| Colin Firth Reviews: "Colin Firth's touching Aston has an unexpected dignity. He summons pathos as much from his considered reflection on Guinness (heartbreakingly, Davies responds with a comment on the weather) as with his account of his terrible experiences in a psychiatric hospital..."(Annalena McAfee, reviewing for some London paper, week of 16 June 1991) "As the older brother Aston, Colin Firth's hypnotic account of the terrifying treatment he received in a mental hospital sends the shivers coursing down the spine, and throughout with his ugly voice and awkward posture, he movingly captures the character's wounded inadequacy, diffident charity and aching need for friendship. .." (Charles Spencer, reviewing for the Times, week of 16 June 1991) "And Colin Firth's Aston, suffering from electric shock treatment, is a touching portrait of a gentle, slow-moving giant reminiscent of a different Lennie in Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men." (Michael Billington reviews the play, week of 16 June 1991) "Like some gentle, diffident giant, Firth, with his awkward postures and nerd- like voice, contributes a remarkable study of a loneliness that seems to have put the sufferer beyond the reach of help or intimidation." (Paul Taylor on Pinter's The Caretaker, London, week of 16 June 1991) . ~~~~ Chatsky (1993) ~~~~ 
| Alexander Griboyedov | Play | | Anthony Burgess | English translation | | Jonathan Kent | Director | | Tim Hatley | Design | | Mark Henderson | Lightning | Summary: 19th Century Russia. Chatsky, comes back to Moscow after an absence of three years abroad, doesn't like what he sees, and says so, loud and clear. His particular disenchantment is finding out that Sophie, the girl he loves, has been having a clandestine affair with his father's clerk, a smarmy and unscrupulous careerist. But his rage soon fans out to embrace everything else he dislikes about Moscow society - its snobbery, stupidity, hypocrisy, inane francophilia. Cast: | Sarah Crowden | Countess Khryumina, the granddaughter | | Jonathan Cullen | Molchalin | | Minnie Driver | Liza | | Colin Firth | Chatsky | | John Fortune | Skalozuh | | Jane Freeman | Countess Khryumina, the grandmother | | Bob Goody | Gorich | | Rebecca Harries | Princess | | Sean Harris | Peter, servant | | Jemma Redgrave | Sophie | Reviews: "Colin Firth, on the other hand, is an excellent sombre Chatsky;" The Sunday Telegraph, 21 March 1993 [From a review by John Gross] "But it is Colin Firth who carries the main burden as a superbly tormented Chatsky: combining Alceste's anger with Hamlet's introspection, he makes you feel that the hero's disgust springs from a genuine social and sexual idealism. He dominates a vast
cast [...] That is part of the overwhelming pleasure of Chatsky: it vividly shows the vanity and pretension that turns its hero into one of drama's classic outsiders." The Guardian, 18 March 1993 [From a review by Michael Billington] ~~~~ Three Days of Rain (1999) ~~~~ 
| Richard Greenburg | Play | | Robin Lefevre | Director | Summary: The play is set in New York 1995 and 1960. A drama about family secrecy and inheritance which makes its points by artfulness of form and clever doubling of parts, as well as by debate. In the first half of the play, a brother and sister meet for the reading of their architect father's will. An ex-lover of the woman's, the son of their father's partner, arrives; it turns out that he is a chief beneficiary of the will. Why? The second half answers the question by going back 30 years to the Sixties and tracing a crucial period in the lives of these characters' mothers and fathers: each actor now plays her or his parent. The device - with its deceiving resemblances and differences - graphically explains how misunderstanding rumbles through generations. Cast: | Colin Firth | Walker / Ned | | Elizabeth McGovern | Nan / Lina | | David Morrissey | Pip /Theo | Reviews: "The force of Colin Firth’s remarkable acting transcends the mere erotic appeal that on television made him the fantasy play-thing of so many women. He portrays two men who loiter on the fringes of life, brooding over how to find the key to happiness. Firth’s valiantly worn dejection always rings true. Dowdily dressed in despondency, an almost thread-bare charm and a long, grey-green pull-over as Walker, and then in the role of his bespectacled, stammering and introverted father, the less brilliant architect, Firth illuminates both men’s diffidence and pain." (Nicholas De Jongh, The Evening Standard) "This is a tremendous piece for actors and it is tremendously well-served by these actors. Each of them does something surprising....And Colin Firth is amazing. He is completely convincing as a pinched and bullying neurotic. As the neurotic's self-effacing and secretly successful father, he is a miracle of corrugation." (Susannah Clapp, The Observer) "But Firth is touchingly truthful as an earnest stutterer with little self-belief and a terror of children" (Benedict Nightengale, The Times) |
