Did not feel very royal. I’d like to speak to the King.

My personal review of the Royal Haymarket’s production of Grace Pervades.

As a whole, I was not very entertained. I found the show to be droning. It felt like it remained at a constant. There weren’t really any ups and downs. Nothing in the show excited me. I wasn’t impressed with the stage design. I wasn’t impressed with the acting all that much. I found my mind wandering a lot. Not to mention that the seats were the most uncomfortable seats I have ever been in in a theatre. But I feel that my opinion of this production might be affected by a few things that make my opinion unfair. Number 1, I forgot my glasses. We were seated in the furthest and highest spot in the theatre. I can not see things that are far away. So I couldn’t really see who was talking unless they did big motions to convey that they were. Number 2, the seats which I mentioned. And number 3, a very tall lady was positioned in front of me and kept moving to where I just could not find a resting position that worked for me to see the stage. So basically, I couldn’t see.

So maybeeeeeee, my review isn’t very fair. So I will talk about the things I liked! That’s more interesting anyway!

I really liked the transitioning between scenes. It was very smooth and there was always something happening. They used lighting well. They were able to make parts of the stage completely blacked out while having one thing lit.

Also, big thing, Ralph Fiennes was one of the main characters. For those who don’t know who that is (I didn’t know who he was until we left the flats to go to the show (I don’t know actors)) he is the actor that plays Voldemort *ahem* sorry… the one who should not be named in the Harry Potter series. I liked his character. He was very funny, and I think he did very well! But duhhhh. The costumes were also pretty fun. They were actors playing actors, so there were fun costumes when they were acting out different plays within the play. But I couldn’t really see them.

Ok, I said some good things.

My issue with the set design is mainly that it was all over the place. There was a screen that was used as the background that changed pictures for different scenes. It just reminded me of my high school productions that used projections to create the set because we didn’t have the furnishings to do so. From up high, the projections looked faded, since it is a thing that you need to be looking at straight on since it’s two dimensional.

I was also just confused on what the play was even about for the longest part of Act 2. I didn’t realize that it kept switching from past to the future, then to past but slightly more ahead, then to future but slightly more ahead. I was not getting that at all. Apparently there was a projection that was even further up showing the year and location. This projection was blocked off from my view because of the ceiling. I, with others around me, had to duck our heads to view it. This projection should have been placed where all seats had the ability to see it.

Overall, I was bored. Would I watch this show again? I would like to, but with much better viewing, and with my glasses. I feel that maybe I am missing something. In fact, I know I am, because I was daydreaming throughout the first act and part of the second.

If you made it this far to the end of a show critique that you didn’t see, thank you!

Here is a picture of the stage:

As you can see, we were very high up. And the ceiling and speakers blocked some view of projections.