Diary of a Grammatical Misfit

With the whole new-job-sort-of as well as the hunt for new-job-proper and the finishing off at old-job, I have managed not to blog about some of the shows I’ve seen recently.

Four in fact, in chronological order (and at the rate of one each week for last four - how neat!) they are: Treats, The Hound of the Baskervilles, The Royal Ballet’s Mayerling and The Drowsy Chaperone.

Treats was interesting. It has a frustrating ending but that’s pretty much the point and I’m afraid it’s horribly realistic. The performances (Billie Piper, Kris Marshall and Laurence Fox) were all really good if occasionally patchy from the first two. It is a serious play but I did voice the desire to my friend that one of the actors might get a bit less clothed in the second act. Annoyingly, the only one that got topless was Piper.

What can I say about The Hound of the Baskevilles and The Drowsy Chaperone…? Both are pure entertainment, both are beautifully amusing spoofs (the former of Sherlock Holmes obviously, the latter of musicals in general) and both are on the same street (irrelevant but true). Both highly recommended to anyone who wants to switch their brain off and laugh a lot.

Mayerling is a stunning ballet although given its basic plot of madness, adultery, drugs, murder and suicide (with a bit of rape, fighting and prostitution thrown in for good measure), it seemed inappropriate that children should be in the audience. I might have been biased though since the sevenish-year old behind me would not stop whispering. Grrrrrrrrr.

There’s a little voice singing inside my head. It’s a good voice even though it’s little because it’s the ghost of some good voices I heard on Saturday.

“Little shop… Little shop of horr-ors….Little shop…Little shop of horr-ors”

Musicals are a pain for that. They boost you up and make you jolly and everything’s good. But for days after they buzz around your ears and your brain and your footsteps.

“Little shop… Little shop of horr-ors….Little shop…Little shop of horr-ors”

That last one might sound weird but I’m sure I’m not the only one whose walking rythym is affected by the tune that’s playing in the head? This morning I walked along with a jaunty bounce. Most ridiculous for a Monday morning - I am expecting the white coated people to arrive any minute.

“Little shop… Little shop of horr-ors….Little shop…Little shop of horr-ors”

I feel I’ve let this blog down by failing to mention two things I went to see in March that were fabulous. I missed out a couple back in November/December time too but they’re waaaaaay too long ago so I will pretend they do not exist. Or mention them in relation to April to pretend I’m not having a boring month…

The two things from March were Push and the Barenaked Ladies and I loved them both.

Push was incredible. The show is nominally ballet - a selection of pieces choreographed by Russell Maliphant and performed by him and Sylvie Guillem. The pieces were unusual - there was some incredible lighting design and a wide variety of music styles. The overall effect was powerful elegance. Wow.

It was the first time I’d seen Sylvie Guillem dance but I will do so again on Friday - this time in a programme called Sacred Monsters with Akram Khan. I hope it’s as good as Push.

First time for Sylvie, second time for Barenaked Ladies. First time was Glastonbury 1999, this time was at the Hammersmith Apollo (a legendary venue in my world as it was the location of the filming of Eddie Izzard’s Glorious routine). I fell in love with the band watching them do one live set when I knew none of the songs. This time was just as good only I could sing along more! Quirky, funny and musically gifted - what more could I ask for? Well, apart from my favourite song (Call and Answer) which they didn’t play, sadly. But I forgave them for all round brilliance.

Although I have not been blogging much (as mentioned yesterday) I have not yet devoted all my spare time to the job-hunt. March is stomping on by (definitely more like a lion now than it was when it arrived) and so far I have got around to the following:

• One modern art/design fair named “Form London”. It was one of the most surreal moments of my life so far when an earnest young woman tried to persuade me that spending 6 grand on a painting was “a worthwhile investment”. I mean, seriously, there should be training for people so that they can tell that a person whose entire outfit (inc. coat and bag) cost less than £150, does not have thousands to invest in art. 
• One aerial view of London courtesy of the London Eye. Oooooh, aaaaah. Not been up before. Was very pretty on sunny spring time day. Next time I want to go at dusk.
• Two comedians (Jimmy Carr and Josie Long). Both very funny and very witty but in entirely different ways. I probably laughed slightly more at Jimmy Carr but am pretty sure Josie Long has more potential to make me laugh ‘til I’m sick one day.
• One museum, the Tate Modern. Another thing I’m surprised I haven’t been to before. Spent much time standing at the bottom of the slides and a goodly while clapping on command as some kind of mass experiment. Hmmmm.
• Only one play (gasp), The 39 Steps, which makes up for its solitude by being the most amusing play I’ve ever seen. Maybe. Well maybe not, it depends really. But it is very very funny. Fantastically farcical in fact.
• One whole trip to the cinema (double gasp) to see Factory Girl which I thought was pretty good although I still haven’t forgiven the cinema generally and have not been converted back to regular attendance. This time was cool though since we had free tickets to splurge and I doubt I would’ve got around to seeing it on DVD.
• Two dancey things – one night of the flamenco festival at Sadler’s Wells which was spectacular and renewed my desire to take up flamenco dancing. (The desire has yet to be fulfilled and probably never will be). The other was a dress rehearsal of the Royal Ballet’s Onegin which was dramatic and beautiful. I’d love to see ballet at the Royal Opera House more often but unfortunately I do not have a property to provide a second mortgage to pay for it.
• One night with dead people. Also known as Derek Acorah’s ‘live’ show. Was interesting but scarily over-hyped, complete with booming music and an American voice-over insisting we “give it up for the world’s best spirit medium Derrrrrrrrrrrreekkkkk ACK – OR – RAHHHHHHHHHHHHH!” Derek kindly warned the audience before we left that we were likely to be followed home by spirits who didn’t have a chance to communicate with us and to watch out for strange noises and eerie presences. As an exercise in mass paranoia inducement, it was impressive! Sadly though, all I have experienced since the show is the echoing sounds of american style voice-overs ringing around my head and I’m pretty sure it has nothing to do with any deceased relatives…

I’ve noticed advertising have many funny effects on people and the way they see things - the inability of many people to say armadillo except in a west country accent and adding “soft on the outside, crunchy on the inside” being one of them. The fact that many people find it necessary to refer to toilet paper every time a a labrador has a golden puppy is another.

Some of these are funny, some are just annoying but the use of marmite as a descriptive term (adjective/adverb - I’m not hot on the difference I’m afraid) is brilliant. It’s a bit “marmite” - you either love it or you hate it - it’s pure Guinness genius.

I’d like to coin the word ”tequila” to have a meaning in language - it always seems to me that the first time anyone has a shot of tequila, their face shows their complete indecision over whether they want to grin or vomit. You’re never sure if you love it or hate it until you’ve had at least one more and perhaps several.

I decided I wanted this word this after watching an Oak Tree at Soho Theatre last week. I liked the concept and found elements of the play interesting but I have absolutely no idea if I enjoyed it or not. I was left with the desire to go again just to see if I could clarify my reaction and make some sense of it. I’m not going to go again because if it does turn out I hated it I’d be pretty out-of-pocket and I don’t know if, like tequila, it might leave me with a headache the next day.

It’s not the first time I’ve had this love it/hate it dilemma and I think a word would be useful. Probably can’t be tequila though because it’s probably impossible to counteract the automatic response of many people to follow any use of the word tequila with a chirrupy sing-song “it makes me happy” and so as a linguistic term it would be far too confusing!

It wasn’t intentional but I seemed destined to watch a lot of actors in animal costumes this weekend since I took my family to see the Lion King on saturday afternoon. Apparantly the masks in the show were in part inspired by the horses’ heads in the original stage production of Equus.

That is as far as similarities go of course! The Lion King was harmless, painless (verging on mindless if I’m to be strictly accurate!) entertainment. It won’t stay with me forever but it was incredible fun and I thoroughly enjoyed myself. What I would like to remember was the minute attention to detail of the staging. It seemed that no moment was compromised for the sake of ease (or even, I’d imagine, budget) but was finely honed to create a superb visual feast.

I’m quite reluctant to write about seeing Equus on Friday night because I have a horrible feeling that my blog might be inadvertently found by teenage girls looking for wizard porn. Sad really. If this does happen - please be assured that I did not use my mobile phone to take poor quality pictures of a young boy with protruding ribs and please go away.

Right, disclaimer over with, I can begin! I bought tickets to the first preview of Equus months ago for two main reasons: 1. Because I’ve wanted to see Richard Griffiths on the stage for a while now and 2. Because I liked the idea of seeing a preview - a chance to see a play without having any preconceptions from any source, having never read the play or seen the film.

Of course, the second point was destined to fail because even at the first preview there was NO chance of seeing this particular play with no preconceptions - there’s been so much fuss about Daniel Radcliffe’s role, or rather his nudity. Knowing this much in advance I was a little surprised that there were small children sitting a few rows behind me and amazed that these children were given 50p so that they could use the little binoculars!

I was also surprised (naively perhaps) that there was a man taking photographs on a suspiciously professional looking camera. My companion, (who has worked for several years in a theatre), was furious and went to report him during the interval. Fortunately the man did not return for the second act and so missed the chance to photograph the scene he was presumably wanting to capture.

All these inconsequential matters aside, the play was amazing. If only for sheer stamina, I was impressed with both Richard Griffiths’s and Daniel Radcliffe’s performances - from the first scene they are never off stage. That alone must make the role of Alan a tough ask for an inexperienced stage actor, I imagine it would be a challenge for an old hand.

The gut-wrenching sympathy I felt for Alan, however, testifies that this was an incredible performance. Despite the almost constant identification of Daniel Radcliffe with Harry Potter, there was no-one in the boy on the stage except Alan and his tormented obsessions. His frustration, confusion and anger were overwhelming and his gradual submission to the force of Dr Dysart’s personality was as painful as it was a relief.

The feelings invoked by Richard Griffiths’s character are probably the ones that will stay with me longest however. Alan is, in the play’s own words, an “extreme” example of a mentally disturbed person but the questions raised by Dr Dysart are applicable to a much wider range of cases. He agonises over his role as “Priest to the Normal” and questions every foundation of his profession and the cause he has devoted his life to.

I agreed with the sentiment of Hesther (played by Jenny Agutter whose performance was, strangely enough, the only one that didn’t ring true for me) that for Alan there could be no choice but that Dysart ease his pain. But Griffiths’s powerfully projected anguish lives on - the question rings from the horses’ heads - even if Alan has crossed a line to the point where there is no choice but to ‘cure’ him, what does that line mean and where should it be drawn? What is “Equus” and how do we know that we are right to banish him?

During the play my emotional pull was for Alan, in my memory I will think of Dysart - to that extent at least, I think the partnership of the two performances was perfectly and poignantly balanced.

Oh, as a side-note, there was one moment when Radcliffe’s inexperience showed - his curtain call. It was quite endearing to watch him shuffle shyly onto the stage looking down at his feet but I hope he will develop more confidence for these moments - he deserves it.

Unimaginative title but it is the name of a song I listened to last night so I have forgiven myself. Slightly less forgivable is the fact that I am about to describe the last 11 days rather than 7. Oh well.

Done a few different things recently, Cirque de Soleil at the Royal Albert Hall was absolutely gorgeous, I never knew circus routines could be quite so sophisticated. I had regretted not seeing any of their Vegas shows so I was glad to have the chance to enjoy them in London, and at half the price of Vegas tickets too. It has, however, left me with a vague hankering for the more traditional and shamelessly tacky circus I remember from when I was little. It’s a silly yearning - I’m not sure they even exist any more. And I’m not foolish enough to believe that I wouldn’t now find fault with the performances from the big top but perhaps that’s half the fun! Cirque de Soleil was so slickly flawless it was almost dull. I certainly didn’t re-experience my childish terror that the trapeze artists would fall - although I was still relieved that they put up a safety net.

Love Song was good - interesting and amusing if perhaps a little too predictable. Fast paced though, I didn’t feel any drag and didn’t feel deprived of an interval. Cillian Murphy has got to be one of only few people whose eye colour can be determined from the dress circle! On a side note, the dress circle at the Ambassadors theatre is decidedly cramped. It was lucky that most of the audience appeared to be female - most men wouldn’t have had enough leg room to get closer to their seats than a squatting position.

Woman in Black was creepily fun although perhaps after a tough working week I hadn’t loosened up enough to really get into the spirit (no pun intended, but left in nonetheless) of the thing. Several members of the audience insisted on screaming hysterically every time something creepy happened, the most annoying ones started several seconds after the dramatic moment which made it impossible to forgive. Despite them though, the play was fun. And with tickets at £10 I’m easily pleased.

Last night I celebrated Russian pancake day - highly enjoyable although I’m not sure I will recover in time to celebrate UK pancake day next week! My gracious hostess invited people to bring fillings - perhaps inevitably causing an eclectic table spread including salami, chorizo and other cold meat, four varieties of cheese, fried onion and mushroom, cheese sause with bacon and mushroom, frankfurter sausages, blueberries, melon, strawberries, grapes, dark chocolate, milk chocolate and cream.

Oh and lemon juice and sugar too, obviously. Let’s not break with tradition entirely, just because we’re a week ahead of ourselves!

I went to see The History Boys last night. I have avoided seeing the film before seeing the play so this was my first introduction to the story.

Unsurprisingly I enjoyed it. Of course it’s unsurprising because it’s proved a wildly popular play, it was made into a film on the strength of its success as a play and the film did ok despite only appealing to a pretty small market. Even all the critics seem to like it. So I agreed with them that the play was brilliant, poignant, thoughtful and witty - no shock there.

Mostly though, it’s unsurprising because I enjoy nearly everything I go to see. I’d make a rubbish theatre critic. It’s not that I’m uncritical but even if I can find a million things wrong with a play/show/performance, I usually still enjoy the experience - I enjoy the chance to criticise, to appreciate the way things should be done. If I worked as a critic my enjoyment would be obvious. Even if I were being critical, it would probably seem like I was doing it for the sake of it, at best I’d appear smug and condescending - i.e. the worst kind of critic.

I’m a lot more fussy with films, perhaps because there are so many more of them. I remember walking out of the cinema a couple of years ago after seeing some film that my friend wanted to see and wondering why on earth I had bothered watching it (I can’t even remember what it was now, some girly/romcom thing or other…). I had free cinema passes so I wasn’t annoyed at the money but I remember thinking as I left that I had utterly wasted two hours of my life. I’ve been a lot more choosy about what I see at the cinema since then and in fact, I rarely bother going. If there’s a film I want to see, I’m happy to wait to borrow/buy the DVD or watch it on TV.

I don’t think that I will ever feel that I’ve wasted my time by going to the theatre. As for the money, admitedly the tickets cost twice as much as the average cinema ticket but we probably saved the difference by not spending stupid amounts on giganto drinks and chewy popcorn. Hooray!