Other People ( Archived )

Reviews

newspaper reviews

(L to R) Daniel Evans as Stephen, Richard Cant as Darren, Nigel Whitmey as Man, Doraly Rosen as Petra, Neil Newbon as Tan, James Frain as Mark. Production photography by Joe Dilworth

Direction: Dominic Cooke, Design: Robert Innes Hopkins, Lighting: Johanna Town, Sound: Paul Arditti

Cast : Richard Cant, Daniel Evans, James Frain, Neil Newbon, Doraly Rosen, Nigel Whitmey

CHARLES SPENCER, DAILY TELEGRAPH, 23 March 2000

“Shinn, still only 24 and unknown in his native Manhattan, comes across as a young Woody Allen for the new millennium, brilliantly and often hilariously nailing the insecurity, the unhappiness and the chronic self-absorption of struggling artists in New York’s East Village… The play is sharp, intelligent and touching. Dominic Cooke directs a superbly acted and atmospheric production, full of the sounds of New York and with slick designs by Robert Innes Hopkins. Daniel Evans offers great comic value as the nerdishly camp Stephen, a strangely appealing character despite his passive agression and “toxic” rage. James Frain memorbaly captures the smug certainties of the born-again druggie and his precipitate fall from grace, while Doraly Rosen is truly touching as the stripper in desperate need of love. Shinn certainly looks like a shining prospect for the future.”

DAVID BENEDICT, THE INDEPENDENT, 27 March 2000

“Shinn’s central characters are East Village artists sharing an apartment and, at the annual stocktake that is Christmas, they’re on various rungs of the success ladder. Happily and unhappily, they over-articulate their dreams and desires, yet the secret of Shinn’s success is in the way he exploits the dramatic gap between what is said and what is left unsaid. He works delicious comedy from the feverishly neurotic chat of self-analysing Stephen (Daniel Evans) who makes Woody Allen seem like a trappist Monk. Better still, he uses it to peel back the layers of denial and desperation as Stephen tried vainly to be caring and sharing with his ex-boyfriend (James Frain), a screenwriter so in recovery from severe drug addiction that he’s given up sex and found God.

“Unlike Shinn’s outstanding debut Four, this play relies too heavily on his generous interest in character to the exlcusion of other organising elements… The writing has great moments but not enough momentum. Just before the interval, a surprise in the plot kicks everything forward, but in the ensuing climaxes, energies become dissipated to the detriment of the piece… If such criticism seems severe, it is because Shinn’s finest moments show that while this is only his second play, he should be judged by the highest standards. Criticisms falls away in the light of the shockingly poignant scenes between Petra and her lover man.

“Writing like this is rare, and the same goes for the performances. Doraly Rosen lends Petra grace and simplicity to the play, while Nigel Whitmey matches Shinn’s genuine compassion with an unjudgemental and unsentimental performance that is solid gold.”

BENEDICT NIGHTINGALE, THE TIMES, 23 March 2000

“Real lives, Other People suggests, are more confused, scattered, odd, lonely and droll than you would guess from musicals that sentamentalise poverty or from movies that romanticise violence, or, indeed, from most other products of the American entertainment factory. The fact that the conversation in question occurs between a forlorn investment banker and the part-time stripper he has paid to talk to him reinforced the point.

“The trouble, of course, is that plays about confused, scattered people tend to be confused and scattered themselves. That sometimes seems the case with Other People. But if it veers about, it veers interestingly about. Shinn is a young American writer whose gifts for creating edgy, troubled characters, concocting sharply realistic dialogue and establishing a distinctive millieu are emphatically worth encouraging.”

MICAEL BILLINGTON, THE GUARDIAN, 22 March 2000

“Late in 1998, the American Christopher Shinn made a deep impression in the Court’s Young Writers Festival with a short, poetic play called Four. His new, full-length piece inhabits the same territory but the form is looser and baggier. Part of Shinn’s purpose is clearly to explode the romantic fantasies peddled by escapist Hollywood movies and supposedly fearless musicals like Rent. Urban life today, he suggests, is a kind of hell full of smart, sexually knowing people unable to connect. And the best scenes catch the authentic note of quiet desperation … Shinn writes with graceful compassion about people trapped inside their own skins unable to make sense of their lives.”