Her review of a play called Holding the Man showcases a quality that endears Alison Croggon to me:
“There are few more isolating experiences than sitting unmoved in an auditorium that echoes with muffled sobs.”
(Such an experience is not unknown to me in Chicago.)
“I don’t doubt for a moment the reality of the feelings prompted by this show, nor the sincerity of those who made it. And it's clearly struck a chord in a wide audience[.]”
“I... feel that these impassioned responses are less to the play itself than to its subject matter, and are validated by a sense of its authenticity.”
How reminiscent of the first review by Croggon that commanded my attention, which begins, “Theatre has made me well used to what Michael Billington once memorably termed ‘mutinous isolation’: sitting among a rapturously applauding audience as a personal black cloud rains down on my... brow.”
* * *
On YouTube one can find Croggon interviewing Tom Stoppard. I watched a little but I stoppard. Here she gives a very good disquisition of his work entire. I like Stoppard, reservedly, and have not seen his play Rock’n’Roll which prompts the review.
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