Latest news with #TamsinGreig
Time Out
19-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Time Out
The Deep Blue Sea
The tried and sometimes true conveyor belt between Bath Theatre Royal to Theatre Royal Haymarket continues rumble on, bringing big old fashioned productions of big old fashioned plays with big name actors. Terence Rattigan's maudlin masterpiece The Deep Blue Sea with Tamsin Greig as tragic heroine Hester Collyer follows in the wake of A View From the Bridge (Dominic West) and The Score (Brian Cox) and lands somewhere between the two. It's never much of a chore to see this play, one of the most well made of the well made plays, with its perfect substructure of unspoken feeling and roiling passion. But it's also a play that summons a long history of brilliant performances. The most recent big one, the National Theatre production in 2016 with Helen McCrory, was pretty great. As for this, it isn't bad at all. Even though there's nothing wrong with the direction by Lindsay Posner (who also did A View From the Bridge in a similarly perfectly good way) or the rundown set by Peter McKintosh, or the day-to-night lighting by Paul Pyant, not much particularly stands out either. It all does the job – all gets out of the way of the play, and maybe that's the best thing. Let the play speak for itself. Tamsin Greig takes on the role of Hester, former wife of a judge. She's now shacked up with a young and sexy test pilot and has tried to kill herself when he forgets her birthday. Across the course of a long career in lighter and comic roles, Grieg has often brought unexpected depth and warmth. Here it's the other way around: it needs depth first and comedy second, and while Greig finds a few shattering moments – and it's great to see her go to some extreme places in her sadness and her ferocity – her Hester lacks unity. She plays every interaction on its own terms: now comic, now tragic, now sharp or desperate. The result is a hundred Hesters rather than one. There isn't a note wrong from Hadley Fraser as roguish Freddy, seducer of Hester, who loves her but makes her miserable and drinks too much. Fraser's got such incredible presence. He drapes himself over the set like he's lived there forever. He's matched by a brilliantly upstanding Nicholas Farrell, Hester's high court judge husband, who offers her a sensible, reasonable and stifling life in high society. And it's a weirdly funny production of a usually sullen play. Selina Cadell finds a laugh in most of her lines as nosy housekeeper Mrs Elton. Posner often comes close to the solidity and quiet excellence of his View From the Bridge of last year, but it's not always sustained. The result is a perfectly decent production of a pretty much perfect play.
The Guardian
17-05-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Tamsin Greig: ‘What is the worst thing anyone's said to me? 'And for you, sir?' It happens a lot'
Born in Kent, Tamsin Greig, 58, studied drama at the University of Birmingham. Her television work includes Black Books, Green Wing, Episodes and Friday Night Dinner, and she won the 2007 Best Actress Olivier award for her role in Much Ado About Nothing. Until 21 June, she stars in The Deep Blue Sea at Theatre Royal Haymarket in London. She is married to actor Richard Leaf, has three children and lives in London. Which living person do you most admire, and why? Nick Cave for his determination to hold a space for public discourse on the deep and difficult and mysterious elements of life. What was your most embarrassing moment? Throwing up all over the red velvet seats in the House of Lords on a school trip, aged nine. Aside from a property, what's the most expensive thing you've ever bought? Therapy. What is your most treasured possession? The ring with three faded amethysts that my husband bought me after the birth of our first child. Describe yourself in three words High-functioning introvert. What would your superpower be? Not seeing the mess. What makes you unhappy? The mess. What do you most dislike about your appearance? To quote a Mavis Staples line from one of her songs, 'I like the things about me that I once despised.' Who would play you in the film of your life?Sharleen Spiteri. What is your most unappealing habit? Interrupting. What scares you about getting older? Not knowing who my family are. Who is your celebrity crush? Julie Walters. What did you want to be when you were growing up? A ballet dancer. What is the worst thing anyone's said to you? 'And for you, sir?' It happens a lot. Would you choose fame or anonymity? A lovely cocktail of both. What was the last lie that you told? How lovely to see you. Sign up to Inside Saturday The only way to get a look behind the scenes of the Saturday magazine. Sign up to get the inside story from our top writers as well as all the must-read articles and columns, delivered to your inbox every weekend. after newsletter promotion What is your guiltiest pleasure? Giant salt and vinegar Hula Hoops. What do you owe your parents? An apology for all the worry I caused. What does love feel like? Bees humming in a tree of blossom. What was the best kiss of your life? The first time my husband kissed me. We met at a wrap party on a TV show called Neverwhere. Lenny Henry was the exec producer; his band was playing – and it was him, Hugh Laurie, and Ben Elton's wife on bass, but all I could see was this wild man dancing, and he became my husband. What has been your biggest disappointment? Not standing up to bullies. If not yourself, who would you most like to be? More of myself. When's the last time you changed your mind about something significant? When I decided that Mavis Staples was right – I don't need to despise myself. How often do you have sex? Whenever. Would you rather have more sex, money or fame? I'd probably go for Hula Hoops.
Daily Mail
16-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Daily Mail
PATRICK MARMION reviews The Deep Blue Sea at the Theatre Royal: Tale of romantic regret hidden by veil of primness
The Deep Blue Sea (Theatre Royal, Haymarket, London) Was there ever a play that craved intimacy like Terence Rattigan's The Deep Blue Sea? Starring Tamsin Greig, Rattigan's 1952 tale of Hester Collyer, a society lady who tries to kill herself after an adulterous affair, is a modern classic of romantic neuralgia. But for its emotional agonies to really torture us, I was hoping for a more intimate atmosphere than is provided by Lindsay Posner's respectable production, first seen in Bath last year. As ever, Greig is a powerful stage presence, catching Hester's shame and anguish at being abandoned by her pusillanimous playboy squeeze, Freddie (Hadley Fraser), a keen amateur golfer (the writing was on the wall). And yes, she mobilises an impressive sense of stultified post-war duty to keep calm and carry on. But the scene where she polishes Freddie's shoes, before he leaves her forever, feels more like a compliant mother seeing her son off to school than desperate self-abasement. Hiding behind a veil of primness and courtesy, we get only glimpses of the emotional lift shaft inside her – until we hear her terrified shrieks, like those of a wounded animal. Mostly, though, we see her character trying (and failing) to abide by the forbidding social conventions of her day. Those conventions are brought to bear with caring, patrician warmth by Nicholas Farrell (sporting a thick goatee) as her much older husband, who gets about in a chauffeur-driven Rolls. Hester's emotional declamation is instead facilitated by Finbar Lynch, as the scruffy, evasive, former doctor upstairs who saves her life and offers sympathetic counsel. The damp sock of a Ladbroke Grove flat where the play is set, with its peeling wallpaper, rusty fire place and prominent gas meter, could easily fetch £2million today. But our brave new world has little or no sense of the social costs that shape Hester's moral dilemmas. A more intimate staging might have helped us feel her pain more sharply. The Deep Blue Sea runs until June 21. Theatre skewers itself – but thanks to impeccable timing, no actors were harmed in the making of this comic masterpiece By Libby Purves Noises Off (New Wolsey Theatre, Ipswich and touring) Rating: Michael Frayn's play about actors is always welcome: a comic masterpiece and loving study in theatre's own absurdity. The first act shows a final limping rehearsal for a hackneyed trouser-dropping farce. The second offers a view from backstage, halfway through the tour, as we hear the play continuing while watching the cast's jealousies and inadequacies creating mimed fury, mutual sabotage, violence — and desperation to keep the whisky bottle and the oldest veteran apart. The third is back onstage for a last performance which dissolves into helpless confusion. Its brilliance lies both in satirizing its own profession and in the remorseless rhythm of returning lines and rising hopelessness. The challenge of turning round the set — twice — is especially fascinating in Douglas RIntoul's touring production: it's in partnership with Hornchurch, Theatre By The Lake and Théatres de la Ville de Luxembourg. The latter's designer Clio Van Aerde has created some clever movable sets: without a curtain the audience very much enjoyed watching high-efficiency stagehands hauling it all around. Altogether it is considerable fun, handling all the physical jokes beautifully — George Kemp's tied-shoelace and downstairs tumble positively heroic — and Russell Richardson's drunken old ham Selsden is a joy. But they're all absolutely on-point and fearless. And goodness, in this play they have to be. The show runs in Ipswich to May 24, then moves to Queen's Theatre Hornchurch (May 28 - June 7); Les Théâtres de la Ville de Luxembourg (June 13 - 15) and Theatre by the Lake (June 25-July 26). Forget 'fair Verona'. Welcome to the Wild West, where Romeo and Juliet are about to meet at a hoedown… By Veronica Lee Romeo And Juliet (Shakespeare's Globe, London) Verdict: Giddy up Your reaction to being told that director Sean Holmes has given a Wild West setting to Shakespeare's tragedy about star-cross'd lovers might be 'Why?' But hold your horses... Holmes mines great comedy from the text, particularly in the first half, and not just because the sight of the warring Montagues and Capulets in cowboy boots and Stetsons, and the ladies in gingham — and line dancing — seems incongruous. But here they are, on a set by Paul Wills that would grace any Western: a simple wooden barn-type affair with swinging saloon doors and a loft space where a hoedown band plays. The frontier setting underlines how dangerous a place Verona could be, when choosing the wrong side in a family feud could mean a dagger in the heart — or here, a bullet in the chest. This is a pleasingly original take on the text, the knockabout comedy of the first half contrasting, and giving real heft, to the final scenes where those previously killed (or assumed dead, in Juliet's case) — Paris, Tybalt and Mercutio — appear to have come back to life on stage as we see the young lovers kill themselves. The frailty of human life is made abundantly clear. Rawaed Asde convinces as a hot-headed Romeo, one moment full of unrequited love for Rosaline, the next head over heels with her cousin Juliet, played here with verve by Lola Shalam. Great support is given by Michael Elcock as a swaggering Mercutio, Calum Callaghan as a menacing Tybalt and Jamie-Rose Monk as a wily Nurse. This is an unashamedly crowd-pleasing production — the large number of American students in on the night I saw it were completely wowed by it — but it's too long at three hours, and Holmes doesn't fully deliver on the bold concept. Until August 2 ( Funny, saucy, and totally gripping, 1536 tells the tale of one doomed Queen, three Essex girls…and a lot of men behaving badly By Georgia Brown 1536 (Almeida, North London) Verdict: It's a man's world In a week when the royal rift between the King and Prince Harry is being compared with another family at war — the Beckhams of Essex — a new play draws eloquent parallels between Henry VIII's murderous dispatch of Anne Boleyn and three ordinary Essex girls, who are also hapless victims of the patriarchy. Ava Pickett's debut play may have nothing new to say, but the way she tells it — using funny, authentic, anachronistic, intimate girl-talk, fizzing with swear words — is as accomplished as it is original. The play begins as news arrives from London that the Queen, now labelled the Great Whore, has been sent to the Tower. In nearby Colchester, suspicious husbands are setting their wives alight. These burning issues are picked over in a scorched field where Anna, the village beauty, has passionate sex with her posh lover; Mariella, the village midwife, washes bloodstained laundry and hangs it out to dry — and their more conventional friend, Jane, regularly wanders. 'Do you think she did it?' asks Jane. 'I wonder if he'll kill her?' muses Mariella. The characters are vibrantly drawn. Siena Kelly's Anna is vain, certainly, but also a sensualist, revelling in the power her desirability gives her — free loaves from the baker and endless attention, scarily careless that her reputation makes her unmarriageable. Mariella (Tanya Reynolds) is more worldly wise, her heart still bleeding for the love of her life, William, who married his social equal, who is now pregnant. Liv Hill's naif Jane, whose dowry makes her a catch, is resigned to a life of making babies and dinner for a kind man. Anna is then she discovers that her lover has proposed to her friend. Much of the play is talk, until in a shocking, slightly rushed climax, when it catches dramatic fire. But it never fails to grip. It has already won prizes, Lyndsey Turner's vibrant production and a trio of exceptional performances deserve more. Until June 7.
Times
15-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Times
The Deep Blue Sea review — Tamsin Greig is terrific, but often inaudible
There are great things in Terence Rattigan's masterpiece about a woman in postwar London who leaves her husband for an unsuitable but exciting ex-RAF man. I just wish we could hear them better. This revival, much praised at the tiny Ustinov theatre in Bath, has virtues aplenty but it hasn't scaled up fully now it is in the grander Theatre Royal Haymarket. So sometimes you think Tamsin Greig is giving a wondrous central turn as a woman paying a stiff price for pursuing passion. And sometimes you long for her to speak up a bit. • Read more theatre reviews, guides and interviews Even in row G of the stalls I was struggling to catch everything, especially for the first of the three acts,
New European
26-02-2025
- Entertainment
- New European
Review: You wait ages for a great role for a woman.. in Backstroke, two come at once
The play is essentially a two-hander between Celia Imrie and Tamsin Greig as a mother and daughter trying to navigate a way through dementia and advanced old age. Mackmin also directs a piece that is a well-constructed, very human, and, at once, funny and tragic account of two women who take turns at being the other's carer. It is the job of theatre to just occasionally put up a mirror to real life and that Anna Mackmin achieves rather wonderfully in Backstroke. Imrie in a role that could hardly be any less glamorous – she is hooked up to a drip in a hospital bed for much of the play – is on staggeringly good form, at once pathetic and terrifying in her last moments. Greig delivers a more nuanced performance – cold and heartless at the start but more understandable towards the end – and the chemistry between the two is a joy to behold. There are precious few great roles available for women on the stage, but these two fine actresses, clearly valuing what they have, make the most of them and they make this an unforgettable night at the theatre. Backstroke plays at the Donmar Theatre in London until April 12.
