Sondheim Forum

Theater in General => Plays => Topic started by: Gordonb on Jun 29, 2017, 05:30 AM

Title: Network
Post by: Gordonb on Jun 29, 2017, 05:30 AM
I've just booked tickets for March 2018 for

(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DCWhZYSXYAAQ2wY.jpg):

at the National with Bryan Cranston.

So sorry for the BIG picture.
Title: Re: Network
Post by: Gsavage14 on Jun 29, 2017, 06:32 AM
Quote from: Gordonb on Jun 29, 2017, 05:30 AMI've just booked tickets for March 2018 for

(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DCWhZYSXYAAQ2wY.jpg):

at the National with Bryan Cranston.

So sorry for the BIG picture.

Oooh, can see what I'm going to be doing on Friday...!!
Title: Re: Network
Post by: AmyG on Jun 29, 2017, 07:24 AM
That sounds fabulous! It opens just after we leave  :( . I hope this will be part of NT Live. 
Title: Re: Network
Post by: Bobster on Jul 01, 2017, 03:56 AM
Wow, I will be fascinated to see what this is!

Title: Re: Network
Post by: Gordonb on Nov 01, 2017, 09:34 AM


National's "Network" trailer (https://www.nationaltheatre.org.uk/shows/network?utm_source=SilverpopMailing&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=SEND_Network_RelatedEventsSolus&utm_content=&spMailingID=31362091&spUserID=OTAxODUxMzk2MDUS1&spJobID=1160100033&spReportId=MTE2MDEwMDAzMwS2)
Title: Re: Network
Post by: AmyG on Nov 01, 2017, 10:23 AM
It's funny how when I was there I saw a poster for it and was excited all over again. I forget completely about this thread.  :-[
Title: Re: Network
Post by: Leighton on Nov 01, 2017, 01:30 PM
I'm taking my sixth former students in February :)
Title: Re: Network
Post by: scenicdesign71 on Jul 21, 2019, 01:16 PM
I managed to see this last month, in its final weekend on Broadway, though I'm just now getting around to putting down a few thoughts about it.

Value for money was provided by Bryan Cranston and the set ravenously devouring each other like some unholy double ouroboros.  (Okay, Cranston and the [spectacular, largely livecast] video design, to be more precise, but the excuse to flip the idiom -- scenery chewing back -- was irresistible).

Still, adaptor Lee Hall's animating purpose seemed to begin and end with ventriloquizing a beyond-the-grave "I told you so" from Chayevsky.  The result was certainly topical, but not especially enlightening unless, perhaps, you've been asleep for the last forty years.  (Or even the last three, which, granted, have often felt like forty).

I don't remember the film in enough detail to articulate exactly what's lost in the play's shift of emphasis to the Howard Beale character.  But Cranston owned the proceedings onstage so entirely and unwaveringly that his costars, Tony Goldwyn and Tatiana Maslany, might want to consider pressing charges for petty larceny (though against whom, I'm not altogether clear:  Cranston himself?  Director van Hove, for negligent disinterest in their characters?  Or is that baked into Hall's adaptation?).

I'm glad I saw it, but it didn't really leave a huge impression beyond a vague desire to go back and watch the movie again sometime.