a text whose ellipses shift from production to production, along with a sense of where its erotic pivot lies. In the last London “Old Times,” on the West End in 1995, Julie Christie brought a sphinx like command to the crucial role of Kate, the wife who is being fought over by her filmmaker husband, Deeley, and her best friend from 20 years before, Anna.

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