Goodbye To All That
Luke Norris
Goodbye To All That
Frank has been married for forty years. Three years ago he fell in love. This taut and tender new play asks if it’s ever too late to start again?
3.7 out of 5 based on 9 reviews
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Omniscore:
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| Location |
London |
| Venue |
Royal Court Upstairs |
| Director |
Simon Godwin |
| Cast |
Susan Brown, Alexander Cobb, Linda Marlow, Roger Sloman |
| From |
February 2012 |
| Until |
March 2012 |
| Box Office |
020 7565 5000 |
| |
Frank has been married for forty years. Three years ago he fell in love. This taut and tender new play asks if it’s ever too late to start again?
Part of the Young Writers' Festival
Reviews
The Financial Times
Sarah Hemming
“It’s a funny and sometimes shockingly honest play. But Norris also demonstrates a great deal of affection and sympathy for his characters. The canvas is small – a working-class couple in Essex; the living room; the golf club lounge – but the emotions run deep. Tightly structured and written with a sharp ear for dialogue, the play draws you into this particular family nightmare.”
29/02/2012
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The Independent
Paul Taylor
“The early scenes pitch you in what is precipitated when David the old couple's sulky, reproving and almost-undergraduate grandson finds out about the affair. They are fuelled by bitterly amusing dialogue that has a pinch of Pinter in its aggressive proddings and repetitions and a real ear for the way the existentially profound pokes through people's verbal gropings. ”
28/02/2012
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The Stage
Aleks Sierz
“A small play but a graceful one. ”
28/02/2012
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The Times
Dominic Maxwell
“It’s about ties that bind past passion and into illness and incapacity. It has a few rough edges. But this is a lively, surprising and emotionally acute first play given a typically lucid production by Simon Godwin.”
29/02/2012
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The Guardian
Michael Billington
“What Norris writes about, with rare perception, is not just the right of old folk to an emotional life, but also the fact that love can take contradictory forms: it can, as with Frank, spring from a sudden surge of feeling or, as with Iris, derive from the habitual nature of married life.
”
01/03/2012
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The Observer
Susannah Clapp
“The play is intriguing for the premise alone, but Norris has made it into a nimble study of long-lasting disappointment and new hope in which blame and compassion are not stacked up in quite the familiar fashion.
”
04/03/2012
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The Daily Telegraph
Charles Spencer
“Norris’s talent is not in doubt - it’s just that a play this good only wants a bit more fleshing out somewhere in the middle to be properly outstanding.
”
01/03/2012
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The Evening Standard
Fiona Mountford
“Instead of watching the painful picking apart of a lengthy relationship, which would have been nuanced if slow-burning, we shift into more soap opera-y territory. It's giving little away to say that this new terrain involves some abrasive analysis of NHS provision.”
28/02/2012
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The Sunday Times
Maxie Szalwinska
“Norris’s drama is anything but comfy-cosy. If only his short scenes were more probing.
”
04/03/2012
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