Tag: Paula Vogel

Categories Print Media Reviews Triumph of Love

The Triumph of Love at the Almeida – Review

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Helen McCrory is a Very Special Talent

Matt Wolf | September 6, 1999 | Variety

It takes a very special actress to burst the fey, densely plotted artifice that comes with the plays of Marivaux, but Helen McCrory is a very special talent indeed. Her amazing performance last year in “How I Learned to Drive” — a portrait of awakened sexuality both confident and fearful — transformed Paula Vogel’s play, and McCrory is scarcely less commanding amid the thicket of amorous intrigue that defines “The Triumph of Love.” Her surroundings on this occasion, however, aren’t nearly as happy as they were at the Donmar Warehouse last year, and even the staunchest of admirers may have trouble sitting through the (intermissionless) evening.

The problem is a production that is pitched somewhere between the Keystone Kops and “As You Like It” — McCrory and sidekick Tonia Chauvet would make a terrific Rosalind and Celia — of a play that is beloved by academics but is arid and even dull in performance, defying a decidedly eccentric supporting cast to bring it to tingling life.

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Categories How I Learned to Drive Reviews

How I Learned to Drive at the Donmar Warehouse – Review

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The dark-haired, throaty-voiced Helen McCrory is giving the female performance of the year so far in Paula Vogel’s “How I Learned to Drive”

Matt Wolf | July 13 , 1998 | Variety

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Mandatory Credit: Photo by Alastair Muir/Shutterstock (10639844a)
Helen McCrory. Kevin Whately
‘How I Learned to Drive, Play performed at the Donmar Theatre, London, UK 1998 – 07 May 2020

Those interested in tracing that thrilling moment when a promising young performer becomes a star should make tracks to the Donmar Warehouse, where the dark-haired, throaty-voiced Helen McCrory is giving the female performance of the year so far in Paula Vogel’s “How I Learned to Drive.” American visitors, of course, may feel they already know every backroad of Vogel’s Pulitzer Prize-winning play, especially now that it looks to be produced throughout the United States. But there’s no way to prepare for the impact of McCrory’s fierce take on a character who is a survivor, yes, but at an enormous psychological price. Abetted by a production from the Donmar’s new associate director, John Crowley, that is every bit her equal, McCrory grabs the wheel of this sorrowful, shimmering play, and — as Li’l Bit herself might say — floors it.

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