25 February 2008

The Lover/The Collection by Harold Pinter

The Lover
Richard - Richard Coyle
Sarah - Gina McKee
John - Charlie Cox

The Collection
Harry - Timothy West
James - Richard Coyle
Stella - Gina McKee
Bill - Charlie Cox

Directed by Jamie Lloyd
Designed by Soutra Glimour

seen on the What's On Stage outing night to the Comedy Theatre with my sister. We were the most famous people in the audience! Seat F20


Gorgeous production. All the performances were outstanding and apparently this is young Charlie Cox's professional stage debut. He glided through like an old hand but clearly benefited for the combined experience of the rest of the cast.

The Lover is delicious in it's ambiguity and the actors carried that through so cleverly. The Collection was not quite as well formed IMO but still a treat to watch. The kitten was rubbish but the bongos from The Lover made up for that!

The after show Q & A with the cast was interesting but we were quite taken aback that the host seemed quite niaive about the craft. It's possible he was dumbing down for the audience but I'm not so sure. The only people in the audience who 'asked questions' were either asleep during the performance and the start of the Q & A or just turned up to listen to the sound of thier own voice grandstanding about some spurious connection the perceived they had with the play or the cast.