Monthly Archives: February 2015


50 Word Reviews: 3 Winters, Bull and Charles III

50 word reviewsWe like theatre. We like words. So here are words (50 or fewer to be exact) about theatre we have seen recently. (Next time we’ll publish them before the shows concerned close and everything).

 

3 Winters (Written by Tena Štivičić, National Theatre)

Ambitious (if uneven) mix of family drama and national politics that melds a great collection of roles for women with a wooshy set and several heart-pumping speeches about communism. Continues National’s trend of under-edited new writing, but important and moving on a history I feel ashamed for knowing little about.

(Corinne)

 

King Charles III (Written by Mike Bartlett, Almeida @ Wyndhams)

Impressively and unnoticeably written in verse, King Charles III is too predictable in the first half and not challenging enough in the second. Easy laughs abound and much fun is to be had here but flimsy cause and effect and characters mean it feels underwritten. Good populist fun.

(Charlie)

 

Bull (Written by Mike Bartlett, Young Vic)

Slick dialogue, direction and acting doesn’t mask the fact that in scale, imagination and scope Bull is disappointingly slight. Casually, maybe facetiously, bleak (with no possibility for change) I was never going to get on with Bull: humanity is both more terrible and more beautiful than anything on offer here.

(Corinne)

 

(NB: We actually like Mike Bartlett’s work A LOT, but – more messy, complicated, problematic, joyous stuff like Earthquakes in London and 13 please.)


Adventures in planning

Post It NotesSince the beginning of 2014 we’ve been busy doing lots of stuff that I would file under the category of “Things You Don’t Realise You’ll Have To Do When You Decide To Start A Theatre Company”. There’s some stuff that I should have reasonably envisaged (like sorting copy and promotional images and checking contracts and re-designing the website), some stuff that, had I thought about it for a few minutes, I could have thought about existing in some hazy ill-defined way (like funding applications and pitches and commission deadlines) and then there is the stuff that, even when I’m sitting in the meeting talking about them, I have little grasp of the fact that our chosen career path involves us having to do them (company accounts and branding and business plans and, possibly most terrifyingly of all, ORGANISATIONAL DEVELOPMENT).

What all of this stuff has forced us to do, however, is talk. About small stuff like how we express what Write By Numbers does in a single sentence and about the big stuff like how the way we structure and operate the company feeds into the way we make things. It’s also making us PLAN.

One of the PLANS has been about how we use our website and this blog. We’ve come up with lots of ideas (notably the one that got WBN-wide support featured cake) and, beginning this week, we’re going to start implementing them. This blog is going to be a mix of things in the way that WBN is a mix of things; so expect theatre and arts and community and opinions and board games and ridiculous travels with large pieces of furniture and cake. Definitely the cake.