Up For Grabs: GB, London, etc

Up For Grabs, waar Ripley en ik tickets voor hebben, is gisteren in premiere gegaan!
Hier wat fotootjes en recensies.
Wij zijn er op 11 juli! .

The Times schrijft:

Don't be shocked or morbidly excited when I confirm what some of the pre-publicity for Up for Grabs has pruriently suggested. Yes, the art dealer played by Madonna does delight a billionaire by inserting a nylon dildo into his bottom and does have sex with a dot-com millionairess while her genitally challenged husband looks wistfully on. But, no, we dont see these events, and, far from being sensationalist, they add point and punch to David Williamsons enjoyable comedy. Despite the crowds and cameras outside the theatre last night, and the callow whoops that greeted the actress when the curtain rose, Up for Grabs isnt The Madonna Show. The Aussie dramatists play would still be a lively satire of a debased art market if someone else were in the lead. Indeed, it would probably be livelier, for Madonnas acting, though it strengthens as the evening progresses, is a bit like her neat little trench-coat: pale, wan, lacking in colour.

Shes Loren, a New Yorker so keen to make her name and fortune that she herself guarantees to pay $20 million for a Jackson Pollock worth $18 million in the hope that her auctioning skills will bring her an even greater profit. But different abilities turn out to be necessary. Michael Lerners brash, coarse Manny is a Roy Cohn-like homophobe with taste for buggery. And Megan Doddss Mindy is tiring of men and especially of marriage to Daniel Pinos Kel, whose member has been transformed by enlargement surgery into a blend of potato and bloated cucumber. Even Sian Thomass Dawn, a wintry Englishwoman unhappily acquiring art for some vast corporation, has her personal agenda, though a non-sexual and rather benign one.

Madonnas Loren works to push up the competing bids, but finds herself pushed down in ways she never expected. Her smug psychiatrist husband, Tom Irwins Gerry, is appalled to find their apartment at risk. The intensifying pressures take their toll on Lorens nerves, ethics and self-respect. Its strong stuff, but it would be still stronger if Madonna could express desperation or even fear. She looks terrific, moves sinuously, suggests a certain waywardness and, when her marriage is threatened, generates some emotional heat. But she never forthrightly imposes herself on the role and, especially during a low-key, low-voice opening, could use a mike.

Still, Williamsons blowtorch comedy does succeed in searing off any residual pretensions the art trade might have to taste and integrity.

Buying a Pollock is an investment, a tax write-off, a piece of swank, or (Dawns case) an excuse for revenge. I suppose the objection to this is that not all buyers are as philistine as Lerners Manny or as vulgar as Pinos Kel, a self-proclaimed future person who bops and bounces around his computers with glad cries of Yow! So, yes, some of Laurence Boswells cast exuberantly overstate the case. But since when was satire supposed to be understated, objective, cool?

The Telegraph schrijft:

As celebrity casting goes, this is the big one. Short of hiring the Windsors to star in a revival of Sue Townsend's The Queen and I - and who knows, Her Majesty may have some time on her hands after the Golden Jubilee celebrations - it is hard to imagine how any producer will be able to top the lure of Madonna.

She is probably the most famous woman in the world, and certainly the biggest showbiz icon since Marilyn Monroe, on whom dear old Madge has often seemed intent on modelling herself. What's scary about Madonna is the way she has finessed a real but hardly monumental talent to such an inflated level of stardom. There have always been better singers, better dancers, better lookers and, ahem, better actresses than Madonna, but no one has matched her when it came to steely determination and an eye for the main chance. How appropriate, then, that she should have chosen to make her West End debut as a savvily opportunistic material girl in David Williamson's broad comedy about the contemporary art market in New York.

At the start of the show, I feared it would be impossible to judge this as a play at all, but merely as some bizarre phenomenon of hype and fan-worship. When the curtain rose to reveal Madonna alone on stage, the fashionable first night audience behaved like teenagers at a Britney Spears concert, erupting into applause, cheers and even screams before the star had uttered a word. After that, every line which might have some bearing on the star's own life was greeted with knowing, sycophantic titters - whether it was funny or not. And I must admit it is quite a kick to hear Madonna declaring: "My feelings towards the wealthy are deeply ambivalent. On one hand I hate them with a passion. "They're a constant reminder that I haven't succeeded yet. On the other hand I love them because they are the only ones who can make me wealthy." We might be eavesdropping on the real Madonna's nakedly ambitious private thoughts at the start of her career.

For the first 10 minutes or so she seemed seriously nervous; her voice tight, strained and, I suspect, inaudible in the gods. But while she certainly isn't going to give Nicole Kidman or Gwyneth Paltrow any sleepless nights worrying about the competition, her performance is far from the disaster many were predicting and some were maliciously hoping for. As Loren, a pushy art dealer playing three clients off against each other as she attempts to sell a Jackson Pollock - and facing financial ruin herself if she fails to make the reserve of $20 million - Madonna is often funny, and sometimes vulnerable and touching. She looks terrific, comes over as a far more appealing personality than I expected, and is a dab hand at comically kinky sex scenes. For make no mistake, Williamson's play may be about art, but it is certainly not art itself. The jokes are often crude, more reminiscent of a saucy seaside postcard than anything you would find in the Met. To get her price up, Madonna, sorry Loren, finds herself having lesbian sex with a dotcom millionairess while her husband, who has had a bungled penis enlargement operation, looks on. Then she is required to service an obese businessman with a vast black dildo. Chekhov it ain't.

I should add that in Laurence Boswell's slick production, with clever, high-tech designs by Jeremy Herbert, you see only the foreplay, and Madonna remains fully and fashionably clothed throughout.

In the final analysis, Madonna strikes me as being about as good as the play - OK, but hardly sensational. Both the drama and the gags become repetitive and stale in the second half, and Williamson's point that great art is nowadays treated as a commodity is neither original nor profound. Among the supporting cast, there's particularly good work from Sian Thomas as a boozily self-loathing art academic and Michael Lerner as the grotesquely revolting, dildo-fancying businessman.

Needless to say, the whole run is already sold out, but those without tickets needn't repine. Up for Grabs will appeal far more strongly to stargazers than to lovers of first-rate theatre.

De kritieken branden haar dus niet eens tot de grond af.
Dan vind ik het ongetwijfeld magistraal! .

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Op vrijdag 24 mei 2002 15:01 schreef Smike het volgende:
stargazer

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Op vrijdag 24 mei 2002 15:33 schreef Ripley het volgende:
Mijn salaris was er nog steeds niet .

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So, we have a date? .

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Op vrijdag 24 mei 2002 15:42 schreef Ripley het volgende:
. You are a doll!!!

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Ik ben morgen toch in de stad voor mijn Evisu shirt dus bel maar gewoon, dan gaan we daarna boeken!

Whoo-hoo! .

Kijk. Voorprettopic. Leuk. Enzo.

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Op vrijdag 24 mei 2002 15:59 schreef Neejoh het volgende:
hoi

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Yay, here's my stalker!

Een hele nieuwe!!!!

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Op maandag 03 juni 2002 14:29 schreef paarse_paashaas het volgende:
te veel tekst!

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Op maandag 03 juni 2002 14:32 schreef paarse_paashaas het volgende:
waarheen?

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Moeilijk topic?

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Op maandag 03 juni 2002 14:35 schreef Dave het volgende:
Hopelijk gooit haar zwangerschap geen roet in het eten dan...

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Op maandag 03 juni 2002 14:29 schreef paarse_paashaas het volgende:
te veel tekst!

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Op vrijdag 24 mei 2002 14:54 schreef kikkerlikkerfan het volgende:
Up For Grabs, waar Ripley en ik tickets voor hebben, is gisteren in premiere gegaan!
Hier wat fotootjes en recensies.
Wij zijn er op 11 juli! .

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Op maandag 03 juni 2002 14:35 schreef Dave het volgende:
Hopelijk gooit haar zwangerschap geen roet in het eten dan...

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Madonna has repeatedly denied recent rumours she's pregnant. The couple have made no secret about wanting another child. The Sunday People quotes her father as saying: "I don't know if Madonna's child is a boy or a girl yet - we just want the baby to be healthy."

When pressed for further details, he then said: "It's an area I can't really talk about - we just want it to be healthy. Look this is stuff I can't go into. Of course it's an exciting time. We were delighted when we heard, but I can't talk about it."

*** Please note that this report is not confirmed in any way. Several pregancy rumours have been around lately and this is most likely just another one. ***

^{Bron: Sindri's Madonna Page}

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Op dinsdag 04 juni 2002 13:18 schreef Mike het volgende:
Is het wel zeker dat ze meespeelt? Dat je straks geen understudy ofzo krijgt?

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Dat zegt echter nog niks hoor.
It wouldn't be the first time she cancelled. Or the second. Or...

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Madonna's family needs to start signing non-disclosure forms--her father Tony Ciccone has said that the music icon is pregnant again. Not surprisingly, Madonna (news - web sites)'s publicity machine is denying the story. "It's completely not true," a rep from Liz Rosenberg Public Relations told LAUNCH. However, during an interview with the U.K. tabloid The People, Mr. Ciccone let slip, "We are very excited that she is expecting again. It is always exciting when your children have children."

However, the 70-year-old father of the "Material Mom" also commented, "I don't know if Madonna's child is a boy or a girl yet, we just want it to be healthy." Apparently realizing he'd already said too much, Mr. Ciccone refused to give any more details: "It's an area I can't really talk about, we just want it (to) be healthy. Look, this is stuff I can't go into. Of course it's an exciting time, we were delighted when we heard, but I can't talk about it."

Madonna--who recently made her West End stage debut to some scathing reviews--already has two children: 5-year-old Lourdes (born October 14, 1996), whom the singer had with her former trainer Carlos Leon; and 18-month-old Rocco (born August 11, 2000), her first child with her husband, British filmmaker Guy Ritchie (Snatch). Madonna and Ritchie married on December 22, 2000.

^{Bron: Yahoo}

So how's our girl doing in her West End debut, where she's tackling the starring part in David Williamson's snarky play "Up for Grabs"?

Let's just say she shows improvement.

Compared to her fidgety, rickety Broadway debut 14 years ago, in David Mamet's "Speed-the-Plow," Madonna has grown in confidence, charm and poise. Neither does it hurt that the Australian Williamson made plenty of changes to suit her, transporting her Aussie character to New York and, I bet, increasing the kind of teen-speak and snappy comebacks Madonna can handle with aplomb.

Also in her corner is the sheer sight of this massive star on the snug stage of Wyndham's Theatre glimpsed for just 54 performances (including the one I caught last week) that will end next month. That gives each night more buzz than a swarm of killer bees.

It lends another boost that, even as she approaches her 44th birthday, Madonna has never looked more smashing.

Then again, her looming icon status can't help but prove distracting and disquieting as evidenced by the audience, which cheered every wiggle and dance.

In fact, the specifics of Madonna's life lend a level of irony that the play must struggle mightily to overcome. Madonna's character is a wanna-be art dealer who grossly inflates the price of a Jackson Pollock to help scam her way into the top rung of her profession. Every one of the other characters likewise hypes and exploits.

Ponder the subtext: On some level, Madonna has to be using this appearance in the tony West End as her zillionth attempt to be taken seriously as an actress, just as the producers are cashing in on her fame, which guarantees packed houses.

But if such cynicism lurks beneath the play, there's plenty of legit pleasure on its surface. Though Williamson's work seems lightly satiric, it smartly captures characters who have missed life's emotional connections and try to fill their inner emptiness by buying magical art made by others. The staging is appropriately spare, modern and cold, looking like a showroom from the Conran home-furnishings chain.

The supporting cast offers some enjoyably broad performances, especially Sian Thomas as a frustrated artist who has become a corporate shill and Michael Lerner as a crass mogul with a secret fetish.

Yet next to Lerner's oak of a performance, Madonna can't help but seem like a twig. Her biggest hindrance as an actress remains her speaking voice it's girlish and brittle. That helps explain why she can handle flip banter but not emotional consequence. In the past, she has soared in petulant roles, as in "Desperately Seeking Susan," or when she can sing the part, as in "Evita," where her face and vocals communicated a vulnerability her spoken tones never have.

If Madonna is still hellbent on this acting thing, maybe next time she should go for a Noel Coward comedy something so light, cool and fun that even nonfans won't have to watch through their fingers.

^{Bron: Madonnapower.com}