DAY
TWENTY-ONE. AGE TWENTY-ONE.
Seen here as Mr Rugger, an evil landlord.
There’s something awfully familiar about this.
|
Very briefly I wanted to
be a firefighter when I grew up. Until I
discovered that it was possible for firefighters to actually die in fires (I’d
thought of them more as superheroes). Besides
which, I have always been incredibly unfit and was aware I wouldn’t cut it. Let’s face it, I wouldn’t make a good
superhero.
So anyway, one year I evidently
went to London for a few days and visited The Butler. Because
I managed to take in three shows in three days.
That was very cool. Anytime he
wants to invite me to London and take me round the theatres again, I’m game.
I recall once going to visit him
and we wanted to take in a matinee but due to the day we were limited to a
choice of two children’s shows. Either
we saw The Railway Children or The Witches.
Obviously we chose The Witches.
Unfortunately it was kinda rubbish.
This trip was a lot more fruitful.
First of all he had some kind of
favour to call in, and we got comps to
Noël Coward’s Brief Encounter
(adapted for the stage by Emma Rice, from the words of Noël Coward/Kneehigh Theatre/Cinema Haymarket/18th May 2008)
which was, let’s not beat about
the bush, unbelievably pretentious. I
appreciate what they were doing — there was no down time; when you were taking
your seats and during the interval the actors still had to be on, playing music
and handing out cakes and doing vaudeville acts, so it was pretty immersive (and
presumably sucked for the actors).
But the play itself was (apart
from drizzled in these random interludes) full of metaphor and trickery. I only remember
three points clearly
- the woman’s children were performed by puppets which was probably the best part of the show because the actors puppeting them were funny and convincing,
- to demonstrate what a great time the two leads were having at one point they were literally swinging from chandeliers, which was starting to push it a bit,
- and finally for some reason I can’t even remember any more they would occasionally stop talking and do some kind of elaborate sway and ‘woosh’ slow motion thing representing the ocean or the wind or something (possibly connected to the fact that the leads meet when a train gust gets grit in the woman's eye?), a sort of reality check I think, and it was the most poncey thing I have ever seen.
I did get given one of those
fortune teller fish though for some reason.
So, just so you know I am… either
False or Passionate. I’m unclear. If it curls up entirely you are Passionate,
but if it Turns Over you are False, so what does it mean if it curls up and
flips over and then jumps off your hand?
Next, because he worked in the
theatre, we got comps to
Hairspray (book by Mark O'Donnell and Thomas Meehan, music by Marc Shaiman, lyrics by Scott Wittman and Marc Shaiman, based upon the New Line Cinema film written by John Waters/Shaftesbury Theatre/19th
May 2008)
Although only if we went on
Michael Ball’s day off. In fact, in the
performance I saw, four of the leads were played by understudies. But I don’t have a problem with
understudies. You know that. Look what happened with The Producers.
The show was pretty good, I think,
but I barely remember anything of it (it didn’t help that I had only recently
seen the film adaptation). I’ve now seen
three versions of this story, the original film, the musical stage show and the
film adaptation of the musical. Pretty
much there are bits in all three that work better than in the other two. I think
if you took the moral complexity of the original film, the plot of the stage
show and the charm of the newer movie, you’d have a really great show.
And then we went to see a show of
my choice. So I picked
John Buchan's 'The 39 Steps' (adapted by Patrick Barlow, from an original concept by Simon Corble and Nobby Dimon/Criterion Theatre,
Piccadilly/20th May 2008)
which The Butler had seen before
and reported was very good. He had
originally told me about it back when it opened and Charles Edwards was the
lead (because I had a major crush on his Arthur Conan Doyle of Murder Rooms),
but I never got around to seeing
it. So now that he wasn’t in it, I finally got to see it.
And it was hysterically funny. Four
actors playing multiple rolls, using minimal props to great effect with
perfectly choreographed slapstick and all running around like little kids.
This is my kind of theatre.
That interval actor in Brief Encounter... is she making balloon animals? Why are there melons strapped to her? God, that show sounds awful. The film wasn't wank. Why is the show wank?
ReplyDeleteSerious drama is often wank. I haven't seen the film actually, not in a great hurry now.
DeleteShe was making balloon animals, or something anyway and those melons are also balloons. Possibly it was part strip tease. She also had a feather on her head that I have forgotten to draw.
I have now seen the film, which is infinitely better than this stage adaptation, although I still didn't like it because the man is a pushy jerk.
Delete