Farinelli and the King

[jean]

I have a spare ticket for this, with Iestyn Davies, on Friday October 30th at the Duke of York's theatre:

http://www.theguardian.com/stage/2015/feb/23/farinelli-and-the-king-review-mark-rylance

It can be had at a discount (though as it cost £45 I am not quite prepared to give it away.)

PM me if interested.

.

[bluestateprommer]

Would be interesting to hear your thoughts on the play. I just saw the play in NYC a few days ago, with Iestyn Davies singing Farinelli, and Mark Rylance (natch) as King Philippe V and Melody Grove as Queen Isabella. It's a good, smart play, but it didn't blow me away as being a stupendously fantastic drama. Maybe part of it was the sense that with MR's King Philippe suffering from mental illness, and thus already limited in a dramatic sense in terms of development, there didn't seem a huge journey between the beginning and the end. If anything, there was slightly more of a journey in the characters of Isabella and Farinelli, with Isabella trapped in a marriage to a mentally unwell man (let alone a mentally unwell king), and Farinelli in the 18th century equivalent of being caught in the trappings of artistic stardom. At the very end, the actors let ID step forward for a solo bow.

One droll moment was during one of the King's lucid moments, when he points out errors to De La Cuadra and catches the latter totally off guard with that lucid statement. It was also cute to see MR break the fourth wall twice in Act II, when he addressed the 'crowd' in the park, one of the audience replied "good evening", and MR quipped back "oh, thank you". MR also shook hands with several audience members who had seats on stage. The production did a very nice job of recreating the look of the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse at the Belasco Theatre, with the musicians featured above the stage, except for one moment when one violinist and one cellist (baroque cello) took to the stage to accompany Farinelli. 3 of the musicians (the same violinist and cellist, plus guitar) performed before the performance as patrons took their seats, with one of the selections being the same music that Rodrigo used in the finale of Fantasia para un gentilhombre (I can't recall the name of the original composer or of the melody).

[jean]

It's so long ago that I saw this that I had to remind myself of what I might have thought at the time by looking up some reviews!

It looked wonderful, of course. I didn't see it at the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse where, as you rightly say, it premiered (some reviews of the American production thought it came from Shakespeare's Globe) but they had recreated that theatre within the Duke of York's theatre and I did have a seat in one of the galleries on stage, which was a more authenticplace to be than an upholstered seat in the main auditorium, though less comfortable. The knowing modernisms didn't grate. I don't remember any interchanges with the audience.

I did enjoy it, but I did also feel at the end that I might have preferred a whole evening of Iestyn Davies singing Handel, without the bits of drama in between.

(Nobody on this board took up my offer of a spare ticket, but I did sell it to someone outside the theatre and then felt slightly anxious about what she thought since I don't think she quite knew what she was going to see!)