Und für diese Vorhersage von Michael Berg drücken wir doch alle die Daumen, oder ?
https://twitter.com/shoreditche2/status ... 7769743360

Anscheinend haben die überwiegend 5 Sterne Reviews die letzten Zweifler überzeugt und den Ticketverkauf ernorm angeregt.

Die Kritiker von The Stage, der vier Sterne vergeben hat, findet, dass seine Kollegen, die alle fünf Sterne gegeben haben, zu großzügig sind: http://www.thestage.co.uk/columns/shent ... -generous/

Die Kritiker von The Stage, der vier Sterne vergeben hat, findet, dass seine Kollegen, die alle fünf Sterne gegeben haben, zu großzügig sind: http://www.thestage.co.uk/columns/shent ... -generous/

here was even a five star rave from Libby Purves on her Theatrecat blog, though she qualified it by adding that the fifth star “is for pure opportunist cheek.”

THE GATES OF HELL CREAK OPEN…



It will haunt the memory for months, this profound, dark-lit, smoke-scented deep-booming production of Arthur Miller’s play. In the round arena it creates a ring of pity, guilt and judgement: the physically intense direction of Yael Farber makes Salem’s crazy diabolic terror rise again, as fresh as yesterday and as threatening as tomorrow. No need for updating: not in a world where women are murdered by their own families for marrying or converting, confessions are beaten out of suspects and even our milder law sees malicious denunciation, false memory, and a lust for scapegoats.



Miller wrote that when he approached the idea of expressing 1950’s McCarthyism through the 17c Salem witch trials, the “story’s lines of force were still tangled”. But that very tangling enriches the play. John Proctor (Richard Armitage in a commanding performance) has slept with the maid Abigail; when her hysterical accusations threaten his wife Elizabeth with the gallows, he fights with desperate self-reproach, and only through final degradation walks upright into dawn and death. That private tragedy, and the pair’s progress from delicate marital adjustment to terror, are given breathless intensity by Armitage and a fine-drawn Anna Madeley as his wife. But the wider tangle matters as much. Complex political, social and psychological subtleties jab at the sorest places in any society.



The action is driven by the religious witch-hunt, spreading beyond the village’s control: Christopher Godwin makes Judge Hathorne a striking-cobra of a man. But Miller underpins the ludicrous fanaticism about dolls and visions with hints of the small things that corrode communities: rows about pigs or lumber, poor crops and infant mortality feeding an instinct to purge and control which ends with orphans wandering the streets, cattle loose, crops rotting. Hard not to think of the Balkans.



The speed with which Miller plunges into tension is remarkable. After a sinister opening moment when in near-darkness the slave Tituba circles the stage with a smoking cauldron: soup or diabolic incense, depending on credulity. Then we are in the bedroom with Betty in a swoon, the other girls turning their evasive schoolgirl guilt into infectious hysteria, and the suspicion of witchcraft rapidly inflated by Rev.Hale, the pompous theological terrier with books where the very devil is “caught, defined, calculated”. Adrian Schiller as Hale is particularly impressive even in a cast as strong as this, his gradual loss of face and conviction dwindling him to remorse and horror before our eyes.



But the strength of this majestic, perfectly judged production lies in faithful perspective and contrast. After the first hysteria the Proctors in their kitchen provide a glimpse of sane, if uneasy, normality as they reach towards one another, trying without words to forget the adultery, laying the foundation of the heartrending closeness of their final prison moments. As for the ‘children’, girls led by the jilted Abigail in jerking, shouting, hair-tossing accusatory seizures, they display all the bodily ferocity which is this director’s trademark: somewhere between St Trinian’s and Bacchantes. Abigail is Samantha Colley: all glaring black-browed control, her decision to deploy her only weapon visibly growing from the moment she is rejected by her lover after a yearning “I have a sense for heat, John! you are no wintry man…” This ticking bomb is finally detonated by the fussy reproofs of the clerics, but Farber allows us brief levity as male horror at Betty’s faint is set against the calm of Goody Nurse (“She’ll wake when she’s tired of it!”). In this small but pivotal part Ann Firbank is unforgettable, a small pool of sanity amid the chaos.



Soutra Gilmour’s design is a masterpiece of smoky atmosphere, and Richard Hammarton’s soundscape cracks open Hell itself. But above all the beauty of Miller’s lines is relished, explored, set like jewels. “An everlasting funeral marches around your heart..” ”I have signed seventy-two death warrants, my hand shakes still, as with a wound”. Or the final admission of Proctor that he finds in himself “a shred of goodness. Not enough to weave a banner with”. But do weave one for this unstinting, profound production. It does honour both to Miller and to the Old Vic.

box office to 13 Sept

[b]rating: five 5 Meece Rating

Hier ist das Review von theatreCat aka Libby Purves, frühere Theaterkritikerin der Times und heute noch sehr angesehen.
Sie hatte Mr. Shenton auch erwähnt:


Von seinem Kommentar/ Kollegenschelte mag man halten, was man will... - immerhin betrachtet er sie gnädigerweise als gerade noch qualifiziert

Aber wenn wir Kritiker kritisieren und sie für voreingenommen oder missgünstig halten, warum sollten sich die Kritiker nicht gegenseitig kritisieren?

SHENTON'S VIEW
Are critics too generous?
By:
Mark Shenton

Richard Armitage in The Crucible at the Old Vic. Photo: Tristram Kenton
Published
12:58pm
Friday, July 4, 2014
Filed under
Shenton's View
West End
Tagged
critics, Great Britain, National Theatre, Old Vic, The Crucible
You don’t expect critics to necessarily agree, and we often don’t: I’ve often pointed out here how one critic’s one star pan is another’s five star rave. But a consensus regularly emerges around some shows, even if there are dissenters to the prevailing view, and I do sometimes wonder if some of us aren’t being overly-generous.

Of course, one of the problems about going to the theatre as often as most of us do is that our senses can simply become blunted, and when something stands out from the pack, there’s a palpable sense of relief that we’ve actually had such a good time. That automatically seems to add a star to our ratings.

But is this really fair on our readers, the ticket-buying public, who may have other tastes? I’ve wondered this twice this week, after seeing Richard Bean’s Great Britain open at the National on Monday and again today after last night’s opening of The Crucible? Great Britain is, in my opinion, perfectly enjoyable but pretty obvious; yet it garnered a solid run of four star reviews from the Telegraph, Guardian and Evening Standard, as well as Whatsonstage; there was even a five star rave from Libby Purves on her Theatrecat blog, though she qualified it by adding that the fifth star “is for pure opportunist cheek.”

I’m sure these reviews would have helped the decision, the very day they appeared, to confirm its immediate transfer to the Haymarket after its season at the National.

An even bigger roar of critical approval greeted last night’s opening of The Crucible, with five-star raves from the Telegraph, Times and Time Out. Yes, it’s very good – but five stars suggests the truly exceptional. Of course, that’s always going to be a very personal decision, and it is clear, for example, that Time Out’s Andrzej Lukowski was very moved: “The lengthy first half flew by, and yet I was grateful for an interval just to steady myself; by the end I was pretty much broken.”

In between seeing these two productions, I had travelled to Birmingham on Wednesday to see Cape Town Opera’s touring production of Show Boat. And during moments of musical ecstasy, I found that I had to steady myself, too. But by the end, I had to acknowledge that the show is pretty much broken, so my initial five star euphoria slipped to four in my published review. And I had the same feeling on The Crucible: as much as I admired the visceral charge that director Yael Farber brought to it, there are also overblown performances and some distracting directorial intrusions that also brought it down to four for me.

Natürlich. Ich bin immer für eine objektive Meinung. Was einen Olivier Award angeht, halten wir den Ball auch mal schön flach. Ich meine - Frage an White Rose und andere Theatergeeks - wie oft kommt es vor, dass ein Stück eine Reihe von fünf Sterne reviews bekommt? Eher regelmäßig? Was wir haben ist zwar das nahezu bestmögliche Resultat, aber ich wäre jetzt trotzdem nicht davon ausgegangen, dass dies ein völlig außergewöhnliches Ereignis ist. : :

Weil sie dann ihre eigene Daseinsberechtigung ad absurdum führen?