This critic really dug it. I like her description of it as “grown-up panto.”
We’ve waited for this one, in wondering hope. Joanna Lumley! David Hyde Pierce who was Niles Crane in Frasier! A Broadway transfer in the bag, and our own peerless changeling sprite, Mark Rylance! It even promised a debate: high culture versus populism and the conscience of the artist. Wow!
Read the rest of this entry »
Here’s the Financial Times‘s take:
Which touches us more, highbrow art or lowbrow farce? That is the question that powers David Hirson’s oddball comedy; it is also a dilemma that the director Matthew Warchus has delighted in tackling before, with his brilliant productions of Boeing-Boeing and Ayckbourn’s The Norman Conquests. But, in spite of the ingenuity of the piece, in spite of Warchus’s excellent pedigree, and in spite of a cast with impeccable comic credentials – Mark Rylance, Joanna Lumley and David Hyde Pierce – this show doesn’t fly.
Read the rest of this entry »
The good ol’ BBC have come through again – this time with a report about theatre exports from the West End to Broadway, featuring scenes from La Bête and more interviews with David and Mark Rylance. Watch it at the website.
One last review for today! Here’s the Associated Press verdict.
It’s easy to see why La Bete wasn’t belle of the ball on its first run in 1991, lasting only 25 performances on Broadway. David Hirson’s play is a self-referential comedy about the battle between art and commerce, set in 17th-century France and written in mock-Moliere rhyming couplets. No wonder audiences were wary.
Read the rest of this entry »
There seems to be a pattern emerging from the La Bête reviews – Rylance is explosive, DHP is subtle, and the whole thing, while intriguing, doesn’t quite excel. Check out the What’s On Stage review – they also have a handy roundup of reviews.
Maybe the anticipation of seeing Mark Rylance, Joanna Lumley and David Hyde Pierce together on one stage in American playwright David Hirson’s La Bête, a theatrical comedy of rhyming couplets set in the 17th century court of Languedoc, was too much.
Read the rest of this entry »
UK people watching the 10 o’clock news on BBC last night might have caught this interesting piece in which the male leads of La Bête discuss American vs British theatre.
Watch the video at the BBC website!
Here’s The Guardian‘s rather mixed review. Comes with a cool pic though!
I’ll say this much: David Hirson’s piece of Broadway-originating, pastiche Molière seems less smugly self-admiring than it did on its first appearance in 1992. That may be because Hirson now gives the action an uninterrupted flow; it may be because Mark Rylance virtuosically adorns the current cast; but I suspect the real change stems from director Matthew Warchus, who has discovered a hidden tension in what at first seemed a dramatically inert piece.
Read the rest of this entry »
The Independent gave La Bête three out of five stars on its opening night. Check out the review HERE.
“La Bête” is a “beast” and a “fool” in French, and it’s one of the puzzles in Matthew Warchus’s colourfully inflated, Broadway-bound revival of this 1992, 17th-century oddity that you never really know to whom the title refers: the actor, the writer or the patron.
Read the rest of this entry »
