I've been falling behind with my blogging so I'll lump these two together to compare and contrast, 'Travelling Light' on the big Lyttleton stage and 'She Stoops To Conquer' at the Olivier.'Travelling Light' is billed as a funny tribute to the early Eastern European pioneers of cinema that became the movers and shakers of Hollywood. If that's what it had been then I might have enjoyed it more but I thought it was pointless and it didn't go anywhere. It had that big stage to play with but it stuck to the front few yards of the stage. Mind you, it wasn't helped by me nodding off to sleep for most of the first half (I know, the shame) but I didn't miss what little plot there was since it was easy enough to follow. The one thing I didn't understand was why Anthony Sher had a classic 'Fiddler on the Roof' accent but no-one else in the cast had an accent. What was that about?
Something altogether grander was 'She Stoops To Conquer', a classic play that I've never seen before. I thoroughly enjoyed this one without a drooping eyelid in sight! It's a tale of mismatched love, of manners and morality, of city versus country, age and youth - well, it's about everything if it comes down to that. Clearly, it's a great piece of writing by Mr Goldsmith but it's also a great cast and a great production - I'd find it hard to fault anything about this production (other than our hero channelling a manic Rik Mayall now and then).I was particularly taken with the performances of the 'core family', of Sophie Thompson as the mother and Steve Pemberton as the father, David Flynn as the wastrel son and Katherine Kelly as the highly intelligent and saucy daughter. They were all excellent and I loved Sophie's trick of doing a deep curtsey and then needing a hand to stand up that she carried through into the bows at the end. That was a nice touch.
So, in my book, the score in that match is 1-0 to 'She Stoops To Conquer'.
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