If Thomas Hardy had blessed his female characters with more than an “ephemeral precious essence of youth,” perhaps he would have produced something along the lines of Dorothy McDowell’s Casterbridge, an adaptation of Hardy’s 1886 novel The Mayor of Casterbridge.
"This was the second of three successive sold-out nights for the four-piece at the London venue, and it proved one for us and the remaining five thousand people in attendance to remember."
"This uncomplicated plot provides Worth with rich opportunities for philosophical musings, with ideas explored in the piece ranging from the abrupt to the more profound."
It is an amazing skill to have such a carousel of worlds and people played by the same few actors, and yet the show never felt disjointed; it was almost as if the tennis players, the telly-tubbies and the young conservatives were all interconnected.
"Out from the November night an easy orange glow invited me into the Sheldonian. I trotted up creaking stairs to the top floor, into the jaws of death – the jaws of death being an archaically unintuitive seating set up. The seats on the upper stalls are just three big steps – if you arrive late, sidling along the upper rows in front of those already seated requires deft footwork and a lot of 'excuse me's."
"While Rooney wants to make it clear that these characters are made by a complex process of personal and structural factors, the characterisation of these effects comes across as largely typical liberal nihilism: evident contemporary issues are discussed but focus by and large as background. Brexit, climate change, culture wars and fame form a seemingly endless indulgent discourse with no real direction or purpose. Instead, there seems to be an obsession with providing binary opposites within her characters, which comes across as a litany of cliché. Felix is both bad because he watches hardcore pornography but is good in the fact that he likes and gets along well with dogs. Eileen presents her vulnerabilities through the online-stalking of her ‘sad boy’ ex-boyfriend, her tiny apartment, and meagre salary, while Simon can promise his traditional Catholicism, do-gooder job in the Irish government. Alice’s sexual voyeurism is linked to her financial position in allowing Felix to come to Rome with her expenses paid. Felix’s working-class cliché borders on the offensive, or serious ignorance at best, presenting a character who has to literally defend his intelligence: “I can read by the way… I’m not great at reading, but I can read. And I don’t think you really care anyway.” When these minor power-plays slowly unfold and catalyse at the end of the novel, involving a major confrontation between Alice and Eileen, a knocked-over chair, and a wine glass smashed on the kitchen floor, we’re left wondering what the entire point of these relationships was in the first place."
"Conflict in God of Carnage is created through two groups of parents‘ apparent desire to resolve a falling-out between their children. Alain and Annette’s child has hit and broken two teeth of Véronique and Michelle’s child. However, despite initial mature airs, the adults soon lose any sense of moderation, and themselves turn into quarrelling children. This play is therefore an intimate descent into savagery."
'Overall, I very much enjoyed Please Clap. Experimental, and at the same time digging into the solemn secrets of celebrity and humanity, the fakery of the media and the forgery of façades, this was a show to be applauded.'
"[...] it is these painfully truthful human relationships that elevate it from an evocatively written commentary on medical ethics to a truly perceptive piece of art."
"We’ve got 19, 21, and 25 to hear Adele sing about growing up, breaking your heart, and the power of belonging. 30 is another project personal to a stage in her life, and regardless of whether it’s for everyone, it is a simply brilliant listen."
As a show with only two characters, the use of four actors in this production was truly innovative. It was able to showcase their talent in the best possible way, highlighting the actors’ strengths while elevating the characters to a level above how they have been traditionally interpreted on stage.
