Everett And Lipman Line Up For Great Hampstead Season

[MamasDoin'Fine]

The Autumn/Winter Season at the Hampstead Theatre, London.

'The Judas Kiss' by David Hare
6th Sep to 13th Oct 2012.
Directed by Neil Armfield
Cast includes Rupert Everett, Freddie Fox.
Portrait of the fall from grace of Oscar Wilde. Focussing on two critical moments – the eve of his arrest and one night after his release from two years imprisonment.

'55 Days' by Howard Brenton
18th Oct to 24th Nov 2012.
Directed by Howard Davies.
The political upheaval of the mid-seventeenth century has no parallel in English history. In these dangerous and dramatic times, in a country exhausted by Civil War, the great men of the day where trying to think the unthinkable – to create a country without a king. Oliver Cromwell struggled to invent a political future for his beloved country as he presided over the death of medieval England and the birth of the modern state.

'Old Money' by Sarah Wooley
29th Nov to 12th Jan 2013.
Directed by Robin Lefevre.
Cast includes Maureen Lipman, Tracy Ann Oberman.
For 30 years Joyce has done her domestic duty – played the part her husband, mother, father and daughter thought appropriate. Now she is free – and as realisation dawns a chance meeting with a stripper opens her eyes to a whole new world of possibilities.

[theatrepaul]

Sounds like an interesting season. Very tempted by all these productions :)

[theatrepaul]

Just seen Old Money and oh dear what a dissapointment.

The premise, a woman who's just emerged from a long, tough marriage (Maureem Lipman) to rediscover life and a chance to get away from her difficult & unsympathetic mother (Helen Ryan) and daughter (Tracy Ann Oberman) is a good one but the writing is very mediocre and really doesn't offer anything of real substance. The storyline wavers with no sense of real purpose and the performances are rather lacklustre though that may have something to do with the writing.

[Owen22]

I saw this in December and, as always, I thought Lipman was fantastic. And there was some interesting stuff, but in the end, you're right. Disappointing and a missed opportunity to examine a woman in her sixties suddenly reawakening.