Review – All About Eve, Noel Coward Theatre

There’s a cheeky story about the making of the 195O film classic All About Eve. Phil’s tried to find it on t’internet but all he could come up with was this 14 bumpy facts about All About Eve page. Worth-reading though.

Anyhoo he’ll deliver the story from his rather shaky memory as best he can. George Sanders (Addison deWitt in the film) was married to Zsa Zsa Gabor at the time and his newish wife was constantly turning up on the San Francisco film set to check up on him (well he was filming with Marilyn Monroe) and wanting Sanders to take her out shopping, to which the film’s writer/director Joseph L. Mankiewicz allegedly snapped “Fuck off Zsa Zsa we’re trying to make a movie here”. We’d love to believe it’s true.

Review – Network, National Theatre

Questioner:  Network was a brilliant seventies satire about American television. It won a slew of Academy Awards, including one for Beatrice Straight who had the shortest screen time of any acting winner and Peter Finch won the first ever posthumous acting Oscar. It also proved incredibly prophetic about a lot of things including the medium of TV. What did you think you could possibly add by putting it onto a stage?

Ivo Van Hove:  I thought I could add a restaurant. It’s called Foodwork, geddit? I also thought I could add a real bar and a vorking kitchen, all on the stage before your very eyes. You can vatch ordinary members of the public having the Portland crabs vhilst vatching the show.

Review – Hedda Gabler, National Theatre

A few weeks ago, on the Nothern Line, while Phil was running his fingers along the lines of type in the Metro he noticed he was sitting next to a woman concentrating on a script with all the “Mrs Elvsted” parts underlined. Suspecting it might be for the National’s Hedda Gabler he went off and did a bit of internet stalking and discovered that it was Sinéad Matthews who takes that role in the this production.

Perhaps Phil should have torn her manuscript into pieces, scribbled notes all over it so that she could piece it back together again to get a better understanding of her role. To explain that would need a SPOILER ALERT. Of course if it had been Ruth Wilson (who plays this Hedda) next to him he’d have torched it for her.