Rosamund Pike - Theatre - Gaslight

[updated 19 March 2011]





Reviews

Guardian
"...Rosamund Pike also gives a good account of the persecuted Bella... palely beautiful and suffering valiantly, Pike also implies Bella is corrupted by her husband, and at the last confirms Auden's point that those to whom evil is done do evil in return...."

London Theatre Guide
"...Rosamund Pike, who is quickly forging a reputation as one of the West End's most dependable leading ladies [...] creates a Bella who is flighty and a touch melodramatic..."

Telegraph
"...Rosamund Pike breaks your heart as his pale, cowed wife..."

whatsonstage.com
"...we see Rosamund Pike go to pieces and then find her feet in emotional turmoil, damaged but not beyond rescue if life should deal her a better hand in future. It’s a beautifully plotted performance in a play that still stings in its analysis of a cruel marriage as a criminal strategy..."

Daily Mail
"...fair Rosamund alone is worth travelling a long way to catch..."

theatre.com
"...showing stage power and panache...she's immediately arresting from the start..."

Observer
"...she comes into her own in the part's more surprising moments, as a sharp-witted victim who will take her own sadistic revenge..."

The Times
"...Pike invests her [Bella] with real innocence and a sudden, climactic attainment of some strength of character that almost makes you cheer..."


Bloomberg
"...Possessing the translucent beauty of Grace Kelly in her prime, Pike is terrific in the part..."


The Daily Express
"...The impossibly luminous Rosamund Pike pitches Bella's fragility and desperation just right. She is all fraught and frenetic, nervous and frantic, with an edge of manic hysteria..."

The Stage
"...her portrayal comes into its own as the plot thickens, with a superbly played revenge scene to round things off..."

New Statesman
"...[Pike] manages to inject real distress into a woman who doubts her own sanity..."

Reviews Gate
"...Tall and energetic, Rosamund Pike isn’t the immediate idea of the put-upon wife, but her lightness of voice, and the grace of her movement create a sense of timidity, someone browbeaten into submission through uncertainty about herself..."


Video blogs
Meet the cast
The final week

Articles
Telegraph
Evening Standard
Daily Mail
Independent

Pictures
Production:
Ellis Parrinder photography
Rex Features - search for "*671051"
Isifa
Alastair Muir/Telegraph
unknown/New Statesman

Opening night:
What's On Stage
Getty
Rex Features - search for "*671173"
Isifa
theatre.com
{Sam West was at the opening night party, there's a picture of him at Getty. search for "#74624981"}

Samuel West - Theatre - Betrayal - pictures

[updated 19 March 2011]

Various
Betrayal gallery at a Toby Stephens fansite

Opening night

Getty
whatsonstage.com
theatre.com

Production

Catherine Ashmore/Donmar Warehouse
Tristram Kenton/The Guardian
Alastair Muir/Evening Standard

Samuel West - Theatre - Betrayal - reviews

[updated 13 November 2007]



Theater News Online New York
"...it's capital casting here. It really isn't worth doing a Pinter if you aren't to have a star cast... it's a stellar lot you get for your money..."

Guardian
"...Superbly played by Samuel West, Robert initially seems a cold, calculating bastard viewing the fluctuations of adultery with sublime indifference. West gradually makes you see that the sardonic mask covers a broken heart...Toby Stephens invests the adulterous Jerry with a paradoxical innocence..."

London Theatre Guide
"...Toby Stephens is a laid-back, unruly-haired, beer-drinking Jerry, while Samuel West is a pretentious, old fashioned, whiskey-drinking Robert, and the interaction between the two provides much of the play’s funnier moments..."

Telegraph
"...Toby Stephens plays Jerry with puppyish charm but also brings a depth of pain and vulnerability one rarely encounters in Pinter...[Samuel West] brings a scary chill to the stage as the cuckolded Robert, rejoicing in the power of knowledge even as he suffers the humiliation of betrayal..."

Evening Standard
"...Toby Stephens and Sam West give sensational performances..."

whatsonstage
"...Stephens exudes all the raffish, boyish charm that is his trademark while adding new notes of frailty and aghast surprise at the unravelling. West is as dry as a biscuit, as clipped as a neat suburban hedge, but he breaks down mightily over lunch with Robert, glugging his wine with vengeful dedication..."

Independent
"...West brilliantly delivers Robert's lethally barbed banter but also gives you, in bouts of displaced fury, glimpses of a man crying out for help. Toby Stephens, who plays the weaker Jerry, brings out all the absurdity of the fact that he feels principally betrayed by Robert. But he also shows a person sensitive enough to be overcome by the nostalgic memory of a moment of unrecapturable happiness..."

theatre.com
"...the production deepens the minute West enters the stage, one's awareness of the bleakness lying behind his brisk, cool affect palpable throughout..."

Bloomberg
"...The outright revelation is West... Robert [Sam's character] has the least stage time of the trio, but West's gathering cool hovers throughout...

Daily Mail
"...in Messrs Stephens and West we have two greats for our future."

British Theatre Guide
"...Much of the joy of Betrayal is the audience's far greater knowledge than the protagonists of their predicaments but there are still enough surprises to keep viewers on their toes. The play also takes its audience into the hearts and heads of three people, with at least one of whom they may well identify..."

Observer
"...it [Betrayal] has in Samuel West the best actor of Pinter of his generation..."

The Stage
"...Toby Stephens as Jerry and Samuel West as Robert spark off each other with a great feel for their humorous, sometimes mannered exchanges..."

Theatre Guide London
"...West plays a man who might very well become violent with rage. But he also shows us the pain of the man, and the great cost not giving way to violence takes on him..."

New Statesman
"...West, as the knowing cuckold, manages somehow to indicate seething fury and despair that only occasionally explodes from his clubbable exterior, while Stephens, as the lover, brings a leonine carnality to the drama..."

Hampstead and Highgate Express
"...he [Roger Michell, the director] has atuned his cast to portraying the thought behind the simplest gesture...In this respect, Samuel West is a genius...Toby Stephens' Jerry is perfectly cast, boasting just the right level of rugged innocence..."

Tags: Samuel West, Sam West, Betrayal, Harold Pinter, Pinter, Donmar, Donmar Warehouse, theatre, theater, Toby Stephens, Dervla Kirwan, Roger Michell, quotes, reviews, links

Ruth Wilson - Theatre - Philistines

[updated 2 March 2009]

Production: Philistines, by Maxim Gorky
Theatre: National Theatre, London

Telegraph
"...Ruth Wilson cracks the heart as the plain daughter who has to watch the man she loves proposing to the maid..."

Guardian
"...there is rich comedy in the portrait of this exploding family...If there is tragedy, it lies within Ruth Wilson's Tanya who seems doomed to disappointment from the start. But the joy of a superb evening lies in the overdue rediscovery of a play that links the family to politics and that confirms Gorky was an unparalleled observer of his times."

whatsonstage.com
"Ruth Wilson gives a shattering performance as the almost spectral Tanya who haunts the shadows of Bunny Christie’s moody, brown-tiled, right-angled set."

Independent
"...a beautifully acted production...The excellent Ruth Wilson pulls you right inside the suffocating plight of the depressive daughter..."

musicomh
"...Ruth Wilson’s suicidal and ghostly Tanya - who begins and ends the play in seemingly hopeless limbo, a victim equally of her environment and her own self-centredness – makes a big impact..."

Daily Express
"...she makes for a touchingly wounded Tanya.

She is like a fragile bird and her vulnerability and desperation creates sympathy and lends her weary and ever-complaining character a great poignancy..."

Culture Wars
"...Ruth Wilson as Tanya seems at times to be able to draw the entire auditorium into her grief..."

British Theatre Guide
"...The young woman, twice described by her father as a "scowling old maid", is played by Ruth Wilson who offers the damaged, bird-like stage presence associated with Victoria Hamilton and has recently made a big name for herself as the BBC's Jane Eyre...Howard Davies has created an enjoyable revival that should continue the Gorky resurrection.

sean in the stalls
"For ensemble acting at its finest and a consistently absorbing, intellectually stimulating, play, head to the National Theatre."

Some interviews Ruth has done to promote the play
whatsonstage.com
Times Online

Links
pennyforyourdreams
sobfas (tag: ruth wilson)
IMDB
Curtis Brown

Pictures
wireimage

Tags: Philistines, Maxim Gorky, Ruth Wilson, theatre, theater, links, quotes, reviews

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