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THE PRIDE (2008) - Philip (1958 & 2008)
©2008 Royal Court Theatre

21 November - 20 December 2008 - Jerwood Theatre Upstairs (Royal Court Theatre, Sloane Square, London)

The 1958 Philip is in love with Oliver, but married to Sylvia. The 2008 Oliver is addicted to sex with strangers. Sylvia loves them both.
The Pride examines changing attitudes to sexuality over a period of 50 years, looking at intimacy, identity and the courage it takes to be who you really are.

Philip - JJ Feild / Oliver - Bertie Carvel / Sylvia - Lyndsey Marshal / Written by Alexi Kaye Campbell / Directed by Jamie Lloyd

The Pride won the Laurence Olivier Award 2009 for Outstanding Achievement in an Affiliate Theatre

REVIEWS - THE PRIDE

2009-01-05 Josie Rourke Theatre Blog (Download as JPG)

Even without the rep system that was Pinter's inheritance, some fine actor-playwrights have been produced for the first time over the past year. Alexi Kaye Campbell's The Pride at the Royal Court had an intimate understanding of the kind of writing that makes actors fly.

2009-01-02 Variety (Download as JPG)

The same theater also saw the debut of the year from actor-turned-playwright Alexi Kaye Campbell, whose spellbinding "The Pride" had the structural intelligence and emotional maturity that left most plays looking decidedly flimsy. Happily, there's more in the pipeline: Campbell has already delivered his second play to the Bush Theater, which smartly commissioned him before "The Pride" was in rehearsal.

2008-12-30 International Herald Tribune (Download as JPG)

The novice dramatist Alexi Kaye Campbell's extraordinarily accomplished "The Pride" had too short a run this month at the Royal Court's tiny Theatre Upstairs, which meant that only a select few were able to savor a fully able quartet of actors in Bertie Carvel, JJ Feild, Lyndsey Marshal and Tim Steed.

2008-12-30 Sebastian Gillies (Download as JPG)

Despite the interesting period contrast, all the characters still grapple with emotions they don’t quite understand and the results are the same – loneliness, un-fulfilment and guilt. Self-deception in the 50’s has become self-hate in the present.

2008-12-18 Tribune Magazine (Download as JPG )

"The cast – Bertie Carvel (Oliver), JJ Feild (Philip) and Lyndsey Marshal (Sylvia) – are better in the zesty contemporary scenes than in the clipped and taut 1950s world, while designer Soutra Gilmour’s dreamy set, with its clouded mirror reflecting and refracting images of the audience, brings the stage world into the real one."

2008-12-18 Theatre Guide London (Download as JPG )

"Feild makes the 1958 Philip almost a parody of Noel Coward without the wit, his emotions as tightly controlled as his clipped speech, but so buttoned-down that he constantly threatens to explode, while the 2008 Philip is healthy, self-accepting and unhappy only in his love life."

2008-12-17 TimeOut (Download as JPG )

"Not (as his hilarious men’s mag editor supposes)out of pure fun and freedom, but out of the historical origins – revealed in the tragic story of ’50s Oliver and Philip – of his contemporary identity. In less subtle hands, the wordier aspects of Campbell’s drama might have been stiff, but here they are integral to an illuminating, moving night of theatre."

2008-12-15 Hal for King-Blogspot (Download as JPG )

"This is a beautiful, tightly constructed muse on the changing views and taboos between 1958 and 2008. The set was wonderfully economical but still retained a richness. The performances where fantastic all round as they got their teeth into long speeches and punchy dialogue."

2008-12-14 Louise´s Theatre Review (Download as JPG )

"...whilst JJ Feild’s staccato delivery as married 50’s Philip gives way to real anguish as he realises, but still fights against, his true nature."

2008-12-10 Sky Art (Download as JPG )

"And it’s an opportunity to see four outstanding performers in what is a well-paced, highly enjoyable piece of accessible theatre that’s just about us, people, and how we’re similar yet different from each other and just struggling to try and be happy with our day-to-day lives."

2008-12-08 Pink Paper Magazine (Download as JPG)

"The actors superbly navigate between comic moments and fast tricky dialogue that shows the uselessness of words when you can't express what you need to."

2008-12-07 Observer (Download as JPG )

"As the repressed husband, JJ Feild gleams with misery..."

2008-12-04 musicOMH (Download as JPG )

"JJ Feild, as the 1950s Philip provides a strong sense of a man, who though calm and collected on the surface, has been hollowed out by his inability to be the man he feels he should be."

"The Pride is a bit too wordy, at times getting bogged down in long descriptions of dreams, but it is a powerful and promising piece of writing."

2008-12-04 Variety.com (Download as JPG )

"A haunting scene with Philip and an aversion therapist in the '50s is contrasted in 2008 by one with Oliver meeting a hilariously know-it-all, straight magazine editor intent on commissioning a piece on "the whole gay thing."

"Campbell's background as an actor serves him extremely well in his adroit handling of subtext, which the immaculate cast feasts upon. But it's the rigorous unsentimentality of Lloyd's direction that's most impressive. His actors are never allowed to indulge themselves through overt displays of the underlying pain and longing that courses through the play, instead leaving audiences to discover for themselves what lies beneath the surface."

2008-12-03 What´s on Stage (Download as JPG )

What´s on Stage Blog (Download as JPG )

"Ever on the prowl, Oliver nonetheless pines for the photographer, Feild's huskily spoken Philip, who has been driven away by his lover's promiscuity."

"The Pride, meanwhile, makes all manner of connections of its own. Let's have more from Campbell, please, and soon."

2008-12-03 British Theatre Guide (Download as JPG )

"J.J.Feild's Philip is torn between his inclinations and his genuine love for his wife Sylvia (Lyndsey Marshal)."

"This is to take nothing away from any of the four actors, all of whom give the evening their all, the leading three all bringing real sympathy for the damaged souls that they portray."

2008-12-03 Financial Times (Download as JPG )

"As Philip, JJ Feild has one excellent scene towards the end, volunteering to undergo a primitive form of aversion therapy to “cure” him, he hopes, of his love for Oliver more than his sexual desires."

2008-12-03 Times Online (Download as JPG )

****

"Alexi Kaye Campbell's impressive debut gives us three actors embodying three lives as they might have been lived in two very different periods: grey, repressive 1958 and a 2008 that brings its own pressures and difficulties?"

2008-12-02 Telegraph (Download as JPG )

"J.J Feild brilliantly captures the corrosive self-loathing of Philip, which leads him to aversion therapy..."

2008-12-02 International Herald Tribune (Download as JPG )

"The director, Jamie Lloyd, completes a 2008 hat trick, following an earlier Pinter double bill and then "Piaf" with another smart, spry production whose backdrop of a tarnished mirror communicates the appropriate distressed chic. (Soutra Gilmour once again is Lloyd's expert designer.) "All I can do is whisper from a distance," Sylvia remarks in a farewell that acts as both warning and benediction."

2008-12-02 Official London Theatre Guide (Download as JPG )

"Feild’s 1958 Philip is a taut, tense picture of restrained emotion, desperate to deny that which everyone else knows to be true..."

2008-12-02 The Stage (Download as JPG )

"What saves the play are its flashes of humour and its elements of fantasy, with spooky presences beautifully rendered in director Jamie Lloyd’s careful production. The cast - Bertie Carvel (Oliver), JJ Feild (Philip) and Lyndsay Marshal (Sylvia) - are better in the zesty contemporary scenes than in the clipped and taut fifties world, while designer Soutra Gilmour’s dreamy set, with its clouded mirror reflecting and refracting images of the audience, brings the stage world into the real one."

2008-12-02 Evening Standard / This is London (Download as JPG )

"There’s a hint of male to male attraction but when Oliver’s child-like, desperate Oliver tries to persuade Feild’s repressed, self-deceiving Philip to resume their affair, the two actors stoke up an emotional blaze in a scene of virtual male-rape and humiliation. Feild’s piercing scream of shame, his spasms of violence and subsequent tearful breakdown, his grim stoicism when facing up to aversion therapy, define an extraordinary performance that unerringly captures the 1950s mood and its cruel, homophobic spirit."

2008-12-02 Guardian (Download as JPG )

"JJ Feild is especially good as the uptight 1950s Philip wrestling with a fierce passion he never fully comprehends."

2008-12-01 Reviews Gate (Download as JPG )

"And the fine cast in Jamie Lloyd’s production, at once fast-paced and allowing key moments the necessary space to resonate, catch the anguish, guilt and changes in status – as, for example, Field crumbles from assertive husband through assertive homophobe to the despair of guilty desire, or in the contrast between Lyndsey Marchal’s crystal-cut fifties anguish and the independent, northern-vowelled 2008 Sylvia."

REVIEWS - RING ROUND THE MOON

Ring Round the Moon (2008) - Hugo/Frédéric
©2008 Ring Round the Moon

The original play L'Invitation au Château has been written in 1947 by french dramatist Jean Anouilh . In 1950 it was adapted by Christopher Fry especially for the british audience. He gave it the more poetic name Ring Round the Moon.

Ring Round the Moon was performed first 1962 in the Globe Theatre, starring Paul Schofield as Hugo/Frédéric and Margaret Rutherford as Madame Desmortes.

In the 2008 adaptation JJ Feild plays the role of identical twins Hugo/Frédéric (written for one actor).

Summary:

Frédéric, a sensitive dreamer, is immortal in love and engaged with Diana, daughter of the selfmade millionair Messerschman. On the other hand Diana is actually in love with Hugo, the arrogant playboy. To show Frédéric, that Diana isn't worth his love, Hugo yarns a scheming net. Scene is the spring ball at the castle of his aunt Madame Desmortes.

©2008 Public Eye