Title: LINKS: To Online Articles (In Celebration)
Description: **Archived**
Description: **Archived**
Jesse - May 8, 2007 07:06 PM (GMT)
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| Screen star Orlando Bloom — know for his work in the "Lord of the Rings" and the "Pirates of the Caribbean" films — is scheduled to make his London stage debut. Variety reports that the actor will star in a revival of David Storey's In Celebration. Anna Mackmin will direct the 1969 drama, which will be produced by Sonia Friedman. No dates, theatre or additional casting have been announced, although the industry paper speculates that a July opening at Trafalgar Studios is likely. In Celebration, according to Variety, is a "Chekhovian-style ensemble drama about three brothers returning home for their parents' 40th wedding anniversary." Bloom's additional film credits include "Love and Other Disasters," "Elizabethtown," "Kingdom of Heaven," "Haven," "Troy," "The Calcium Kid," "Ned Kelly," "Black Hawk Down" and "Wilde." He is a graduate of London's Guildhall School of Music and Drama. |
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| LONDON — Orlando Bloom will make his West End debut in veteran Brit playwright David Storey's 1969 drama "In Celebration." The play, a Chekhovian-style ensemble drama about three brothers returning home for their parents' 40th wedding anniversary, will be directed by Anna Mackmin and produced by Sonia Friedman. Dates and theater are still subject to confirmation but the most likely venue is the 380-seat Trafalgar Studios for a July opening. No further casting has yet been confirmed. Bloom has been eyeing legit projects for some time. He is keen to be part of an stage ensemble having worked exclusively on screen since being cast in the "Lord of the Rings" trilogy almost immediately on leaving London's Guildhall School of Music and Drama in 1999. |
I can't even begin to tell you how happy I am that his dream has finally become a reality.
:yahoo: :yahoo: :yahoo: :yahoo:
Jesse - May 8, 2007 09:32 PM (GMT)
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| Orlando Bloom will make his West End debut in a revival of David Storey's 1969 drama In Celebration, according to a production spokesperson. The play will be directed by Anna Mackmin and produced by Sonia Friedman. No dates, theater or further casting have been announced, although Variety speculates that the play may open in July at Trafalgar Studios. Storey's drama follows three unhappy sons who travel back to their parents' Yorkshire home for their wedding anniversary. Once there, tension immediately begins to mount between the three brothers until one of them begins angrily lashing out at the rest of the family, tearing apart their illusion of happiness. The play premiered at London's Royal Court Theatre in 1969. The 1975 film adaptation starred Alan Bates and was directed by Lindsay Anderson. In America, Storey is best known for his 1970s dramas The Changing Room and Home, which was revived off-Broadway this season by The Actors Company Theatre. In Celebration was produced by the Manhattan Theatre Club in 1984 with a cast that included Malcolm McDowell. Best known for his film roles in The Lord of the Rings trilogy and the Pirates of the Caribbean series, Bloom is no stranger to the stage. He trained at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, where he appeared in The Seagull, Twelfth Night and The Trojan Women. His other film credits include Love and Other Disasters, Elizabethtown, Kingdom of Heaven, Troy, Haven, Black Hawk Down, Ned Kelly and Wilde. |
I feel a visit to the library coming on!!
Jesse - May 23, 2007 06:10 PM (GMT)
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| Pirates of the Caribbean star Orlando Bloom has revealed he is to tread the boards in London's West End. The 30-year-old actor told Reuters he was going to star in a revival of In Celebration by British playwright David Storey, which is due to open in July. "I wanted to feel like going back to basics... and having just a completely different experience," Bloom said. Bloom joined co-star Johnny Depp at the world premiere of Pirates of the Caribbean 3 in Los Angeles on Tuesday. The British actor said he intended to go onto the stage after graduating from the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, but ended up making it big in Hollywood. The heartthrob has also appeared in The Lord of the Rings trilogy, Troy and Kingdom of Heaven. Asked whether the fame had been a strain, he said: "I think everything takes its toll. "It just felt like I wanted to get back into the driver's seat of my career and my life, and part of that is coming back to what I have known in the past... really solidifying the foundation of my working career." Bloom added that he would not close the door on making a fourth Pirates of the Caribbean film at a later date. "It's been an incredible ride for everyone involved," he told Reuters. "Who knows what the future holds. Right now I can't even think about that." The name of the theatre where Bloom will appear was not available. |
Jesse - May 25, 2007 06:01 PM (GMT)
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| Farr, Hilton, et al. to Join Orlando Bloom in London's In Celebration Lynda Baron, Gareth Farr, Paul Hilton, and Ciaran McIntyre will join previously announced star Orlando Bloom in the London revival of David Storey's 1969 drama In Celebration, which will begin previews July 5 at the Duke of York's Theatre and will open officially on July 12. The production will be directed by Anna Mackmin; additional casting will be announced at a later date. In the play, three brothers return home to the northern roots of their childhood for a family reunion. While they have come home to celebrate, the explosive complexities of family life and long-held grievances threaten to ruin the party. The production team includes Lez Brotherson (sets and costumes), Mark Henderson (lighting), and John Leonard (sound). Among Mackmin's many directing credits are Dying for It, The Lightning Play, and Ghosts. Bloom will make his West End debut in the play. His film credits include two trilogies, Pirates of the Caribbean and The Lord of the Rings, along with Black Hawk Down, Troy, and Elizabethtown. |
Ooohhhh! Lynda Baron. She's wonderful. I loved her as N...N..Nurse Gladys Emmanuel in 'Open All Hours' :lol:
Jesse - May 31, 2007 08:14 PM (GMT)
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| Casting is now complete for the upcoming London revival of David Storey's 1969 drama In Celebration, which will star screen actor Orlando Bloom. Joining the previously announced Bloom (as Steven), Lynda Baron (Mrs. Burnett), Gareth Farr (Colin), Paul Hilton (Andrew) and Ciaran McIntyre (Reardon) will be Tim Healy (as Mr. Shaw) and Dearbhla Molloy (as Mrs. Shaw). Anna Mackmin will direct the production, which begins previews July 5 at the Duke of York's Theatre with an official opening July 12. Produced by Sonia Friedman Productions, the play is currently booking until Sept. 15. In Celebration will feature designs by Lez Brotherston, lighting by Mark Henderson, music by Stephen Warbeck and sound by John Leonard. The play, according to press notes, is described in this manner: "Three brothers — Andrew, Colin and Steven — return home to the northern roots of their childhood for a family reunion. Although they have returned to celebrate, the explosive complexities of family life and long-held grievances are unlikely to improve the chances of a decent party." Tim Healy created the role of Dad in Billy Elliot — The Musical. His other theatrical credits include Art, Twelve Angry Men, Shooting the Legend and Going Home. Healy's screen credits include "Auf Wiedersehen Pet," "Coronation Street," "Mit," "Common as Muck," "The Grand," "Dead Man Weds," "When the Boat Comes In," "Remains of the Day," "The Lost World," "The Egg," "School for Seduction" and "Flea Bites." Dearbhla Molloy has been seen on Broadway in Dancing at Lughnasa (Tony nomination) and A Touch of the Poet, and her other theatrical credits include All My Sons, Juno and the Paycock and The Cripple of Inishmaan. Molloy's screen credits include "New Tricks," "55 Degrees North," "Foyles War," "Waking the Dead," "The Fragile Heart," "Mostly Martha," "Tara Road" and "Home for Christmas." In Celebration received its world premiere at the Royal Court Theatre in 1969. |
RosieB - June 4, 2007 07:53 AM (GMT)
From Variety.com here is an article anticipating the arrival of 'In Celebration' in the West End
Mayday for U.K.
Mayday for U.K.
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| Month typically slow before summer season By DAVID BENEDICT April, according to poet T.S. Eliot, is the cruelest month. Clearly, he wasn't a legit producer trying to sell a show in May. In the U.K., May is a double whammy. Tourists don't appear in sizable numbers until June. Worse, this is the point in the year when the weather finally cheers up and the great British public sensibly reasons they would rather be outdoors enjoying a balmy evening than sitting in a darkened theater. In fact, things have been so bad this year that the TKTS half-price booth has been selling almost every show in town. Proving that there's no such thing as a sure thing, even strictly limited runs of Daniel Radcliffe naked in "Equus" and Maggie Smith fully clothed in "The Lady From Dubuque" have been available. Not that this is stopping producers, who continue to ply their trade and then some. In the busiest period anyone can remember, the two weeks that began May 28 see 14 major London openings in the West End and at other illustrious addresses including the Royal Court, Hampstead, the Donmar and the National. And that doesn't include such out-of-town offerings as Ian McKellen in the double bill of Trevor Nunn's "King Lear" and "The Seagull" at the Royal Shakespeare Company in Stratford, Pete Postlethwaite playing Prospero in "The Tempest" at Manchester's Royal Exchange and Patrick Stewart murdering the odd Thane in "Macbeth" at Chichester Festival Theater. Full house in the cards? Most canny producers try to fill the auditorium to capacity to generate word of mouth, no matter what it costs in discounts. That's been the thinking behind the re-pricing of "Avenue Q" that began earlier this year. With the puppet tuner now approaching its first anniversary in the West End, business has climbed, thanks to significantly cheaper tickets for weekday perfs. "The Drowsy Chaperone," currently in previews, has ticket deals not just at TKTS but everywhere from theater Web sites to the pages of supermarket magazines. Another way to ensure a fuller house, of course, is to pack up and move to smaller digs. Step forward "Little Shop of Horrors," which, after its June 23 perf, will head up StMartin's Lane from the 650-seat Duke of York's to the 410-seat Ambassadors, bowing there June 27. The move was precipitated by the impending arrival at the Duke of York's of "In Celebration," Sonia Friedman's revival of David Storey's 1969 drama, directed by Anna Mackmin and marking the West End debut of Orlando Bloom. In this homecoming story focusing on three sons, Bloom's brothers will be Gareth Farr and Paul Hilton, with other roles played by Lynda Baron, Ciaran McIntyre and Dearbhla Molloy. The father is still to be cast. Previews begin July 5 for a July 12 opening. Festival redux Across the river on the South Bank, an even grander opening is about to happen. From dusk on June 8, there will be 48 hours of nonstop free music, dance, film and visual arts involving 18,000 performers inside and outside every refurbished corner of the much-loved Royal Festival Hall. Following its two-year, £115 million ($228 million) renovation, the 2,800-seat concert hall returns with vastly improved acoustics, 35% more interior public space and a startlingly diverse program. Not only is it home to four of the world's leading orchestras, it also hosts Meltdown, an annual multi-arts event curated this year by former Pulp frontman Jarvis Cocker, who has bagged such cult figures as Iggy and the Stooges, the Jesus & Mary Chain and the first U.K. perf in 30 years of '60s legend Melanie. Somewhere between those musical polarities come three semistaged perfs (July 5-7) of Stephen Sondheim's "Sweeney Todd," with Bryn Terfel as the barber and Maria Friedman debuting in the role of Mrs. Lovett. |
I don;t imagine they will have much trouble selling tickets to see Orlando! :lol:
Jesse - June 9, 2007 01:49 PM (GMT)
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| Orlando Bloom has revealed that he was thrilled to be offered a part in a play after finishing work on the third Pirates of the Caribbean movie. The actor has agreed to play Steven in David Storey's In Celebration, which will open at the Duke of York's Theatre in London next month. "I have been kind of desperate to do a play for the longest time and this opportunity came up when I met this director, Anna Mackmin, who I'm now working with on a play called In Celebration - a play by David Storey," Bloom told Parkinson. "I was just hungering for an opportunity to be part of an ensemble cast in a great play. It's a phenomenal play." Asked how he is coping with the Yorkshire accent required for the role, Orlando replied: "I tell you what my dialect coach, Jill, said 'Whatever you do, don't do your accent - save it for the audience [paying] when they come in!' I'm working on it though!" Parkinson airs at 10.25pm tonight on ITV1. |
I'm desperate to hear this Yorkshire accent...it's one of my favourites! :faint:
*Praying to all things sacred and holy that I can get there!*
RosieB - June 14, 2007 03:04 PM (GMT)
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| Dianne Bourne 14/ 6/2007 AUF Wiedersehen Pet star Tim Healy is pretty pleased with his latest West End role. Not least because, rather flatteringly, he's been asked to play the father of one of the world's hunkiest men. For Tim will star alongside Hollywood heart-throb Orlando Bloom in the revival of the David Storey play In Celebration. The production is already causing a stir, as it will be Pirates of the Caribbean star Orlando's first time treading the boards and tickets are flying out to fans desperate to get up close and personal to the star. Cheshire-based Tim, who won rave reviews in the award-winning West End production of Billy Elliot, started rehearsals this week alongside Orlando and tells me he can't wait for the play to start. He laughs: "The thing is we're not going to be able to get in the stage door with all Orlando's female fans. "But while I might be playing his dad, I doubt if any of the girls will be waiting outside for me." Tim says that, despite his movie star status, Orlando is mucking in with the rest of the cast - which includes Lynda Barron, Dearbhla Molloy and Paul Hilton. Heart-throb "To many he's a heart- throb, but to all of us, he's just one of the lads," he says. The play is set in a mining community in Wakefield, Yorkshire, with Tim starring as the head of the Shaw family. Tim says: "My character is still going down the pit at the age of 64. "He has three sons and has made sure they've been well educated, sending them to grammar school, and they all do well for themselves. "The play sees the boys come back for their parents' wedding anniversary, and basically all hell breaks loose. "It becomes a tragic sort of comedy." Tim's family - actress wife Denise Welch and their children, Matthew and Louie - are set to head to the Duke of York theatre in London when the play debuts there next month. And Tim will star in the run of the play until September 15. |
Thanks to Orlando News for the heads up
Jesse - June 18, 2007 11:30 AM (GMT)
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| Louis Healy is delighted with his dad's latest acting role. The six-year-old son of Auf Wiedersehen, Pet and Billy Elliot The Musical star, Tim Healy just happens to be an avid fan of the box-office-smashing Pirates of the Caribbean movie franchise. So the prospect of his dad taking to the stage with none other than Pirates good-guy Orlando Bloom is creating much excitement in the Healy household. "He's loving it," says Tim who today starts his second week of rehearsals for Orlando's West End debut, a revival of David Storey's 1969 stage and screen plaudit-winner, black comedy In Celebration. "When I get home there's me and Louis on the couch with our swords watching Pirates of the Caribbean ," he continues. "He's worked out that because I'm playing Orlando's daddy, Orlando must be Louis's brother, so he's very pleased with that. He was the same with all the Billys when I was doing Billy Elliot - they were all his brothers too." As he says, Tim plays the father of Orlando and his two brothers who return to the family home in Wakefield to celebrate their parents' 40th wedding anniversary. "My character is a 69-year-old man who is still working down the mine. He was determined that his sons would never have to go down the pit and they've all done very well - going off to University and London and becoming successful. "They get home for the celebration, but it ends up turning into a bit of a tragic occasion as lots of things start coming out during the meal. It's brilliantly written." Of Orlando, Tim says: "He's a great lad. Very humble, unassuming and totally unaffected by his success in the movies. He's a great actor, too, and I'm really excited to be working with him." |
Well, Louis does have a point! :lol:
Jesse - July 2, 2007 08:56 AM (GMT)
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| Hollywood star ORLANDO BLOOM's upcoming theatre stint should keep him grounded - the playwright has no idea who he is. The actor makes his West End theatre debut in London this summer (Jul07) in a revival of David Storey's 1969 play In Celebration. But despite garnering huge success on Disney franchise Pirates of the Caribbean, Bloom remains a relative unknown to literary heavyweight Storey. The 74-year-old says, "I didn't know that he was a big star. I had to be instructed. "When we met he was very charming - no side has developed which stars get when they've been hammered with success." |
:D
Jesse - July 2, 2007 11:31 AM (GMT)
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| the West End’s Duke of York’s theatre (See News, 25 May 2007). The press performance of David Storey’s In Celebration, which was due to open on 12 July 2007 (previews from 5 July), will now take place on Monday 16 July. Producers agreed to move the date following a request from Peter Hall, who launches his annual repertory season at the Theatre Royal Bath next week (See News, 12 Mar 2007). Critics have been invited to Bath for two days to review the first three productions in the Peter Hall season, with Hall’s own world premiere production of Simon Gray’s Little Nell opening on 12 July and his adaptation of George Orwell’s Animal Farm (directed by Rachel O’Riordan) and revival of Shaw’s Pygmalion opening the following day. David Storey’s In Celebration, premiered at the Royal Court in 1969, centres on three brothers – Andrew, Colin and Steven – who return home to their Northern roots for a family reunion. Although they’ve returned to celebrate, the complexities of family life and long-held grievances make a decent party unlikely. In addition to Bloom, the brothers are played by Paul Hilton and Gareth Farr. The production, directed by Anna Mackmin, also features Lynda Baron, Tim Healy, Dearbhla Molloy and Ciaran McIntyre. The revival, presented in the by Sonia Friedman Productions, continues its limited season to 15 September |
I know some of you have tickets for 12th (original opening night). Can you report in with any details you may receive about your tickets.
Jesse - July 3, 2007 03:26 PM (GMT)
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| Being holed up in a broom cupboard-sized office with Hollywood A-lister Orlando Bloom would undoubtedly tick many girls' fantasy boxes. Normally sane colleagues had been reduced to giggling puddles of mush by the mere idea of meeting him; shamefully, I'd spent about three hours beforehand trying to decide what to wear. The man himself, though, looks far from happy. In the slightly scruffy surroundings of the National Youth Theatre rehearsal rooms, he shifts restlessly in his chair, looking anywhere but at me with those big brown, heart-throb eyes, and his conversation is peppered with pauses, erms, sentences that trail into nothing and endless y'knows. In fact, when our time is up, he gasps as if he's been underwater, and says 'We're done, aren't we?' with barely suppressed glee and punches the air - which he does then have the good manners to dissemble into a big stretch. Truth is, Bloom isn't giving many interviews for his latest project; maybe because he's already a long way outside his comfort zone. After a remarkable cinematic career that has seen him star in five of the 15 top-grossing movies of all time before the age of 30, this quietly earnest Kent lad is going back to basics and making his professional stage debut. It's been nearly ten years since Bloom trod the boards - and even then his amateur stage experience in his final year at Guildhall was somewhat limited, as he was recovering from the small matter of breaking his back. 'Doing all these big movies, there's not the same skill set needed,' he agrees, when I suggest maybe his acting capabilities haven't exactly been tested by the Lord Of The Rings and Pirates Of The Caribbean trilogies. 'Certainly my sword routine was being tested,' he grins. 'Theatre acting is just a different muscle, and I'm sort of shocking it into life. Right now, I'm finding the rehearsal space where we're working a very intimidating place, much more so than any $300million movie set.' His latest role is indeed a long way away from Legolas and Will Turner. For David Storey's wrenching 1969 play In Celebration, directed by Anna Mackmin, he plays Steven, the youngest of three brothers from a Yorkshire mining family who have all been traumatised in different ways by being educated out of their social class. When they reunite for their parents' ruby wedding anniversary, the brothers' festering resentments and misery explode. It's a perfect encapsulation of Philip Larkin's famous condemnation of parental good intentions. 'I'm shocked to say I didn't really know the play,' Bloom admits. 'At drama school, you do Chekhov, Tennessee Williams, Sam Shepard, all the greats, and I mention those three because I think that David Storey as a playwright has a lot of those qualities: there's a lot of subtext and so many layers.' So much of what is unspoken is important in In Celebration (in fact, Steven, seemingly on the verge of a nervous breakdown, doesn't speak that much) that it can make for bewildering reading on the page. 'That's exactly it. When I first read it, I was like, er, OK,' Bloom admits, laughing, adding that at first he wanted the role of firebrand older brother Andrew - 'I wish I could say I was old enough or even capable enough,' he says modestly. His own role has good pedigree, though: Bloom's Troy co-star Brian Cox played Steven when it debuted at the Royal Court in 1969. But Bloom isn't looking to boost his ego by stealing the show: he's eager to stress the ensemble nature of the piece. 'I love this sort of telescope on this family in this one room and the dynamics of that family. Every family has a story and, as I've been working at it, I've sort of realised that the brothers breathe as one, really.' There's no getting away from the fact, though, that his presence is going to shift tickets - and probably stretch security at the Duke of York's Theatre. Daniel 'Harry Potter' Radcliffe had to climb out of a window to escape the screaming hordes when he was in Equus, I point out - and he's not been routinely voted most fanciable man on the planet. 'Yeah, I know,' says Bloom with a bit of a shudder, adding slightly defensively, 'I'm not doing it for any reason other than to re-immerse myself in acting.' Rather endearingly, he then ties himself in knots trying to suggest he doesn't know how a large percentage of the female population views him. 'Somehow I think the perception is I'm some sort of, I dunno, pin-up movie star, whatever.' He laughs, embarrassed. 'For the most part, though, I've just been very supported by fans. And anyway, Londoners are a bit cool-for-school, you know what I mean?' Really, Orlando? I think you'd still better check you can fit through that back window. |
'Theatre acting is just a different muscle, and I'm sort of shocking it into life. Right now, I'm finding the rehearsal space where we're working a very intimidating place, much more so than any $300million movie set.'
We have every faith in him, but I can understand how he feels intimidated. There will be no second-takes for a mistake and it will be seen by hundreds. Orlando must remember that no one is perfect and I'm sure I speak for everyone who is going that we don't expect for each and every show to run perfectly. If he makes a mistake then we'll understand, it's what makes him human and that's what live theatre is all about. And if people crucify him for a minor mistake, then they are the ones with the problem - not Orlando. At the end of the day, the people who really matter will be standing there and applauding - us...his loyal fans and supporters.
RosieB - July 4, 2007 07:07 PM (GMT)
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| British actor ORLANDO BLOOM finds performing on London's West End stage daunting compared to starring on a multi-million dollar movie set. The Pirates of the Caribbean star makes his West End theatre debut in London on 16 July (07) in a revival of David Storey's 1969 play In Celebration - and Bloom admits he is petrified. He says, "Theatre acting is just a different muscle, and I'm sort of shocking it into life. "Right now, I'm finding rehearsal space where we're working a very intimidating place, much more so than any $300 million movie set." |
Jesse - July 11, 2007 06:07 PM (GMT)
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| Orlando Bloom is putting pirates and hobbits behind him and making his stage debut. He talks to Mark Lawson about cracking a northern accent - and those rumours of nudity Wednesday July 11, 2007 The Guardian Orlando Bloom has a confession to make. When he was first sent the script of the David Storey play In Celebration, he "didn't know who David Storey was". And the ignorance, it seems, was mutual. "No, I'm afraid I hadn't heard of Orlando," the playwright happily confesses. As Bloom prepares to star in a West End revival of Storey's work, this parallel blankness is perhaps unsurprising, these two theatrical collaborators coming from contrasting branches of culture. The 30-year-old actor has never appeared professionally on stage, having spent his whole decade as an actor in epic films, including Troy and Kingdom of Heaven, with a special line in high-octane trilogies: as Legolas in The Lord of the Rings, and as Will Turner in Pirates of the Caribbean. For his part, Storey, 74 on Friday, is a playwright and novelist belonging to institutions and movements (Royal Court/northern realist) that had their peak years before Bloom was even born. In Celebration - in which three Wakefield sons have escaped, in different ways, from the mining life represented by their father, who has spent 49 years down the pit - premiered at the Court in 1969, beginning a run of Storey hits there that included The Changing Room, The Contractor and Home. Storey's only serious involvement with the cinema was Lindsay Anderson's 1963 movie of his novel This Sporting Life, based on the writer's experience as a rugby league player. The hero of Lord of the Rings and Pirates almost wasn't in this revival at all. He celebrated his birthday towards the end of the marathon shoot for the Pirates trilogy: "I reached 30 and thought time was a bit more precious. What did I actually want to do? Since I was 25, I've basically been making Pirates movies. And, because of the success of those films, that has become the focus. 'Oh, he's the guy from the Pirates movies.' And I had to think, 'Is that what I want?'" Deciding that he "really needed to do some theatre because I was feeling a bit thin", he was offered the part of Steven, the quietest of the three brothers in In Celebration, but initially said no. "I was, like, 'You want me to play Steven? Why? He doesn't say much, does he?' I just didn't get it." He asked for the showier role, Andrew, but realised the character was too old, and was persuaded that Steven was a good entry into theatre. He believes now that the modesty of the role is an advantage. "I saw the potential for a great ensemble play. I was very conscious of not wanting a star vehicle. I wanted to crack this perception of, 'Oh, it's Orl ...'" His own name trips him up, as if he's wary of becoming one of those performers who refer to themselves with ease in the third person. "You know, that it's 'Orlando Bloom.'" He completes the name, but with exaggerated distance, as if it were a fictional character "doing some theatre". Some theatregoers may be disappointed at what they see: one of the Bloom fan sites claimed he would be appearing naked on stage, following Harry Potter star Daniel Radcliffe's stage debut in Equus. In fact, the only undressing stage direction to be found in Storey's text is a hospitable invitation to Steven to take off his coat if he's staying. Is it possible that the new staging reinterprets this scene so radically that Bloom keeps on going once he's got his coat off? The actor has bad news for anyone hoping for Last Tango in Wakefield: "I heard what they're saying. But you've read the play. Where would I possibly get my clothes off in it? It's bizarre." The rumour seems most likely to have been wishful thinking by the teeny-screamy element of Bloom's fan club. Does he ever resent such attention? "No," he says. "It was those fans that gave me the chance to star in Kingdom of Heaven." Still, Bloom will at least be sounding, if not looking, unfamiliar - as he grapples with a northern accent, having been trained by a dialect coach. (He's from Kent.) So how does a dialect coach work? Was he given tapes of rugby league commentaries? "We work on sounds: the dark ell sound, the round oh-sound." Dark ell? It sounds like a minor character in The Lord of the Rings. What exactly is it? "Are you asking me to get technical? I hate it when actors go on about that stuff. The dark ell is a heavier sound. The oh-sound is about how you open the mouth." Reassuringly for the cast, Storey says he isn't especially worried about precisely where the voices land on the map: "On This Sporting Life, Anderson was worried that Richard Harris had an Irish accent, but it turned out that it was fine. I'm much more interested in characters than accents." The new version of In Celebration rehearsed at the National Youth Theatre's rooms in north London, a nostalgic location for Bloom: it was at the NYT that he did his first serious acting, as a spear-carrier in Chiwetel Ejiofor's Othello. The story of Bloom's childhood, in Canterbury, is a familiar one among performers: pretending to be others gave him release from the tensions of who he was. "Drama class was one of the only areas at school I responded to. Until I was 11, I'd struggled at school, and they thought I was just being stupid. But then I had a dyslexia test and it turned out I had a healthy IQ, but had a problem with reading. We found a school that could help me." Bloom's adolescence was further complicated by the revelation that the man he knew as his stepfather was in fact his father. Given that In Celebration turns on parent-child tensions, was Bloom able to draw on his own upbringing? "Well," he says, "what's interesting about this play is that there's no such thing as a conventional upbringing. The father keeps saying, 'Family, lad, it's about family.' But I think the play is saying, 'What is a family? What do we mean by that?' And I love it for that." Encouraged by his mother, first towards the NYT and then the British American Drama Academy, Bloom assumed he would be a stage actor, but others quickly saw him as camera-ready: he was cast as a skinhead self-mutilator in Casualty and then signed for a one-liner as a rent boy in Wilde. Next, he was offered an understudy contract on an RSC world tour but then the role of Legolas for Peter Jackson's The Lord of the Rings came along. In retrospect, he cringes at his initial cockiness: "I remember my first screen test. I did it as Orlando. In costume, with a bow and arrow. But as Orlando. And I was totally at ease, cracking jokes. And I went to see that screen test - the first time I'd ever seen myself on screen - and I freaked out. It was, like, what are you doing? I was devastated. It was so big and I wasn't doing anything. I realised I had to learn how to be an actor for film." With the exception of the quick turn in Wilde, he is unusual in having played lead roles throughout his career and was constantly conscious of the pressure: "Being afraid to **** it up, basically." He finished Ridley Scott's Kingdom of Heaven on one day and started filming for Cameron Crowe's Elizabethtown the next. It began to feel like a marathon relay. In Celebration is a deliberate change of pace. Bloom is a Buddhist. Does its philosophy of serenity help him with the pressures of acting? He becomes suddenly tense. "The philosophy of Buddhism is connected to everything," he says. "So it probably does have some connection with acting, yes." What drew him to Buddhism? "It's not something I talk about. I was brought up with sins and harms, I mean hymns and psalms, getting some of it but it not being enough. I found the philosophy of Buddhism attractive." Bloom belongs to a new generation of actors whose entire careers are available on DVD. If they wished, they could carry all their work around with them on a video iPod. Is he tempted? "No," he says. "I've never even watched one of the DVDs. I sometimes think it would be nice to show your kids one day. Sometimes I catch a glimpse in hotel rooms or on planes, and think, 'Eurggh, is that what I was doing?' ". · In Celebration opens tomorrow at the Duke of York's Theatre, London. Box office: 0870 060 6623. |
Jesse - July 12, 2007 08:41 AM (GMT)
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| ORLANDO BLOOM’s talents stretch beyond acting – he does a mean impression with his chinny grin. The Pirates Of The Caribbean star, snapped carrying a bunch of roses leaving London’s Duke of York Theatre, changed into BRUCE “Brucie” FORSYTH mode. Orlando stopped to sign autographs for fans after appearing in the play Celebration. I wonder if he scrawled, “Nice to see you, to see you nice” on ’em? |
Click the above link for picture. :lol:
Jesse - July 13, 2007 09:18 PM (GMT)
| QUOTE |
| The Day David Storey Walloped A Critic As David Storey's great forgotten play In Celebration opens in the West End, the playwright recalls his unusual reaction to a hostile review. By Jasper Rees David Storey is unique among the great living playwrights for two reasons. Unlike any of his contemporaries, he has achieved equal eminence as a novelist. And he once famously got physical with the critics. Gareth Farr, Orlando Bloom and Paul Hilton in the new production of Celebration Gareth Farr, Orlando Bloom and Paul Hilton will appear in David Storey's In Celebration "Other writers tell me it's what they've always been dying to do but never actually got round to," he chuckles, quietly relishing the memory 30 years after the fact. His novel Saville, which would go on to win the Booker Prize, had just been published to glowing reviews. But in the same week the Royal Court's production of his play Mother's Day opened to rather less of a fanfare after Alun Armstrong dried during a speech containing 27 uses of the f-word. The following week Storey was rallying the cast in the Royal Court bar, only to turn and see a queue of familiar faces. It was the critics waiting to climb the blocked stairwell into the Court's studio theatre. Back then Storey still had the strapping frame of a man who came to prominence with This Sporting Life, based on his own experiences as a professional rugby league player. "I thought, aren't they bastards listening to me give this speech about their reviews without saying anything?" he recalls. "I stepped aside and I just couldn't resist verbally abusing them and I got carried away. I only really hit hard at Michael Billington [then, as now, The Guardian's critic]. I was rather soft with the others - it was on the back of the heads, reproachful, like you do with schoolchildren. With Billington, I hit him each time I came to a vowel. 'I-di-ot.' "I just remembered the first sentence of his review, which only had two words in it: 'A stinker.' I knocked his glasses across the floor. Irving Wardle [the Times critic] brought me to a dead halt by pressing me against a wall and saying, 'Don't hit me!' And I thought, God, we're both idiots, aren't we?" Storey fell into theatre in 1967 when the Court finally staged a play he'd submitted eight years earlier. The Restoration of Arnold Middleton earned him a share of the Evening Standard's award for most promising playwright. It took his co-winner, Tom Stoppard, four years to come up with a full-length follow-up to Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead. In four months, Storey wrote several of the plays on which his reputation still rests. "I don't think I'd been to the theatre more than a dozen times in my life," he says. "All the plays were written out with no knowledge of the theatre at all. The only plays that have ever worked are when I start with the first line and a vague idea of what they might be about and they write themselves." In Celebration, which was written in that period, crystallises Storey's preoccupation with the growing pains of a post-war generation alienated from its own roots by further education and economic opportunity. It dramatises the combustible gathering of three brothers, at their parents' 40th wedding anniversary, whom Storey saw as "my own nature divided into three parts. One was a very passive nature, the second was a kind of conformist nature, and the third was a kind of bolshie nature that didn't want to have anything to do with the other two." In a new production of In Celebration, the part of the failed writer Steven, originated in 1969 by a young Brian Cox, is played by Orlando Bloom. It's not the first time famous names have been lured to Storey's work from outside his regular pool of gritty Northern actors. Long before John Gielgud and Ralph Richardson appeared in Harold Pinter's No Man's Land, they starred together in Home, Storey's best-known play, as a pair of dotty old gents who are gradually revealed to be inmates in an asylum. Oh to have been a fly on the wall when Storey's father, visiting from Wakefield, met Gielgud. "The total incomprehension on both sides was almost elemental - the miner who had been down the pit for 40 years meeting an actor who was supposedly homosexual and effete. They were two human beings who couldn't possibly encounter each other at all in any other circumstances." The image neatly sums up Storey's deracination. But there is also a deeper autobiographical allusion in In Celebration than anywhere else in his work. The mother in the play is emotionally frigid after losing her first son. Steven, who was in the womb at the time of death, and taciturnly carries the full cargo of inherited sorrow. As a scenario it's pure Ibsen, but it also happens to be Storey's story. "My mother was suicidal, really. For six months I was swilling around in her hormonal discharge of grief and whatever came through the placenta. When I first consulted a psychiatrist about this 30 years ago, he said, 'Yes, it's just bad luck. It's what you make of it that matters'." As well as implanting in him a lifelong compulsion to explore his own demons on stage and in fiction, it has also given him a pleasantly Eeyore-ish demeanour and a taste for telling stories against himself. As a young man, much to his parents' disapproval, he thought he'd channel it all into being an artist. He played rugby league to pay his way through the Slade, only for those bruising experiences to yield the novel that made his name, This Sporting Life. Lindsay Anderson's ground-breaking film of the book starring Richard Harris initiated a long theatrical collaboration that ended only with Anderson's death in 1994. Storey hasn't had a new play staged since. "I've written one, but nobody wanted to do it," he says. "It was about a psychiatrist and I think everybody thought it was too negative. I find I'm drifting back to painting and drawing. If you look at them, most playwrights' careers only last a short while. One or two manage to keep going. Formative experience has always been this thing I've gone back to in the end, and I've done all I can with that." |
RosieB - July 17, 2007 07:27 AM (GMT)
| QUOTE |
| s David Storey alive and kicking? Yes, he’s just turned 74, is still writing and remains scandalously neglected by the theatres he once illumined. But Anna Mackmin’s revival of his second play, with the fashionable Orlando Bloom taking the role created by Brian Cox 40 years ago, gives a less literal answer to that question: Storey’s work isn’t just alive but has a kick capable of separating today’s audiences from their emotional teeth. Bloom is Steven Shaw, one of three sons returning from the comfy, middle-class South to celebrate his parents’ ruby wedding in the Yorkshire village where his father works as a coalminer. Superficially it’s an unrewarding part, because he spends most of the time looking wan and saying little but that he’s “fine”, but an important one. He’s a teacher who hasn’t only abandoned the novel he was writing but has lost his old fire and ire. In his aloof, broken way he’s the most troubling proof of Storey’s thesis: that education and social mobility can damage the heart as well as open the mind. Does this idea, which comes from Storey’s own experience as a miner’s son made good, date the play? A bit. Certainly, the drab coal community where the play is set must have disappeared during the Thatcher-Scargill wars. But we still read Lawrence’s Sons and Lovers and in many ways In Celebration is wiser and more balanced than that. Here, it’s Dearbhla Molloy’s Mrs Shaw, a pathologically undemonstrative Yorkshire woman escaped from Alan Bennett’s Talking Heads, who stands accused of causing the damage, and not her miner husband, in Tim Healy’s equally strong performance a genial, outgoing man who impregnated her when she was 20 and is still earnestly appeasing her 40 years later. So where’s the drama? That comes, not from Bloom’s Steven, but from his oldest brother Andy, a lawyer-turned-artist who tries to use him as a weapon in a celebration that becomes an anti-celebration and abortive act of revenge. Taking a role created by Alan Bates, Paul Hilton terrifies his father, Gareth Farr, as the most conventional of the brothers and us in the audience with the possibility that he’ll smash his socially pretentious, guilt-mongering mother to emotional smithereens. With him mocking, sniping and exuding fake-cheery menace there’s no danger of Storey’s family politics lacking tension. But it’s the play’s humanity that’s most striking. Storey makes a case for everyone, including Molloy’s Mrs Shaw, who has her hidden sweetnesses. And his implied conclusion is one that hasn’t dated at all. OK, they f*** you up, your mum and dad, but, as Larkin went on to say, they don’t mean to. Healy’s Shaw may have a secret pride in his work his sons lack and envy, but he’s been sincere in his efforts to help them “better” themselves. So in her narrow way has Molloy’s Mrs Shaw. It’s a tragedy that the result isn’t what it should be: happiness. |
The Times gives this FOUR STARS! (Out of Five) :towel: :towel: :towel:
nahla - July 17, 2007 10:51 AM (GMT)
| QUOTE |
This revival of David Storey's 1969 drama exactly doubles the number of straight plays by living British dramatists in the West End. Even then, one assumes it owes its life largely to Orlando Bloom's theatrical debut. It is a melancholy situation - but one can report Storey's tough and sturdy play stands the test of time, and that Bloom should guarantee it a young audience. Storey's family reunion is fraught with tension. Three sons travel up to a Yorkshire mining town to celebrate their parents' 40th wedding anniversary, and reveal their degrees of disfigurement. Colin, a miner's son, is now a middle-management careerist. Silently depressive Steven, a married teacher with four children, has now abandoned writing his epic social novel. But the most volatile is Andrew, who has given up the law to be an artist, and nurses a grievance over his childhood exclusion after the death of a fourth brother. What makes it a fine play is Storey's use of the specifics of family life to explore a cultural malaise. Andrew's anger springs from the deification of a mother who, in Lawrentian terms, feels she married beneath her. But Storey is also addressing the alienation of sons educated out of their class and suffering a peculiar English mix of guilt and insecurity. Andrew's explanation for his sense of hurt may be a bit glib. But through Steven, Storey nails the traumatised rootlessness that comes from feeling one's life has no significance. Bloom lends Steven exactly the right sense of haunted taciturnity and withdrawn moodiness. Paul Hilton as the vengeful Andrew, however, really has to motor the action, and does so with a quivering, attenuated figure suggestive of a Wakefield Hamlet. Even his few gestures of affection, such as dancing with his mother, are replete with irony. Gareth Farr as the managerial Colin also subtly hints his life is less successful than he claims and that his impending marriage is largely a career tactic. Tim Healy as the father, obstinately refusing to retire after nearly half a century down a pit, conveys the right mix of pride and puzzlement at his bewildering offspring. Although Dearbhla Molloy's accent occasionally slips, she suggests the mother's faint sense of detachment from the family she has none too harmoniously nurtured. The result is a richly satisfying evening that reminds you of Storey's ability to confront unpalatable domestic truths and to portray an England in which class is still a governing determinant. |
nahla - July 17, 2007 10:59 AM (GMT)
| QUOTE |
| Producer Sonia Friedman - our last, serious hope of keeping straight plays alive in a West End deluged by musicals - dares greatly by reviving this Sixties slice of northern, working class drama. The test will be to see whether new-generation theatre audiences will be tempted both by Orlando Bloom, whose first shot at stage-acting is a bit of a miss, and the chance of learning some invaluable social history, theatrically conveyed. In Celebration, by neglected Royal Court favourite David Storey, harks back to the social-realist school of novelists, dramatists and film directors who brought grimy, industrial England into national view. Storey deals principally with a family's tense, generational clash, at a time when university education began to alienate working class kids from their parents and their roots. Tim Healy's grizzled, far too shouty Yorkshire coal miner Shaw and Dearbhla Molloy's sombre Mrs Shaw, welcome three sons for their ruby wedding celebrations. Everyone nurses secrets and resentments as if they were unhealable old wounds. Storey tracks back to the theatrical territory of Ibsen and Arthur Miller, where the past is a misty, fearful country and skeletons lurk in closets. Yet how fresh the stage-scene looks! Designer Lez Brotherston presents a miner's faded sitting-room, right down to fire-side coal bucket on which Bloom's troubled, taciturn Steven is sometimes obliged to squat: Anna Mackmin's production needs more chairs and far greater charges of passion and engagement, particularly in the first torpid half. Furniture and clothes worn by the Shaws mainly come in endless, uninviting shades of brown, grey and beige. So too does some of the acting. Bloom's sexual charisma and androgynous prettiness before the camera vanishes clean away on the stage's more distant perspective. He stands around looking caddish in his pencil-thin moustache, blankly disengaged and forever bathed in boredom. His cries of grief while asleep at night typify his performance, being unduly subdued. All three sons, though, challenge belief. Paul Hilton, whose duffel-coated Andrew never conveys enough serious anger and scorn, resembles a superannuated student. Having abandoned his career as a solicitor to become a painter, it remains a mystery how he and his family could financially survive. Similarly, Bloom's Steven has given up writing his state-of-the-nation book yet needs to feed four kids. Gareth Farr's suave Colin invites further disbelief, vaulting from life as university communist to smart-suited industrial relations organiser. Storey proves himself a master of allusiveness: his characters avoid dramatic clashes, conflicts and revelations. In the more dynamic second half, allusions to a fourth son who died when seven and Andrew's childhood exile, muted hints of murder, hints of child violence and Mrs Shaw's festering marital despair, convey Storey's acute awareness of the roots of family violence, dysfunction and despair. Healy's Shaw looks suitably shattered. If only Storey engaged more dramatically with these family ghosts instead of allowing them to flit spectrally around, In Celebration would take a stronger theatrical hold. Fortunately Dearbhla Molloy's astonishing Mrs Shaw does capture the play's complex essence. She exudes a strange, sad reserve, a sense of shuttered emotion. In the devastating last moments, her sons gone home, she bends to the waist and fights to muffle the dreadful noises of anguish wrenching their way out of her - a married life-time's grief expressed in this great acting display. |
mayfrayn - July 17, 2007 11:03 AM (GMT)
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/6902447.stm
Here is a collect of reviews about Orlando playing Steven....and the majority is positive!
Here is a collect of reviews about Orlando playing Steven....and the majority is positive!
Jesse - July 17, 2007 11:36 AM (GMT)
Thanks for posting all of these reviews ladies.
There are a little mixed, but generally, the feeling is that it's good! :yahoo:
This is a difficult role for Orlando because the character is a subdued one, a total opposite from the characters we are used to seeing Orlando play. I think it's a play where you have to know the characters before hand and have a knowledge of the play.
I'm certainly eagerly awaiting my trip on Friday.
ETA: From The London Theatre Guide
There are a little mixed, but generally, the feeling is that it's good! :yahoo:
This is a difficult role for Orlando because the character is a subdued one, a total opposite from the characters we are used to seeing Orlando play. I think it's a play where you have to know the characters before hand and have a knowledge of the play.
I'm certainly eagerly awaiting my trip on Friday.
ETA: From The London Theatre Guide
| QUOTE |
| Most of the hype around this production was inevitably about the stage debut of Hollywood superstar Orlando Bloom, but when you get past the star-studded draw of the cast, David Storey's family drama hides a centre of seething anger and burning resentment. Matthew Amer attended the first night of In Celebration at the Duke of York's. A 40th wedding anniversary should be a happy affair, a celebration of a life spent together and a family's shared experiences. But all families have their issues, and inevitably if you put people together for too long, conflicts arise. The issues at the heart of In Celebration, though, run deeper than petty squabbling. Of the three brothers that return to their northern, mining-town home to mark the happy day, Orlando Bloom's Steven is a shell of a man, for the most part silent and occasionally weeping into his sleeves. Gareth Farr's Colin is a successful factory middle-manager who does not have a meaningful relationship, and Paul Hilton's Andrew has an antagonistic sarcasm that erupts into near-violent anger. The problems, of course, are caused by the parents, whose mistake seems to have been to try and educate their children and give them better lives. The result has left their offspring lost in the class system, desperately looking for their place in society. Steven, the boy genius, has even been trying and failing to write a book about modern society; it is hard to write about something you don’t understand. Bloom, on whom all eyes were surely fixed, fades into the ensemble faster than you can say 'Lord Of The Rings trilogy', becoming part of the furniture in Lez Brotherston's set – a cross-section of a family home with a dark, forboding upper level – when not active in a scene. Hilton's demonstrative, pacing Andrew is the driving force behind the production, his biting comments and buried rage pushing the tension to the fore. Tim Healy as the father, 50 years a coal miner and unable to give up work, coughs, splutters and tells tales until his world, like an unsafe mine shaft, comes crashing down around him. |
"Bloom, on whom all eyes were surely fixed, fades into the ensemble faster than you can say 'Lord Of The Rings trilogy', becoming part of the furniture in Lez Brotherston's set – a cross-section of a family home with a dark, forboding upper level – when not active in a scene.
I'm not exactly sure which way to take that comment. :huh: Personally, I feel it's a compliment, isn't that what Orlando is supposed to do...to be there but not dominate the stage when the other actors have a scene??
RosieB - July 18, 2007 07:41 AM (GMT)
| QUOTE |
| Probably the most telling compliment that can be made about this revival of David Storey’s witty, engaging social drama is that Hollywood star Orlando Bloom, dressed down in a dowdy brown shirt, tie and cardigan, merges into the background. That Bloom is just another part of that family is testament to how complete is this theatrical experience and to Anna Mackmin’s energetic yet sensitive direction Casting more than plays its part. While Paul Hilton as the deeply damaged Andrew wears his anger and bitterness on his sleeve, as youngest brother Stephen, Bloom?s is an internalised performance and all the more impressive for that. -- The Stage |
:yahoo: :yahoo: :yahoo:
Jesse - July 18, 2007 08:44 AM (GMT)
Just adding links to the full articles here, I'll update as I go:
THE TELEGRAPH
Director Anna Mackmin, with the help of suitably dreary designs by Lez Brotherston, certainly doesn't short-change the audience when it comes to wretchedness, while a brilliantined and moustached Orlando Bloom spends the entire evening looking pale and interesting.
VARIETY
(Not so good!)
As Steven, Bloom wears a moustache in a (failed) attempted to age up so he is believable as the father of four children, but he spends the evening in diffident moody introspection. He indicates his character's gathering distress but lacks the skill to reveal the reasons for it.
THE TELEGRAPH
Director Anna Mackmin, with the help of suitably dreary designs by Lez Brotherston, certainly doesn't short-change the audience when it comes to wretchedness, while a brilliantined and moustached Orlando Bloom spends the entire evening looking pale and interesting.
VARIETY
(Not so good!)
As Steven, Bloom wears a moustache in a (failed) attempted to age up so he is believable as the father of four children, but he spends the evening in diffident moody introspection. He indicates his character's gathering distress but lacks the skill to reveal the reasons for it.
RosieB - July 18, 2007 07:19 PM (GMT)
| QUOTE |
| Not jaded, I hope. But I've had enough great nights in the theatre to be able - normally - to get a message out of my mind by the morning after. Today is a bit different. I need a strong cup of roadside coffee as well as the copy of The Guardian that the last customer has kindly left behind. David Storey's 'In Celebration' has delivered a tougher punch than I remember from before. It opened in London last night with Orlando Bloom as the miner's son who left home, left his parents' life and, as the play begins, has just left his new life as a writer. In 1969 it was one of the first London shows I ever saw. With Brian Cox, I think, in the part now played by Bloom. Alarming then - especially so for anyone whose own family came from those same northern towns where education and escape was what the older generation promised to the young. Alarming now too. InceleBloom may be more famed for playing to the cameras as Caribbean Pirate and Tolkien Elf. But on the Duke of York's stage he controls all the dark corners of the miner's house when the educated sons return to show what their parents really lived and hoped and sacrificed themselves for. The Guardian critic, Michael Billington, liked it too. No mention - only other memories for me - of the notorious time when David Storey punched him for pronouncing one of his plays 'a stinker'. I'm just checking the cafe copy of The TImes. Benedict Nightingale is no less praising. This is theatrical as well as social nostalgia - a hard-crafted play that piles pressure without crude excess or artifice, performed by a cast in which each work selflessly for the others, one giant star. But still too bright at the back of my brain this morning. Posted by Peter Stothatd 17 July 2007 |
RosieB - July 18, 2007 07:25 PM (GMT)
And from The Guardian Reviews Roundup
Orlando Bloom lends some star power to this revival of David Storey's northern family drama at the Duke of York's in Covent Garden. Are the reviews cause for celebration or commiseration?
Chris Wiegand
Tuesday July 17, 2007
Guardian Unlimited
Orlando Bloom lends some star power to this revival of David Storey's northern family drama at the Duke of York's in Covent Garden. Are the reviews cause for celebration or commiseration?
Chris Wiegand
Tuesday July 17, 2007
Guardian Unlimited
| QUOTE |
| Michael Billington opened his Guardian review of the play with a particularly grim statistic: the production of In Celebration "exactly doubles the number of straight plays by living British dramatists in the West End". As the din of singalong musicals continues to drown out drama in London's Theatreland, critics have - by and large - eagerly greeted the revival of Storey's kitchen-sink play. In Celebration first ran almost 40 years ago at London's Royal Court with Alan Bates and Brian Cox among the cast. The play follows the Yorkshire homecoming of three brothers, now settled in the south, for their parents' 40th wedding anniversary. The occasion is soon frayed as the cracks show in the sons' personal and professional lives. For Billington, the play excels at addressing the "alienation of sons educated out of their class and suffering a peculiar English mix of guilt and insecurity". Benedict Nightingale of the Times interprets Storey's thesis thus: "education and social mobility can damage the heart as well as open the mind". Both critics drew comparisons to DH Lawrence, with Nightingale deeming In Celebration "in many ways ... wiser and more balanced" than Lawrence's Sons and Lovers, a similarly fraught family drama set in a mining milieu. While Billington believed the play "stands the test of time", the Independent's Rhoda Koenig found Anna Mackmin's "sluggish production" to be "a relic of a time when men were no good at expressing their feelings, and women weren't much better". The West End Whingers blog "looked on aghast as northern stereotypes were paraded across the stage". The Whingers believe Storey's play "exists in a time capsule that makes it very difficult to see as anything other than a period piece", and drew a parallel with the recent revival of another Royal Court classic, The Entertainer. The comparisons kept coming: In Celebration was "Rafta, Rafta... without the laughs" and was outdone in "wit and verisimilitude" by the average episode of Coronation Street. While applauding the return of drama to the West End, several critics complained that the play just wasn't, well, dramatic enough. Rhoda Koenig respected "Storey's intention to write a drama as inconclusive and wayward as life" but felt that the result "lacks the tension and unease that one might expect". The Evening Standard's Nicholas de Jongh called Storey "a master of allusiveness: his characters avoid dramatic clashes, conflicts and revelations." And what of Bloom's debut? Critics seemed to agree that the pencil moustache is a bad look (surely it's no worse than his Pirates goatee?) but disagreed over the power of his performance in a rather muted role. Michael Billington applauded his "haunted taciturnity and withdrawn moodiness" but de Jongh deemed that the heartthrob's "sexual charisma and androgynous prettiness before the camera vanishes clean away on the stage's more distant perspective". More than one critic commented on the red-carpet fervour that has crept inside the Duke of York's auditorium. In his Daily Mail blog, Baz Bamigboye lamented the fact that Bloom's stage entrance was met with the flash of mobile phones and delighted shrieks, but the star's celebrity status is surely bound to bring full houses for a playwright that Benedict Nightingale believes to be "scandalously neglected by the theatres he once illumined". |
Overall it would seem it's cause for Celebration ! :clap: :clap: :clap:
Jesse - July 19, 2007 08:23 AM (GMT)
From Bloomberg.com
Orlando Bloom has successfully made the journey to stage from screen, to Yorkshire in northern England from Middle Earth and the Caribbean.
The 30-year-old makes a creditable professional stage debut playing an abject miner's son in the London revival of David Storey's 1969 play, ``In Celebration.''
Anyone expecting the British star of ``The Lord of the Rings'' and ``Pirates of the Caribbean'' to merely look pretty in the flesh is advised to think again.
Playing the youngest of three sons of an emotionally constricted, working-class family with little to cheer, Bloom surrenders himself fully to an evening marked out by gloom...
Orlando Bloom has successfully made the journey to stage from screen, to Yorkshire in northern England from Middle Earth and the Caribbean.
The 30-year-old makes a creditable professional stage debut playing an abject miner's son in the London revival of David Storey's 1969 play, ``In Celebration.''
Anyone expecting the British star of ``The Lord of the Rings'' and ``Pirates of the Caribbean'' to merely look pretty in the flesh is advised to think again.
Playing the youngest of three sons of an emotionally constricted, working-class family with little to cheer, Bloom surrenders himself fully to an evening marked out by gloom...
RosieB - July 19, 2007 12:32 PM (GMT)
| QUOTE |
| HE may be a long way from Middle Earth but ORLANDO BLOOM looks quite at home on the West End stage. Taking a break from hobbits and pirates, the actor is starring in a production of David Storey's 1969 play In Celebration. It's about three northern brothers returning home for a family reunion. Though they are supposed to be celebrating, cracks soon start to appear and the family tensions rise to the surface. Orlando is the latest in a long line of celebs keen to show off their acting credentials by treading the boards. |
:thumb:
RosieB - July 20, 2007 09:55 AM (GMT)
| QUOTE |
| Orlando Bloom's stage debut in London's West End has met with a mostly positive response from critics. Bloom, best known for his role in the blockbuster Hollywood franchise "Pirates of the Caribbean," stars in a revival of the David Storey play "In Celebration" at the Duke of York's Theatre. The 30-year-old actor plays Steven, a teacher and failed writer, haunted by his abandonment of his Northern roots. "Bloom lends Steven exactly the right sense of haunted taciturnity and withdrawn moodiness," wrote Michael Billington in The Guardian, while Quentin Letts of the Daily Mail praised for the actor for his "fine sensitivity." Paul Callan of The Daily Express, however, called the debut "disappointing." |
Jesse - July 23, 2007 12:17 PM (GMT)
Yet another wonderful review from The Times Online
And what of Bloom, the principal attraction? He may make an acceptable elf, but can he really act? Yes, he can. His accent sounds well-nigh perfect, at least to these soft southern ears, and his movements have a matching bluntness, turning more hesitant as the play progresses. Rather than stage presence, he exudes absence, but that is a compliment. He is in character as Steven, wrapped in sad, wounded speechlessness.
:yahoo: :yahoo: :yahoo:
I am just so thrilled with all these wonderful reviews. :clap:
And what of Bloom, the principal attraction? He may make an acceptable elf, but can he really act? Yes, he can. His accent sounds well-nigh perfect, at least to these soft southern ears, and his movements have a matching bluntness, turning more hesitant as the play progresses. Rather than stage presence, he exudes absence, but that is a compliment. He is in character as Steven, wrapped in sad, wounded speechlessness.
:yahoo: :yahoo: :yahoo:
I am just so thrilled with all these wonderful reviews. :clap:
RosieB - July 24, 2007 08:14 AM (GMT)
| QUOTE |
| In Celebration by Mark Shenton There’s nowt, as someone might say in David Storey’s In Celebration, to celebrate amongst the tense, uneasy, fractured web of family relationships that the play lays bare, but its return to the West End is paradoxically a cause for rejoicing. It restores a major, but oddly neglected, writer to the heart of the theatrical landscape, and does so with a quietly moving production of meticulous care, attention and yes, love. The play itself reveals the frequent absence of affection, let alone love, in the home of a Northern miner, Mr. Shaw—a year shy of having spent the last fifty unhealthy years down the pit, as his constant coughing testifies. When he and his wife are visited by their three adult sons, returning home to celebrate their parents’ 40th wedding anniversary, it uncovers the burdensome resentments and multiple echoes of past hurts that reverberate there. But as it does so, it etches itself into the heart. Even if much of the attention that this production has received inevitably surrounds the celebrity casting of British movie actor Orlando Bloom, swapping swashbuckling movie pirates for something altogether more realistic, there’s also an integrity and intensity throughout the casting here that places him merely as a part of a finely-calibrated ensemble, not as a stand-out over it. In a play that tries to capture the pulse of real life so meticulously, that’s as it should be. Bloom plays the first, and youngest, of the sons to arrive home. He therefore makes a solo appearance at the top of the play as he enters an empty living room but there is—thank God—no entrance applause. Instead, the cheers are saved for the curtain calls, when some of the audience’s attempts to take photographs are rigorously policed by armies of prowling ushers. By then though, you won’t need to a photograph to remember this by, for this snapshot of family life has indelibly seared itself into the memory, even if memory itself taunts and haunts the characters here. Nearly 40 years on from its premiere at the Royal Court in 1969, the play is its own elegy to a way of life that has passed on, too: “Miles and miles of nothing, this place,” says Mr. Shaw. “Always has been, always will be. The only thing that ever came out of here was coal. And when that’s gone, as it will be, there’ll be even less. Row after row of empty houses, as far as the eye can see…It’s starting.” And it ended, as we now know, in the tempestuous mid-‘80s conflict between Thatcher’s state and the miners. That situation is partly reflected in another current London production, Billy Elliot, in which the father initially resists the efforts of his talented young dancer son to break free of his background and pursue his dream. The dad in In Celebration (played by Billy Elliot's original dad Tim Healy, clearly carving a robust niche for himself as a miner) however, has worked hard to send his sons on different paths—which they are all failing at, whether as a solicitor (who gives it up to paint), a business negotiator (who is unmarried and has no personal life) or a writer (who can’t finish the book he is writing). “Family, lad. Family. There’s nothing as important as that,” says Mr. Shaw. “A good wife: children. God’s good grace. If you have good health and your family, you don’t need anything else.” The irony, which this play exposes so hauntingly, is that he doesn’t have good health—and his family is a barely-functioning mess, too. In Anna Mackmin’s beautifully felt production, which keenly articulates the sadness that underpins them, Bloom is joined by the wonderful Paul Hilton as his eldest brother Andrew (the former solicitor) and Gareth Farr as Colin, the negotiator whose professional skills can’t negotiate around the personal landmines that keep threatening to detonate in the family, particularly over an unspoken grief that forever haunts them all. As the mother, Dearbhla Molloy’s howl of anguish is ripped from the heart, in a play that ultimately rips your own apart. In Celebration By David Storey Directed by Anna Mackmin Duke of York’s Theatre, London |
:towel: :towel:
Jesse - July 25, 2007 06:34 PM (GMT)
This is a lovely review from The Observer dated Sunday 22 July...and the picture isn't bad either! :lol:
*Please credit if posting elsewhere - thanks.*
*Please credit if posting elsewhere - thanks.*
Jesse - July 26, 2007 05:56 PM (GMT)
This is a lovely article from Wigan Today about actor Gareth Farr who plays Colin, in 'In Celebration'.
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| Hollywood A-lister Orlando Bloom is sharing a West End stage with a young rugby player turned actor from Wigan. Gareth Farr is currently on stage with Orlando Bloom – who starred in the Lord of the Rings and Pirates of the Caribbean trilogies – in the 1969 drama In Celebration at the Duke of York Theatre. The 30-year-old, who was brought up in the Firs area of Leigh before moving to Astley, started on the road to stardom after discovering a love of acting at Leigh college. Former Leigh East ARLFC player Gareth said: "It's my drama teacher Julie McKiernan I have to mention – she was the first person who thought I could do this. "I'm still in touch with her but we talk more about rugby league than acting.." Julie, who still teaches at the college, said: "He did O-level theatre studies with me and it was quite a transition because he wanted to be a rugby player. "The drama teacher at his old school had told him there was no point in carrying on with drama because he wasn't very good. "I knew he had what it takes because he was a very generous actor who would play any part because he loved acting so much." The former Bedford High pupil, who trained at the Webber Douglas acting school in London, now lives in London. In Celebration is currently in the second week of its run. Gareth is enjoying playing the part of Colin in the play, which tells the story of three brothers – the two others are played by Orlando and Paul Hilton – who return home to the northern roots of their childhood for a family reunion. Gareth added: "Orlando is one of the nicest guys you could possibly meet. He's a fantastic young actor who has done incredibly well for himself but is still very humble. |
RosieB - July 28, 2007 07:50 PM (GMT)
From Guardian Unlimited
My half-price evening with Orlando Bloom
I've joined the teenagers queuing to see a real-life film star in London's West End. Is Theatreland doing enough to attract young audiences?
Chris Wiegand
July 27, 2007 8:18 AM
My half-price evening with Orlando Bloom
I've joined the teenagers queuing to see a real-life film star in London's West End. Is Theatreland doing enough to attract young audiences?
Chris Wiegand
July 27, 2007 8:18 AM
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| I've enjoyed a good run of discount tickets in my search for cheap theatre seats, spending 10p at the Royal Court, a fiver at the Globe and six quid at the Royal Opera House. But judging by the faces around me, it looks like younger audiences are either being priced out of theatres or put off by the productions. The West End has always been a wallet-worrying experience and, among the overblown, over-priced musicals, the choice of plays is currently disturbingly slim. Cardinal drama The Last Confession was deemed "sturdy but stodgy" by Lyn Gardner, and I get the same stale whiff from The Letter. They're billed as thrillers, but look like middle-aged, middle-of-the-road offerings with the reassuring presence of TV stars (David Suchet and Jenny Seagrove). At the Duke of York's, another play is banking on a bigger star to fill its stalls. David Storey's 1969 drama In Celebration follows the strained homecoming of three sons for their parents' wedding anniversary in a small Yorkshire mining community. Similarly unlikely to woo a young audience, then, were it not for the presence of Orlando Bloom, making his stage debut. It's a straight-faced and entirely unsexy play, but it's attracting gaggles of fans eager to get an eyeful of Orlando. The theatre's offering a good deal to ensure a young audience - top-priced seats in the stalls (£45) can be snapped up for £15 if you're under 26. Impressively, these tickets are available in advance rather than just as standbys. It's an initiative that was introduced after the previews, producer Sonia Friedman tells me, because dozens of young fans were hanging around to get a glimpse of Bloom, but couldn't afford a ticket for the play. The marketeers are reaching out to kids by targeting YouTube and MySpace and the play has its own website, complete with a video interview in which the cast are quick to point out that the play is funnier than the synopsis sounds (it's true). I'm over 26 so have to make do with another ticket deal - the theatre sells 20 "day seats" from 10am. At £20, they're not exactly cheap, but still less than half the original price. A lady outside the theatre isn't convinced. "I paid that much a couple of years ago," she says, "but that was for Sir Ian McKellen." The audience last night was predominantly female (there were only two other men in my row) and there were indeed lots of young fans. If giddy anticipation hung in the air, so did a vague suspicion about the play. "It's two and a half hours long," groaned the girl behind me. So how does it go down with the kids? At the interval, one teenager moans that it's "just a bunch of conversations"; in the second half, another starts texting before an usher steps in. This kitchen-sink drama is probably a harder sell than Treats with Billie Piper or the star-cluttered productions of This is Our Youth, but Friedman is right to call In Celebration a "rich, full play" and it deserves to be seen. If some members of last night's audience seemed nonplussed, In Celebration is nevertheless the talk of the Bloom fansites. Alongside the interest in Orlando's side-parting and moustache, fans are engaging with the play and - shock, horror - buying copies of it. Up the road from the Duke of York's, Spamalot is offering a "pay your age" matinee deal for five to 15-year-olds - another nice initiative to get a younger crowd through the door. But surely the rest of the West End must do their bit to nurture the next generation of theatregoers and improve their dramatic diet by putting on stimulating, quality plays at the right price. • Chris sat in seat M4 in the stalls and paid £20 |
Jesse - August 8, 2007 10:32 AM (GMT)
A really nice review from globeandmail.com...
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| However, in financial and media-frenzy terms, Bloom is carrying the show. He literally stopped traffic on the busy St. Martin's Lane on Friday night as he left the Duke of York's stage door to the ear-puncturing screams of fans. Onstage, surrounded by six excellent actors, he's a bit player who acquits himself well, but leaves the heavy lifting to Hilton and the rest. Still, without Bloom, this moving piece of drama from the author of This Sporting Life would have never made it to the West End where it's currently wowing celebrity gawkers and tough London critics alike. READ MORE HERE |
mayfrayn - August 28, 2007 03:35 PM (GMT)
Here is an article with interview at Dearbhla MOlloy, co-star with Orlando in In Celebration:
http://www.theirishworld.com/article.asp?S...Article_Id=3487
"Is it different to work with a star like Orlando Bloom and someone less famous?
Not at all. He plays one of the sons but it’s another character who motors the emotion in the play. Orlando’s part is the quietest, but nonetheless an important one. I didn’t know Orlando beforehand; I had seen one episode of Lord of the Rings and that was it – I wouldn’t have recognized him if he’d sat beside me on the Tube. In the rehearsal room, all that fame stuff falls away though. He’s very modest, and extraordinarily hardworking, and willing and very eager. We are all immensely protective of Orlando; we’re not about to let anybody do him down in any way, or separate him from the other cast members or from the play as a whole".
Thanks to Josie of Orlando Love for the new....
http://www.theirishworld.com/article.asp?S...Article_Id=3487
"Is it different to work with a star like Orlando Bloom and someone less famous?
Not at all. He plays one of the sons but it’s another character who motors the emotion in the play. Orlando’s part is the quietest, but nonetheless an important one. I didn’t know Orlando beforehand; I had seen one episode of Lord of the Rings and that was it – I wouldn’t have recognized him if he’d sat beside me on the Tube. In the rehearsal room, all that fame stuff falls away though. He’s very modest, and extraordinarily hardworking, and willing and very eager. We are all immensely protective of Orlando; we’re not about to let anybody do him down in any way, or separate him from the other cast members or from the play as a whole".
Thanks to Josie of Orlando Love for the new....
Jesse - September 1, 2007 05:31 PM (GMT)
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| Tuesday, August 28, 2007; Posted: 1:49 PM - by BWW News Desk David Storey's 1969 drama In Celebration will have its final performance at the Duke of York's Theatre on September 15. "David Storey's modern classic took audiences by storm at the Royal Court in the 1960's and established him as one of the country's most powerful playwrights," state press notes, "Three brothers – Andrew, Colin and Steven – return home to the northern roots of their childhood for a family reunion. Although they have returned to celebrate, the explosive complexities of family life and long-held grievances are unlikely to improve the chances of a decent party… Compelling and emotionally thrilling, In Celebration is an exploration of family love and of how the consequences of best intentions can threaten to destroy treasured hopes and dreams." The cast features Lynda Baron (Mrs Burnett), Orlando Bloom (Steven), Gareth Farr (Colin), Tim Healy (Mr Shaw), Paul Hilton (Andrew), Ciaran McIntyre (Reardon) and Dearbhla Molloy (Mrs Shaw). In Celebration is designed by Lez Brotherston, with lighting by Mark Henderson, music by Stephen Warbeck and sound by John Leonard. The Duke of York's Theatre is located at St Martin's Lane, London WC2. Performances are through September 15; showtimes are Mondays – Saturdays at 7:30PM with matinees Tuesdays & Saturdays at 2:30PM. Tickets are from £15 - £45, plus concessions. £15 seats available for Under 26's at every performance (subject to availability, best available, bookable in advance, proof of age required on collection). £20 day seats available from 10AM daily Contact the box office at 0870 060 6623 or visit www.incelebration.co.uk |
Jesse - September 20, 2007 12:51 PM (GMT)
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| New performing arts students from Swansea College enjoyed a trip to London's Duke of York Theatre where they met actor Gareth Farr.After watching a matinee performance of David Storey's In Celebration, which also stars Orlando Bloom and Lynda Baron, they met up with Gareth, who trained alongside Swansea College lecturer Rachel Dooley at Manchester Metropolitan University. Gareth's TV credits include The Bill, Heartbeat and Jonathan Creek. Curriculum team leader for performing arts and music Martin Johnson said: "Gareth was more than happy to speak to our students about his career to date and about the rehearsal and audition process. "It was wonderful for them to find out first-hand what the world of the professional performer is really like." Student Carleia Balbenta said: "It was so great to meet a working actor who gave us an insight into what it was really like to work in the industry. "The whole day was a valuable learning experience for us all - and we got Orlando Bloom's autograph!" |