The World Premiere of a brand new play by Peter Nichols
Enzo Cilenti. Ian Gelder. Rula Lenska. Abigail McKern. Chris New. Charlotte Randle. Natalie Walter.
Lingua Franca
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3.0 (10) |  |
0.0 (0) |
| Venue | Finborough Theatre (click for full venue information) |
General
| Genres | 21st Century |
| Opening | 13 July 2010 |
| Closing / Booking until | 07 August 2010 |
| Production website | http://www.finboroughtheatre.co.uk/productionslinguafranca.htm |
Cast & Creatives
- Author/Writer Peter Nichols
- Director Michael Gieleta
Editor reviews
Average editor rating from: 10 user(s)
Doesn't quite coalesce
| Rating: | 3.0 |
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| Review | Michael Gieleta directs a spirited production but he can’t disguise the fact that the piece, with its unmerited over-sensational finale, doesn’t quite coalesce as great drama. It’s more a series of viewpoints on and snapshots of 1955, and as such it’s enlightening viewing. |
| Written by | Fiona Mountford |
| Full review | http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/theatre/review-23861261-chris-new-is-superb-in-lingua-franca.do |
Flawed play, but impressive production and performances
| Rating: | 3.0 |
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| Review | I'd really like to give this 3.5 - or 3 for the play and 4 for the production / performances. The Finborough is to be congratulated for giving us something new (an escape from the revivals of mediocrity elsewhere), one of Peter Nichols unproduced works and a cast to die for. |
| Written by | Gareth James |
| Full review | http://garethjames.wordpress.com/2010/07/28/lingua-franca |
This gentle memoir warrants a look
| Rating: | 3.0 |
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| Review | Nichols turns 83 next week and, aside from marvelling at his perseverance, you wonder whether the odd tear trickled down his cheeks as he wrote this. Lingua Franca has an elegiac strain, even as it warms to the memory of headstrong, ardent youth pictured at the centre of a motley crew of fellow amateurs in pedagogy: I |
| Written by | Dominic Cavendish |
| Full review | http://www.upthewestend.com/shows/fringe-shows/lingua-franca.html |
Acerbic comedy
| Rating: | 4.0 |
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| Review | Michael Gielata's production, aside from containing the sexiest seduction scene on the London stage, is also cast up to the hilt. Chris New as the selfish Steven, Natalie Walter as his Munich moll and Charlotte Randle as his discarded admirer make a perfectly formed erotic triangle. And there are excellent contributions from Ian Gelder as the liberal aesthete and Abigail McKern as the free-swearing Aussie. Too long ignored by the British theatre, Nichols is back on top form with a play that offers a Florentine room with multiple points of view. |
| Written by | Michael Billington |
| Full review | http://www.guardian.co.uk/stage/2010/jul/19/lingua-franca-theatre-review |
Not classic Nichols
| Rating: | 3.0 |
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| Review | It's not classic Nichols, but deeply felt and continuously engaging. |
| Written by | Michael Coveney |
| Full review | http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/theatre-dance/reviews/lingua-franca-finborough-theatre-london-2030293.html |
A grab-bag first draft
| Rating: | 3.0 |
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| Review |
The post-war Europe that Lingua Franca sets out to explore is a fascinating place, but, annoyingly, this frequently gets in the way of the piece ever turning into a real play. Huge chunks of historical exposition and national identity keep getting in the way of the broad, quirky characters becoming fully human. The cast (including Rula Lenska!) bring some finely observed performances to bear on the script - Natalie Walter's American-occupied German, with an accent clearly learnt from Marilyn Monroe, is outstanding, for example. But ultimately this fascinating study of comparative morality, the value of art, national identity and ideology still feels more like a grab-bag first draft than the finished article |
| Written by | Andrew Haydon |
| Full review | http://www.timeout.com/london/theatre/event/193014/lingua-franca |
SPEAKING IN TONGUES
| Rating: | 2.0 |
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| Review |
'Up a steep and very narrow stairway, to a voice like a metronome' ... well strictly that's 'A Chorus Line' but it could apply to almost any show in the airless attic that is the Finborough Theatre and particularly to Charlotte Randle's shouty performance as an English teacher in 'Lingua Franca' by veteran Peter Nichols. I'm sure she's a subtle and sensitive actress, but Peter Nichols' new play Lingua Franca doesn't give her free rein to express it as he confines all his characters trapped in a Florentine language school in the 50's to one-dimensional stereotypes: particularly Rula Lenska visibly straining to add a sophistication and depth to her flatly-written Russian emigre countess, Abigail McKern's hard-workingly crude but ultimately uncomical Aussie lesbian, and perhaps most wasted Natalie Walter as a Nazi-sympathising Mädchen just two telephone plaits short of Helga from 'Allo 'Allo. |
| Written by | JohnnyFox |
| Full review | http://johnnyfoxlondon.blogspot.com/2010/07/speaking-in-tongues.html |
A tragicomic treasure
| Rating: | 3.0 |
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| Review | Lingua Franca was a little bit of a tragicomic treasure, winningly performed by a brilliantly cast ensemble, nicely quirkily funny in the right places and yes, a little flawed, but all the more intriguing for it. |
| Written by | Ian Foster |
| Full review | http://oughttobeclowns.blogspot.com/2010/07/review-lingua-franca-finborough.html |
It’s wonderful to see a Nichols play again
| Rating: | 3.0 |
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| Review | The play seems stilted in the first act, and Chris New is not totally convincing as a barbed-tongued lady-killer (he’s a bit short, and has too serene a stage energy). But it’s wonderful to see a Nichols play again after far too long, and he recreates a period in his own lifetime, and in Europe, that is shot through with trademark biliousness and witty, double-edged humour. |
| Written by | Michael Coveney |
| Full review | http://www.whatsonstage.com/reviews/theatre/london/E8831279530381/Lingua+Franca.html |
An absorbing, often funny and acute evening
| Rating: | 3.0 |
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| Review | If this is one of those evenings that can feel crammed as you watch it — did it start life as a novel? — it swells satisfyingly in the memory. There are a lot of ideas bubbling away — about a world reinventing itself, about people reinventing themselves, about the pleasures and pains of living life as an outsider and how you cannot always tell the difference between them. I’m not sure that it entirely hangs together; I’m not sure that entirely matters. |
| Written by | Dominic Maxwell |
| Full review | http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/arts/stage/theatre/article2648789.ece |
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