From the other shore

The Outer Critics Circle awards have been announced: see Playbill. Eve Best won in Jennifer Ehle's category, but Coast of Utopia scored six gongs, the most for the season. Congrats!

[...] Among its honors are Outstanding New Broadway Play, Outstanding Director of a Play (Jack O'Brien), Outstanding Featured Actress in a Play (Martha Plimpton), Outstanding Lighting Design (Brian MacDevitt, Kenneth Posner and Natasha Katz), Outstanding Set Design (Bob Crowley and Scott Pask) and Outstanding Costume Design (Catherine Zuber). [...]

There are now some photos up from the Drama League awards at BroadwayWorld; Utopia was represented by Ethan Hawke, Brian F. O'Byrne and Billy Crudup. Here are the boys at the meet and greet. At Stage Notes, you can see a shot of some of Team Utopia from the Broadway Show League.

Tonys predictions are stepping up, with Utopia quite prominent. The Record's Robert Feldberg is tipping it for Best Play and Mr O'Byrne for Lead Actor; Jacques Le Sourd of the Journal News and Michael Kuchwara of AP more or less concur. Michael Riedel of the NY Post goes straight to the source, gauging Tonys temperature from some nominators; according to them, Utopia will be battling Frost/Nixon and Radio Golf for Best Play. Steve on Broadway's poll comes up with the same.

Bloggers are getting in on the predictions as well: Carajoy of Full Force Theater Musings considers Jennifer Ehle a lock in Featured (spin round, spit thrice!) along with some other Utopians in their categories, while Josh R at Edward Copeland on Film thinks Martha Plimpton is a chance:

[...] I'm starting to really like Martha Plimpton's chances for Featured Actress in Play - she was absolutely brilliant in Salvage, which was the last play in the Utopia cycle and consequently the last one voters will have seen (Ehle's triumph came in Part 2). Of course, I love Ehle, but actually, it's a close call for me - and of course, Jennifer has her Tony, so I won't be upset if Martha takes her out. [...]

Michael Baker of Lunar Gemini bats for a few Utopians too. Another blogger, mole_underfield, went to see Voyage especially for Ms Ehle. He missed her at the stage door but says nice things about her "intelligence and her compassionate persona" in Pride and Prejudice. Peter saw the last Salvage performance, enjoying the acting and production. Manderson at The Art of Possible posts this wrapup:

[...] Of everything this season, I only missed one show... nothing has been as amazing and overwhelming that is the journey with the cast of The Coast of Utopia.

The sets, the lights, the costumes, and the most remarkable cast of 44 actors make this an experience unlike any other. Guided by, I am going to say it - Theatrical Genius, Jack O'Brien, The Coast of Utopia takes the amazing words of the fabulous Tom Stoppard and turns them into the most captivating philosophical drama I have ever experienced. [...]

A wee description of Utopia I liked from Chris Jones' review of Arcadia in the Chicago Tribune:

[...] Stoppard’s “The Coast of Utopia,” which recently finished its run at New York City’s Lincoln Center, has that riveting, hopelessly impassioned quality. [...]

And possibly the highest praise one can give a writer chez Sacha:

[...] I'm over the moon. The actors in this ensemble are storytellers on an elite level, Stoppard is gutsy and unsparing and assumes his audiences' intelligence, the light designer painted with light, shade after shade drawing me in, and the music wrapped the whole passionate, noisy, glorious mess in an embrace. Jack O'Brian, the director, had a vision and it was one that as many people as possible should see, love it or hate it. The productions were more than worth every cent I spent, every minute spent on the cancellation line . . . what line? Any memory of that left as soon as my eyes met the stage. What a wonderful, miraculous thing this is, stories told on stage. The very best ones scoop you up, and take you into their world, forcing you to forsake the daily life you have just for a few hours. And when you come back, even the real world has changed as a result of seeing good, very good storytelling. If I ever got a chance to really meet Tom Stoppard, I'd tell him that. He altered the way I see people, my world, choices, and events and that I'm disturbed by this, and I'm glad. And I think he'd be one of those people who could take something like that as a compliment. [...]

Elsewhere in blogland, love for Utopia and funny comments at Allison Williams' LJ, plus some general "saw it, liked it" from Tom & Alissa and Sandy. On the forums there's a sweet "Farewell to Utopia" thread at BroadwayWorld about how it's inspired people, some discussion of accents at All That Chat and another thread where daveylow writes about the last Salvage performance:

[...] I also found Salvage much more involving today, much sadder. The whole cast was in tears this afternoon. I was in the second row center so I was thrilled to be there. [...]

Anthony Grafton reviews Utopia for the New York Review of Books. It begins with observations about some marathoner' reactions:

[...] The marathon version of Tom Stoppard's Russian trilogy is charged with excitement. When I saw the three plays in one day at the end of March, virtually the entire audience stayed until the end. Some of those present—who ranged from eager students to slippered pantaloons—clutched battered blue copies of Isaiah Berlin's Russian Thinkers. Others congratulated one another enthusiastically on seeing plays "that are so much more demanding than the usual." One young man who passed me during an interval on the plaza outside the Vivian Beaumont, talking and gesturing as wildly as the young Russian intellectuals in the first of Stoppard's plays, cried "Knowledge! I want more knowledge" as he went by, smiling seraphically.

When the audience gave the actors a standing ovation—something that happens more often than it should these days—the actors applauded the audience in their turn. Some of them even appeared in costume after the show and joined the ushers in handing out buttons that read "I ran the mara-thon." The ties of feeling that bound cast and audience were almost visible and broke slowly. An older man, behind whom I walked to the subway after the third play came to an end, used his cell phone to give a friend or loved one an urgent, detailed, scene-by-scene account of what we had just watched. [...]

In the "links that fit nowhere else" category, have a read of Aileen Kelly's introduction to Isaiah Berlin's Russian Thinkers, posted at Slow Muse. Also, Dying City playwright Christopher Shinn was asked his opinion on Utopia at one of the Platform Series sessions. Oh yeah Brits, tune your tellies to BBC2 this Monday at 11.50pm to see Bedrooms and Hallways.

Phew, that's the news done! Now for the navel-gazey bit....as of Sunday, the grand Utopian voyage has finally come to an end. There have been more than 200 performances of the show, which must add up to a hell of a lot of sacrifice, man hours and creative energies spent so that hundreds of thousands of spectators could experience this epic event. Congratulations to every single person in the Utopia family - cast, creative team, crew, admin. And thank you. I can't do justice to the scope of this momentous achievement; surely there will be an elegy for Utopia in the NY Times or something. We all need some closure!

On our part, we've been chronicling the show from June 2006 when it was announced that Jennifer Ehle was cast (see hysterical post). Since then, it became an almost daily part of our lives as we hunted down every snippet of Utopia news and opinion available online. It's been a joy watching it take flight.

A lesser milestone passed a couple of weeks ago, the blog's second anniversary. We made it! Hilarious, wristslitty, absurd, humbling, hectic, exhilarating...that hardly begins to describe the year. For me personally, this was the year that web fandom converged with real life as I had the privilege of seeing Utopia with some fellow fans. It was incredible. The report from this is criminally overdue but on the verge of completion.

Said report contains an announcement I've been meaning to make for some time now. The short version is that I am soon stepping down from blog management, passing the torch to Abi and Kate. Officially I'm staying until the Tonys, but impending exam madness means my departure will be a gradual decrescendo rather than an abrupt silence come June. Afterwards I will still be around to enjoy my successors' work and help with technical hitches if necessary, but the blog will be in Kate and Abi's capable hands.

There are many thanks due to everyone who's helped with the blog over the past couple of years, but I think I'll keep my list of specific acknowledgments til June to avoid repetition. For now, thanks to you, dear readers, for your silent support. The little numbers ticking over on our visitor counter has been great reassurance that we're not talking into a void.

PS. Sorry about the weird popup, not quite sure how to get rid of it.

Salvage and Something Different

For a change, here's a blog review on Bedrooms and Hallways:

This is another of our films, which I finally got around to watching yesterday. And I loved it! It's a very witty, if altogether implausible, romantic comedy about a group of tangled-up thirtysomethings in London, from director Rose Trouch (who also did Go Fish). It's definitely worth checking out (if you're willing to overlook the far-fetched boy-meets-girl-meets-boy-meets-boy pansexuality of the whole thing).

And the cast - oh my, check out this ensemble: curly-haired cutie Kevin McKidd, who was in Trainspotting, among a million other films, and now stars in the HBO series Rome; pretty boy James Purefoy, from Mansfield Park and Vanity Fair, who ALSO now stars in Rome; the unbelievably adorable Tom Hollander, better known as the loathsome Lord Beckett in Pirates of the Caribbean - or the equally loathsome Mr. Collins in the most recent Pride & Prejudice...(though he's the cutest little queen in this film!); a shockingly hunky Hugo Weaving (who plays this sex-crazed real estate agent who runs around town getting it on with the aforementioned Lord Beckett/Mr. Collins in his clients' houses); and a BLONDE Jennifer Ehle, who we all know and love as Elizabeth Bennet from the A&E version of Pride and Prejudice (and who looks upsettingly like Meryl Streep as a blonde)

But back to the usual, Salvage review at Little Miss Nomad, though, it's not very nice about the entire trilogy.

Blog barrel

Of which we are scraping the bottom.

Random, a smidgen disrespectful.

Wilde review

Bedrooms and Hallways review

Funny freak-out about her blondeness. Read the comments too. Perhaps our subtitle should be "A fan blog with daily news and links about blondeish, Americanish, actress Jennifer Ehle." Just to warn people.

Blog trawl

Haven't had one of those for a while. There a a couple of foreign-language posts, so get Babelfish ready. Most are Pride and Prejudice-related.

Raffy reckons that Keira Knightley borrows from Ms Ehle:

La Knightley sa reggere davvero la scena e da una versione di Lizzy che rispetta la Lizzy del libro, forse in alcuni punti un pò troppo simile a quella di Jennifer Ehle (la Lizzy dello sceneggiato della NBC): tutti quei sorrisi a occhi stretti.....sono molto da Ehle.

Knightley indeed knows how to resist the scene and gives a version of Lizzy that respects the Lizzy of the book, perhaps in some points a little too similar to that of Jennifer Ehle (the Lizzy of the NBC dramatization): all those smiles with tight eyes.....are very Ehle.

And from, er, 马雅可夫斯基的臭虫. Use "Chinese-simp" to translate it. This is all about Ms Ehle as Lizzy, but I can't really make out whether it's positive or negative or what. There is this bit which actually is something like English:

The Ehle flavor, lies in the five senses. Another schoolmate said "Jennifer Ehle eye really attractive", I thought her eyebrow is more attractive.

Some nastier ones. From awakencordy's Livejournal:

Ehle was an okie dokie kind of a Lizzy, I prefer Keira's performance. Yes, Ehle is a pretty woman, but she was "all smiles" during some parts, and it was not all for the time of the novel, it was her body.. You can feel the rebelness in Keira's vibe, Ehle was so smooth.

Rebelness? *twitch* There's a malicious one at Any Eventuality. Read at your own risk. I'm serious.

At Cacciaguide:

So the Wright movie is an excellent addition to the Austen filmography, though A&E will remain the gold standard. Jennifer Ehle's Elizabeth in the A&E version was charming, brilliant, and just what the author ordered. However, I will be getting the movie tie-in paperback, the one with Keira's face on it.

And finally, for something different, a Bedrooms and Hallways review chez Writing of Harlots:

...we watched Bedrooms and Hallways, and I fell in love with kinda-queer-mostly-confused-James Purefoy just like everyone else in the history of EVER. As I told damned_colonial, his character was kind of a clueless bastard, but I want one anyway. Also, Hugo Weaving was in this one, as a real estate agent who used his access to strangers's houses to shag his boytoy senseless in increasingly decadent surroundings. And, there was Jennifer Ehle, who I didn't recognize for about ten minutes because she was BLONDE! AUGH! But thumbs up for light and fluffiness and SO MUCH BOYKISSING, thumb gravity for blatant stereotyping, and thumb WTF? for fashion used as a weapon. Ask your Netflix, it comes Sid recommended.

Our cup runneth over

Yep! Even more photos from Josie. 16 stills this time: Summerfolk, The Real Thing, Bedrooms & Hallways, Paradise Road, This Year's Love and a rare Pleasure one.

"Radiant" and "winning"

PlanetOut:

As Sally, Jennifer Ehle looks like a young Meryl Streep and is winning enough to make men and women swoon. It isn't at all a stretch that Leo and Sally share a special bond; nor is it making a statement on Leo's gayness. Rather, Troche gently and without an agenda portrays ordinary human emotion and unexplainable attraction.

Reel.com

Sally (the radiant Jennifer Ehle, from A&E's Pride and Prejudice), who is a school chum of Leo's. When some "more than friends" feelings start to arise between Leo and Sally, it becomes clear that the film is trying to be more than your average queer romantic comedy. By fully exploring the dual nature of Leo's and Brendan's sexual orientations, Bedrooms and Hallways bursts open rigid comedic doors and lets in the fresh air of complexity.

These are Bedrooms and Hallways reviews, by the way.

Martyn James Brooks photo

This is one of my all-time favourite photos. It's up on the fansite, but MJ Brooks has a slightly higher-resolution version on his site, with different cropping as well. There's also a shot of the whole Bedrooms and Hallways cast and portraits of the other actors.