Grief
Mike Leigh
Grief
Mike Leigh's new play deals, as one might expect, with intense, awkward and frustrating relationships. In the second half of the fifties, Dorothy, a war widow, has relocated with her daughter and the twin spectres of her absent husband and a changing world to her older brother's house in the suburbs. Together the three negotiate an anxious world of routine, ritual and repression.
3.6 out of 5 based on 10 reviews
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Omniscore:
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| Location |
South Bank |
| Venue |
National Theatre |
| Director |
Mike Leigh |
| Cast |
Marion Bailey, Sam Kelly, Wendy Nottingham Lesley Manville |
| From |
September 2011 |
| Until |
October 2011 |
| Box Office |
0207452 3000 |
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Mike Leigh's new play deals, as one might expect, with intense, awkward and frustrating relationships. In the second half of the fifties, Dorothy, a war widow, has relocated with her daughter and the twin spectres of her absent husband and a changing world to her older brother's house in the suburbs. Together the three negotiate an anxious world of routine, ritual and repression.
Reviews
The Independent on Sunday
Kate Bassett
“The household's quiet agonies are charted with acute delicacy. Everything is muted in Dorothy's taupe, carpeted living room in a way that's deliberately undramatic yet intense, making you hypersensitive to the merest flicker of stifled emotion... Extraordinarily poignant.”
24/09/2007
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The Stage
Michael Coveney
“Taut, tight and brilliantly controlled... I don’t think Leigh has ever produced work quite as tense and concentrated as Grief”
21/09/2007
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The Daily Telegraph
Charles Spencer
“Be warned: brilliant though it often is, Grief casts a potent pall of desolation that lingers long after the show itself is over.”
21/09/2007
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Time Out
Caroline McGinn
“Each tight performance is the tip of an entire mysterious life. When the two hours of gradual revelation is up, you wish you could rewind and rewatch.”
25/09/2007
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The Independent
Paul Taylor
“Meticulously evocative ”
22/09/2007
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The Times
Libby Purves
“As to plot, well, nobody gets more truthful performances from actors than Mike Leigh, but few have less regard for storytelling. When it all ends grimly, you always knew it would.”
21/09/2007
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The Sunday Times
Maxie Szalwinska
“Exquisitely observed, profoundly quiet”
24/09/2007
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The Observer
Kate Kellaway
“At the end, although the two hours have been absorbing, occasionally poignant and sometimes hilarious with flashes of Leigh's unique magic – one is left unsurprised and dry-eyed, unable to share in anyone's grief.”
24/09/2007
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The Evening Standard
Henry Hitchings
“[Leigh's] vision of domestic wretchedness is profound, even if in the end it isn't heartrending.”
21/09/2007
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The Guardian
Michael Billington
“While it doesn't disappoint in its exploration of the hermetic strangeness of English family life, it lacks the richness of texture of Leigh's finest work for stage and film.”
21/09/2007
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