Saturday, 19 August 2017

Angels In America, Or, My Love for Andrew Garfield




Today is the last day of the run of Angels in America at the National Theatre, and to honour this, I thought I would review Perestroika, which I went to see last Thursday. Bear with me, this could get emotional, or turn into an essay, so here we go. 

So I loved the NT Live broadcasts of Angels in America (you can see my blog posts of them here and here) but nothing could've prepared me for seeing the actual play. I tweeted a little emotional thread on Twitter the day after seeing the play, which I will now repeat here. So, when I saw this play as part of the NT Live broadcast, I fell in love with it, it was spectacular, breathtaking, mesmerising, brilliant, everything I hoped it would be, but it still felt a bit like I was watching a film, watching it on a screen, so when I went to see it live it was truly a different experience. Firstly, seeing actual professional actors performing the play in the flesh was an amazing experience. The acting in this play is absolutely out of this world, jaw-dropping, phenomenal, and emotional, truly the best acting I have ever seen or no doubt ever will see, if this play and the actors don't win all of the theatre awards then it is honestly a travesty. I was honestly moved by this play, and spent the majority of four and a half hours crying at this play, and at the actors, who were all so much more than amazing, but I want to dedicate the rest of this post to talking about one particular actor. That actor, ladies and gentlemen, is Andrew Garfield as Prior Walter.

Since I first saw Andrew Garfield, I knew he was a special actor. He absolutely gives his all in each and every performance, and this one was no different. Andrew's performance absolutely lit up the theatre. He was beyond spectacular, he was, I don't even think I have the words to accurately describe how I felt about the performance that Andrew gave, but I'll try some; astonishing, superb, stunning, emotionally charged. I won't say any more, but all the adjectives are appropriate for how wonderful this performance was. I am still going to try and talk about it for many many more words, because I could literally go on all day about this man. I said before that this play brought me to tears pretty much all the way through it, and it was down entirely to Andrew Garfield. The sheer emotion of the performance made the play so much more intense, and I left the play awash with emotions. Honestly, he truly delivered the best, most emotional, heartfelt, mesmerising performance I've ever seen. I genuinely feel so lucky to have seen this powerhouse of acting in this role, as it honestly was the best performance I've ever seen. I genuinely believe that he should win theatre awards for this performance, as he honestly was unbelievable. I just love him okay.

The only other thing I will say about this play is that I honestly hope that the National Theatre will release the NT Live broadcasts of this play on dvd, as I think everyone should see it, and because I am desperate to see it again and again.


Nic
xx

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