The Don (Juan/Mar) effect
While the domesticated country bumpkins are getting swept up by the 'Nigella effect', London's city slickers are out in force at the Donmar Warehouse for Patrick Marber's, Don Juan in Soho, a contemporary makeover of Moliere's 17th century classic. But, rather than attempt to eclipse the professional reviews in the Torygraph, Indie, Evening Standard, and Guardian with my own carrot dangling Christmas appeal to get you racing to the box office, I am going to use a different approach today: the guilt trip.For those of you too inebriated with all of the 'Holiday Season joy'- excessive drink, debt and dysfunction - to bother with a night of inspired, cultural escapism, I will provide you with sufficient chat to make you the cultured belle of the Crimbo ball. Because who can't win friends and influence people when flush with direct lines from the hottest play in town after Love & Money (which closes this week, and should you miss it would be a sin greater than voting Tory)?
Rhys Ifans (the Welsh guy from Notting Hill) plays Don Juan and looks a cross between Mick Jagger and Russell Brand. Rhys is a tour de force (correct usage?) as the hedonistic rake, with the best part of the play being the savagely funny one-liners that you hope you never will forget. So in an attempt to immortalise them I have listed a few of the best here. Because if you can't walk the walk you can at least talk the talk. Of course, a true Don Juan would do both.
Quotes from Don Juan in Soho:
DJ: "The world has two types of people: the fuckable and the unfuckable."
DJ: "Down with selfishness up with me"
DJ: "I am the Kofi Annan of copulation!"
DJ's sidekick: "Ever seen a dictator with blood on his hands? Never. First the manicure, than the massacre."
DJ: "The most frightening word in the dictionary is 'wife'."
DJ: "Nude as a spoon" - (referring to one of his conquests)
DJ: "We live in an age of apology, don't confuse it with authenticity"
Don Juan in Soho, Donmar Warehouse
41 Earlham Street, Covent Garden
Until 10 Feb
020 7854 7000 (returns available)
posted by City Slicker at 11:02 am
20 Comments:
Hysterical. Great post. The Kofi Annan one is legendary.
Thanks CS!
Read a review that it was good. Moliere is hardly funny at the best of moments , sounds like Marber got the best out of the macabre animal.
Great news I am going a week Monday
Cant wait
And second that call on Love & Money. Too good to forego people!
But Marber was so bad with Closer -the film and the play horrendous. So he has redememed himself? My brother went to school with him in London.
Inspired first quote. Now this is my type of theatre!
Marber said that when he wrote the play Closer he had come to the conclusion that 'there is no such thing as an honest relationship. The best you can hope for is an honest relationship with yourself'. He long ago decided that the best way to pursue the latter was to write about it. His subject has always been how much of ourselves we are prepared to risk giving away, and the consequences of that self-exposure. He writes, in other words, like a poker player.
His head is fucked to think only about sex and betrayal. I am not interested in this warped vision of his.
I know Patrick Marber - he grew up in suburban Wimbledon, but wished he could say he came from Camden Town or Islington. His father worked in the City; Marber knew, he says, from the age of 10, that words might prove an escape route. In his teens he was the kind of boy who would go to the National Theatre on his own and sit in the foyer writing notes in the margins of Camus or Bukowski.
At Oxford he was inspired by the Marxist critic, Terry Eagelton, and made an assault on his shyness by becoming a stand-up comedian. 'He had a big coat, too,' remembers one friend. 'And he tried that enigmatic, brainy thing.'
Marber is, by all accounts, an obsessive rewriter, ruthlessly shedding favourite lines for the sake of the whole: 'If it stops changing, it's dead.' He is as hard, or as clear-sighted, about the shape of his life, too. Courted by Hollywood since the extraordinary success of Closer he has decided to wait his moment to up the ante,
Play sounds good.
But how do yuo peeps know about the writer's life?
Puzzled...??!!
Great quotes. Sounds fun. Better than all the family oriented stuff on play now in the West End.
Cool thanks going to use the wife one on fiancee should go down well.
Ah thanks for reminder. I saw it reviewed in Vanity Fair this month and wanted to go.
Just got 2 seats for Friday before Christmas. Top tip :-)
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A tour de force is an act of strength. So it's more likely that his performance was, than he himself.
You may carry on.
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Ughhhhhhhh CS!!
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Anyways cool blog
Rhys was great. Attended this play last night. What a show. The Great Statute was excellently portrayed. The lighting as well. Casts different spells. Was not entirely blown away at the end though. He could have suffered more.
Brill
Off to see tonight
Picked up £8 standing seat to learn there is no interval
Argh
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