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Saturday 20 June 2015

An audience of monkey's !

If you're wondering how the 'play' at the Finsbury Park theater, I an tell you now. It's doing very well ! Playing to a full house, some nights. I was a tad saddened to learn this until I came across this on Moor Larkin's blog
 http://jimcannotfixthis.blogspot.co.uk/2015/06/intermission.html
 
 Park 90, as it's name suggests has an audience capacity of 90. There are however, two theater's in this glorified arts centre. The larger space holds 200 ! Just 200 hundred guys and gals, yes you heard that right.
The venue describes itself as 'off West end', 11 minutes (presumably by tube) from where the real theater's are. 
Off West End or not, Park200 has attracted the great and the good from theater critic world, can't think why ? From the Islington Gazette to the telegraph and more, it seems just about every media outlet , has either seen or has promoted this nasty event.
157 articles on or related to this play. Amazing when you think how many have been produced about Karin Ward's libel trial this week. Google it, tell me how many you find, I'm tired of looking.
For some reason, extra nights have been added to this 'off West end' production. NAPAC are well pleased as they are profiting out of the experience.
But, don't believe the hype guys and gals. Look a bit closer at the audience figures. Looks like folk tend to purchase their tickets on the day or closely before. 
Yes, all concerned seem to be doing OK out of the character assassination of a dead DJ who never uttered a bad word about anyone in public ! Park200 might have an audience of liars 

But, Park90 has it's dead monkey and not knowing what this is about makes it hard to decide which is the most tasteless 
 The venue's boss is over the moon ! I doubt he's seen so many folk through his doors, or ever will again. So many, they've put on two extra nights !
 There is indeed, 'much to be learnt from this DISGUSTING piece of our society's history' But I doubt Jez and his pals will be admitting that anytime soon !
And neither will Jonny Maitland or Alistair McGowan be admitting it either. But I could care less guys and gals because I know that even with a hundred more nights, off or on, 'West end', they will never attract the audiences Jimmy did. Here's jus a few of the 35,000 who showed up at the end of one of his charity walks, this one in Dublin in 1971 I think it was. 
It's in his 1974 book 'As it happens', as it happens !
Have a great weekend !

5 comments:

  1. With so many critics and NAPACs on the case, I wonder how many tickets have actually been paid for. I think we should be told... ;-D I suspect the premiere gig was all a freebie since it was a hand-picked jolly for vics and their lawyers.

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  2. Tom Stoppard's take on 'a share of the profits' (Shakespeare in Love):

    FREES
    Twenty pounds to the penny, Mr. Fennyman.

    FENNYMAN
    Correct!

    HENSLOWE
    But I have to pay the actors and the authors.

    FENNYMAN
    A share of the profits.

    HENSLOWE
    There's never any

    FENNYMAN
    Of course not!

    HENSLOWE
    (impressed)
    Mr. Fennyman, I think you may have hit on something.

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  3. Mark Lawson, for the New Statesman, notes something that I think others have picked up on too:

    "The play is generally most impressive when Maitland incorporates verbatim lines, especially those from interviews with Savile, conducted by Davies or by the detectives who questioned him in his lifetime, without prosecutions resulting. When the conversations are imagined they sound less real."

    Translation: the lines written by the author are a bit shit.

    http://www.newstatesman.com/culture/2015/06/terrifying-sweaty-memory-alistair-mcgowans-dark-turn-jimmy-savile

    Unfortunately, the rest of his article suggests we really are in some kind of alternate reality.

    'Oddly, while so bruiting its moral scruples, the production was slow to acknowledge a huge narrative debt to Dan Davies’s tremendous book In Plain Sight: the Life and Lies of Jimmy Savile (Quercus, first published 2014). The programme for the performance I attended referred only to the use of “books by and about [Savile]”, although, a few days after the opening, the writing credit on the theatre’s website was intriguingly amended to read “by Jonathan Maitland, containing research from the book In Plain Sight by Dan Davies”.'

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    Replies
    1. Why do I wish I'd never read that last comment Misa ? Are these people as ignorant as they sound ?
      In other news, I've just realised I've been spelling Liz M's name wrong, must correct ! :-)

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    2. Honestly, Rabbit, I find this all so disturbing, I wish I could ignore it and let it go away. But it's too important. If you and I find this upsetting now, with all we have read over such a long period of time, imagine how difficult it would be for anyone who has accepted the 'truth' that Jim did all this stuff to encounter evidence that he didn't.

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