When I called up to book, all the £5 tickets were gone on that night, so they had to charge me full price: £10! And that's for a decent front-ish seat in the royal circle.
If it is Benny Hill that is the winner - I might just venture £10 for a ticket...
Makes me wonder if the winning playwright is getting 10% of gross box-office... being their first pro gig, they won't realise how much they could be losing out on.
No - but for £50 you get to meet the writer, for £100 you get to meet Sonia and for £200 you get a lock of Neil Pearson's hair.
You can make a cool £360 in an evening!
No, look, I'm sorry, joking aside and even allowing for a 'nurturing' process, I just don't believe this. Don't get me wrong Mrs Rachie - I'm sure you saw her there - but "I think you're entering the realms of fantasy here"!
Seriously though - the tickets aren't exactly flying out the box office. When I rebooked for Thursday I got tickets in the middle of the front row of the Circle - I mean, when do you EVER get that 2 days before the show unless it's a return? Bizarre.
If you want to ask the person next to you what they think of the show, I suspect you'll need a megaphone.
What they needed was a rooting, tooting, well-plugged comedy.
Not a farce.
Yeah, I KNOW it looks like sour grapes - but I was really, really looking forward to seeing the tv show and thinking 'Fair enough, these people are clearly better than me'. And so far, I've seen no evidence that any of them have even seen a theatre before, much less been in one.
All the gags aside, I'm trying, I'm really trying to believe in this. But they're not making it very easy, are they?
Why are you trashing this woman and her writing before you have seen/heard/read a single thing she has put on a page? Doesn't she deserve at least an open mind? Just because you had a visceral reaction to a few seconds of selected footage you have decided to trash the play, the event and the competition - and the weird thing is, you are acting like you are compelled by circumstances to do so.
Well, you're not. There was a competition. Someone won - maybe - someone didn't. Even the budding Tennessee Williams out there can say they were having an off day when they submitted their proposal, but the bottom line is that someone won and someone didn't. Rather than searching for a reason to call the whole thing garbage, why don't you consider learning something from this?
I would expect better behavior from Adman and Jay - your slightly hysterical condemnation is beneath both of you.
Whoa up there a mo' Swann! I've actually literally just watched the tape again!
1. I did say I'm trying to keep an open mind; it's only my opinion, but I just don't happen to believe that a deep and meaningful play about schizophrenia - the main subject of the lady's play, and she couldn't spell it - meets the brief (which was for a comedy!).
2. I'm suspicious of the judging criteria; why no experienced writers?
3. I'm suspicious of the reading criteria; how come all three judges HATED the Marilyn Monroe gig (which I understand) - it looks like 1970 of us were judged by readers, not the panel (and yes, I know that happens normally anyway).
4. I'm suspicious of the quality of the writing on the basis of, yes, the only little bit I've heard.
5. Half this play takes place in a planetarium, the other in a pothole underground.
I stand to be corrected (it normally happens - I'm a bloke!).
I wish her all the luck in the world. Frankly, however, I SIMPLY DO NOT BELIEVE that they could not have found a single, multiple-work writer with an amdram record of quality to put up against Ms Betts (for tis her).
What do I know? I think Shopping and F*cking is absolute cr4p.
Sorry Swann, halfway through cooking (what a modern man I am) now risking getting a major b0ll0cking off my dearest because I'm back here.
Of course, you're 100% correct; what right do I have to judge at all, much less from this limited snippet?
But I was looking forward to something marvellous. Something significant. Something monumental. Something that would make the 95% of Great British public who DON'T go the the theatre think 'I'd fancy that'. Because then they might keep going back, and there would be a greater demand for MY play!
And my gut reaction says this isn't it.
When I told my wife that we thought Ms Betts had won with the schizophrenic-Jesus and the potholes-and-planetarium gig, she curled her lip just a bit. And I know my parents, brother, his girfriend and most of my friends would do EXACTLY the same. So would my neighbours. So would all my mates 'down the pub'.
And THAT's what I'd hoped C4/SFP/ATG would avoid.
Prima Facae - and that's all we have right now - I don't think we have something good for Brit theatre. It may be 'different'. It may be 'risky'. It may be 'avant garde'.
"Have I got a great play? Probably not. have I got a theatrical event? Probably." Sonia, when it was all over.
Shame. Didn't we have a right to a great play from thousands of scripts, all that professional support and six-figure funding from C4?
I do so hope that she can create a credible piece of theatre. However SF's comments about a theatrical event, and the fact that she went against both of her invited pannel and still chose to follow that route makes me feel that this was a non-starter.
I could now transpire that the production is now severe trouble as ticket sales are very low and has already suffered two CXLs.
For the playwright's sake, I do so hope that she can make me eat my words, forces me to make an appology on the forum and is laughing all the way to the bank.
However from the little I have seen, this is a restricted concept for a play, to be played out in a childish manner, does nothing to further an increase in theatre attendance and written my someone that needs to develop a much harder character to hope to have a second performance (afterall, she only stands to make a max of 20p for each bum on a seat at the moment - a hardened playwright would have fought to increase that price... Or worse, suggested postponing/cxl'ing the play to avoid the badd press/reputation).
I look forward to eating my words, but I'm not quite ready to keep the salt on the table just yet.
It doesn't seem to me like anyone on here is trashing the play or the writer. Expressing worries - most definitely. But that's inevitable. All we've been given to judge on at the moment is a few snippets of the ten finalists - and we're bound at this point to have favourites and ones that we didn't like. That may well change each episode, and maybe by the end Jesus Woman will be the favourite. It's just the way things are at the moment. If anything, people on the forum seem desperately hopeful that the play will turn out good - it doesn't benefit any new writer for this to be a failure.
This Forum was always going to resound with the cries of 'rubbish'. I'm not saying the play is rubbish. I'm not saying Ms Betts or any of the others can't write.
What I'm saying is that on what I've seen and read so far, I have grave concerns regarding the selection process/criteria, and similar worries about some of the writers and matter selected.
I know why my office-comedy was not selected. But the only litmus paper I have is knowing what Jay submitted, and if I were he I would be angry that (specifically) his play Denim was considered an inferior shortlister than (specifically) the Marilyn Monroe synopsis.
True - Jay's play Denim might need work for a WE stage (no offence mate) - but it could never, NEVER have received the horror that MM did.
Actually, blowing my own trumpet - I even think my historical synopsis was better than the MM concept!
But ignoring me (that could easily be seen as unsweetened wine crops) if there was one Jay out there, there must have been others! That's my big worry.
How to ensure a full house? easy my dears, cancel the damn thing and replace it with a revival of Noises Off by Ray Cooney. From the comments made by the old gang who are flockiing back to this site, all my acidic prognosications are being validated. What you are seeing here is talent outraged by the apothiosis of mediocraty, and I have read enough of the postings on this site to realise there is a fair bit of genuine talent floating arround, which is not at all what the production team were after in the first place.
