Signs of the times

A few weeks ago, we went to the Arts Theatre to see Cheek by Jowl's production of the overwrought Jacobean tragedy 'Tis Pity She's a Whore. Entering the auditorium, we were presented with a sign warning that the production contained nudity and bloody violence. Fair enough, given that these days when a character murders and dissects his sister, that sort of thing naturally occasions buckets of the old Kensington Gore for audiences oft rendered blasé by the various species of torture porn that runs through cinemas without any shrieking of "Look -- a video nasty!!".

Today, we went to see the Marlowe Society's production of A Midsummer Night's Dream; and the warning this time was that there would be smoking on stage.

Is this what we have descended to, that when a production decides that Oberon shall open the second half lazily waving a cigarette as he observes the chaos he has occasioned, that we have to warn the sensitive of the fact?

Some people need to grow the hell up.

Play — Rosenkrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead

The emperor has no clothes.

Play — Dracula, a tale of undying love

I am in the chat room
I am crawling the web, searching for you,
My search engine is tracing you.
Where is your domain?

Thus, the ominous East-European voice of the Count greeted the audience as they took their seats for the World Premiere run of the new adaptation of Bram Stoker's Dracula, by Bryony Lavery.

I confess to having listened to that intro with some qualms — but they proved ill founded. Using e-mail and texts (shown on a large screen built into the imaginative set), it recaptured the epistolatory style of the original in a hip and now setting; and only occasionally veered into ironic self-reference.

It was a very faithful rendition of the text, albeit abridged (cutting out the Count's real-estate deals in London), more so than other more period takes from recent years. I especially enjoyed the updating of the "Bloofer Lady" to the "Buffy Lady" — cute, and not too knowing.

Highly recommended. Catch it at the West End if you can't do it this week!

Play - Pedro, the Great Pretender

From the Spanish Golden Age season at the RSC, now playing in London, rather than Stratford, a rarely performed play by Cervantes.

Translated from verse into verse, in stylish fashion, a semi-autobiographical tale, interwoven with a plot involving gypsies, and the gypsy girl with the intent to rise above her station; plus general gibes at the clergy and the over-pious and over -credulous laity as one might expect from the period.

Interestingly different to English Jacobean plays that are of the same period.

And thence to dine at Simpsons in the Strand, no-nonsense best of British food (steak and kidney pie, jugged hair, aged beef off the bone, and of course the famous treacle sponge and custard). Don't think I'll be hungry till lunch tomorrow.

Also noting - there were the earliest daffs - or daff-alikes - in the crescent between Euston Road and Russell Square.

[Later]And I wasn't.

Theatre — His Dark Materials Part 2

This week, part 2 of His Dark Materials. Quite as well staged as the first half, and completely excising the whole wheelie-world digression - frankly, while Pullman is not at the JK Rowling extreme of Harry Potter and the Desperate Need of an Editor, the prolixity of The Amber Spyglass approached that modern nadir, the popular author's work being sacrosanct.

This made the latter half much better on the stage than in the books - though of course it was still shackled to the same safe moralistic outcome, for all the flim-flam sure-to-shock Republic of Heaven stuff, and ignoring the fact that in all the alternate worlds in its universe of discourse, what could be made once - the gate-cutting knife - could be made again, and again, and again.

Overall, better than the books, nice to watch, pity about the fact that the storyline can't sustain its daring all the way through.

Theatre — His Dark Materials Part 1

Went down to London on Saturday, to see the first half of the production of His Dark Materials at the NT's Olivier stage. Very well produced, and making such continuous use of the drum stage to achieve frequent fluid scene changes that I can't see it transferring well to anything other than a minimalist, almost-no-props version in a less equipped theatre. Especially, they get the daemons down just right, with some very clever and effective puppetry.

The play has so far worked through the books in rough order - though cutting out a lot of the boring bits (Will Parry's moping, which especially annoyed me in the books, compared with can-do Lyra; and so far, it seems, the astrophysicist/dark matter thread which also put the latter parts of the sequence on rocky ground for me) - and bringing an amber spyglass into the hands of the witches almost as soon as they appeared.

Next week, part 2, which is only being done as an evening performance, while part 1 is always a matinée.

Of course it's not much good recommending this production as it's now sold out to the end of its run...

The new Jubilee footbridge from Embankment was very convenient - but has succumbed to the temptation of providing disabled access by lift, like on the Millennium Bridge. The lift there has never worked; and the one at the Embankment end was out of service when we returned. Similar disabled access screwups happened at the NT - to access the cloakroom and disabled toilets on level 1.5, there's a staff operated wheelchair lift up a shallow flight of stairs, which also failed to function.

When will people learn that ramps aren't subject to such mechanical failure?

A week of autumn

Took last week off to to a lot of boring things, like clearing out old clothes from the wardrobe; but midweek, went over to Stratford-upon-Avon to catch one of the last shows in this season, The Tamer Tamed, by John Fletcher - a contemporary rebuttal and sequel to The Taming of the Shrew. As the play opens, Kate is dead, and Petruchio is remarrying - but this time the tables are turned, and (apart from the moral and another wedding), the play ends with Maria, the second wife, saying "Dare you kiss me?" to Petruchio. A good fun bawdy romp of a play, with much stealing from the Lysistrata.

Also saw Kill Bill - and as a fairly squeamish person, was surprised at how un-squicky it all was. It would make a fine Vingan Red Vows workout video... Eagerly awaiting part II.

At the start of the week, the cherry tree in the lawn was still in full leaf; each day it shed enough to need raking, and now it is almost completely bare. There are a few leaves on the plums, but the apples and elders are all still green. The Japanese maple was a brilliant fiery red display during much of the week, but that has shed most of its leaves by now.

I had hoped to do some more garden clearance, but between the drought breaking, and the weather being mild apart from morning frosts, things are still growing - the escholzias that started flowering in late May are still squeezing out a few flowers even a month after I stopped dead-heading them, which means that the front bed is still cluttered and is not yet ready for a good cover of rotted compost. Meanwhile some new seedlings are growing quite large.

Theatre

Did the Stratford-upon-Avon thing at the Bank Holiday. The As you like it... was not very well done - a new director had the actors all shounting their lines (spit everywhere), and all on one note. I didn't like it, and after suffering through the first hour and a bit, left at the interval rather than sit through another couple of hours of it.

The Cymbelline was much better done, and interesting production of a minor play (another instance of the cross-dressing/missing relatives plot). Unfortunately timing wasn't right to see a performance of The Tamer Tamed, a contemporary riposte/sequel to The Taming of the Shrew.