Mark Rylance - Rave Reviews in Boeing, Boeing

As most of you know by now, I am a devout fan of the Divine Mark Rylance. He is currently starring in a Marc Camoletti (Don't Dress for Dinner) farce in London's West End. The play is called Boeing Boeing and focuses on a man who is engaged to three different flight attendants at the same time, until the arrival of a new Boeing jet messes up his "triple-life" and he has to juggle the women around so they don't find out about each other and his deception. Mark Rylance plays the faithful friend who gets pulled into the soup.

I love Camoletti's bedroom farces—I played Suzanne in a production of DDD a few years ago, and it was as much fun for the actors as it was for the roaring audiences. From the sounds of it, Boeing Boeing is tickling London audiences pink. Now I need to rob a bank and get my hiney to London to see it.


First, here's The Guardian Interview with the Divine Mark Rylance. Second, here's what the critics are saying about his performance:

The Evening Standard, Feb 20, 2007: CRITIC'S CHOICE "Allam's sexual deceiver is abetted by Robert, his sexually famished friend, whom Mark Rylance brings to timid life in the comic performance of a lifetime." The Independent, Feb 19, 2007: "It is Rylance, as his Welsh-accented innocent chum, who steals the show. From the moment he arrives, fresh-faced, from the provinces, blinking with disbelief at Bernard's real-life erotic fantasy, he is the comic heart of the play. By the end, festooned with airline handbags, his mouth smeared with the lipstick of various hostesses, he is clearly having the time of his life, as is a whooping audience in the stalls. It is a joy to behold." BBC - London, Feb 19, 2007: In an evening of (im)pure, adulterous pleasures, Allam and Mark Rylance, playing his friend from the provinces who is unwittingly thrown into the sexual maelstrom, demonstrate a propulsive comic energy that is carried on tidal waves of panic. The Independent on Sunday, Feb 18, 2007: "Rylance is a joy as Robert, blinking like a bewildered dolt but with a sneaky habit of getting snogged." The Observer on Sunday, Feb 18, 2007: "Mark Rylance - one of the greatest actors of the last 50 years - moves to a separate rhythm, while hitting the beat of the farce. As the bumpkin friend let loose in the city, he's most interior. His face - with small currant eyes - doesn't work, it thinks; his body doesn't gesture, it responds (he enters weighed down by the weight of his metropolitan hat). He lets thoughts swim out of him. Look at him and Frances de la Tour trying to outface each other: it's like watching an ant and a cobra going head to head." Whatsonstage.com, Feb 18, 2007: "Allam and Rylance show that the best of our classical actors are capable of conquering the most difficult of all acting challenges, farce... easily the funniest evening in London." The Times, Feb 16, 2007: "In many ways it's Rylance's evening. Tell me: is there a subtler comic actor in London? ...His wary, flustered wonder is a delight to behold." The Guardian, Feb 16, 2007: "The plum part is that of Robert, whom Mark Rylance invests with a Welsh accent and poll-scratching air of bemusement that reminds one of Stan Laurel at his best. Rylance, with his tenative gestures and secretive smiles, works in a different rhythm from everyone else, as befits a rural visitor. But what he dazzlingly shows is how the outsider gets caught up in the wicked Parisian game. At one point Rylance, overcompensating for the compromising undergarments found in his bag, essays a macho toughness which leads him to point his fingers like pistols and kick open a door in the manner of John Wayne. It typifies a great farce performance in which innocence is corrupted by experience."

GAWW, I need to get to London TOMORROW! I worship this man!
Performances until April 28, 2007.
 

Finally some Mark Rylance News!

Mark Rylance, Roger Allam, and Frances de la Tour will be opening next month in a farce called Boeing Boeing at the Comedy.

Eeeeeee, how do I get to London??? It may not be Mark at the Globe, but still, the Divine Mark Rylance. *sigh*



For the (incredibly dull) article, where this news originated, click here.
 

Return from London

Ahh, London.  The simple pleasures like riding a bright red double-decker bus.  One of those things you take for granted when you live in London and have to endure an un-airconditioned bus daily, but which you appreciate with childlike glee when you're just visiting.  If you're not in a hurry, it's a great way to see the sights, and you don't have to pay the astronomical fares of the tour buses.

Saturday the plan had been to go see Coriolanus at the Globe, but my aching, infirm body put a firm stop to that.  So instead, a little stroll in Hyde Park, a nice bus ride to Trafalgar Square where poor Lord Nelson was covered up in a blue contraption for restoration and some G'awful band was holding teenagers in thrall, and a short walk up to Theatre Royal Haymarket.  As I had feared, Dame Judy Dench in Noel Coward's Hayfever was all sold out except for obstructed view seats in the nosebleed section, and even those would have required my signing away the rights to my firstborn in blood, so it was a no-go.

Up to Leicester Square and the TKTS booth, amidst throngs of folks enjoying "West End Live" the annual festival of scenes from the big West End musicals, magicians, performance artists, etc.  Managed to get tickets to "Donkey's Years", a farce by Michael Frayn, the writer of "Noises Off."  It starred David Haig, an actor well known in England, though perhaps some remember him as Hugh Grant's stuffy brother in "Two Weeks Notice" — I was excited to see him on stage again, because he had been superlative as the professor in "Hitchcock Blonde."  Other better-known cast members included Mark Addy of "The Full Monty" -fame, and Samantha Bond, who played Miss Moneypenny in "Die Another Day" and Lady M opposite Sean Bean in Macbeth at the West End.  The premise was that of a 25-year reunion at an unnamed university, and the plot was that these Oxbridge folks, who now hold respectable positions (Haig plays the Minister of Education), are just as immature and silly as they were in their college days.  Not much for plot, but the excellent cast pull off a raucous show with impeccable timing.  Most enjoyable.

After show we ate at Garfunkel's, which is basically a chain of diners — I do LOVE having breakfast at all hours of the day, especially for dinner :P  The window seat afforded a first class view of one of the prerequisite fist fights which inevitably break out among drunk teen hooligans "every hour, on the hour."  The police are now monitoring the choice fight spots with video cameras, and a full van load of bobbies was on the scene in under a minute.  What with the football season in full swing and the majority of London population and tourists under 25 (and over) perpetually drunk, it must needs be a necessity.

The flight back from London yesterday, Sunday, was uneventful — I possess an infallible gift for sleep in planes, trains, and automobiles.  The trip was a great success, and my favorite part had to be seeing Nader for the longest time, and talking theatre, books, and life over Indian food at the Masala Zone.  Ahh, London, bright Lady of the Thames.  If you weren't so mind-bogglingly expensive, you would have a new resident in no time.

 
Tags:  Theatre | Travel | London