Confessions of a Theatre Snob

Friday, January 29, 2010

Where I may become even more anti-social

I’ve been pondering getting an iPhone. My poor old mobile is distinctly worse for wear, and has had a cracked screen since I dropped it on the car, so I’ve been waiting until I qualified for an upgrade.

I called into the shop last week to see what my options were. It seems I’m eligible from the end of this month.

‘What do you recommend?’
‘Get an iPhone’

Last weekend, I was looking at all the Apps* on Cat’s. For a map geek like me, it was fabulous (yes, I know there are lots of other Apps, but it was the ones that could direct you to places, and recommend a nearby restaurant** which fascinated me). I want one, even though it may mean I spend even more time not talking to people.

So when I saw someone’s iPhone on the table at work, I asked what she thought of it. She looked at me, and it was almost like I could read her mind. What could someone like me (in her eyes, a total non-techy) want with an iPhone?

‘Yeah, it’s good, but you’d probably find it complicated’
(pause)
‘Mind, I do have a lot of Applications, and things like Facebook on mine, which you wouldn’t want’

I smiled. ‘Oh, you’d be surprised’

They really don’t know me. And that suits me just fine.

*See, iPhone jargon
** if you ever need an Indian Restaurant in Grantham, we can recommend one. Not that we visited, we were on the train at the time.

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Tuesday, January 26, 2010

The Handbag Walkers Guide to the Cleveland Way

Last year, we did the Ribbon Walk. It was challenging, but it made us get out and walk, even when we didn’t really feel like it, as we had to ‘train’ (I remember how I scoffed at the very idea at the start), but we did it. And we’ve managed to keep going since, though not with quite the same level of intensity. Winter isn’t the best of time to walk as it is a) cold, b) tends to be muddy (or, this year, snowy), and c) gets dark early, but we’ve still been out there.

This year, our project is to walk The Cleveland Way. All of it, all 110 miles. Not all in one go, of course, but over the year. We’ve done a lot of bits of it, but this time we want to complete it. We probably won’t do it in the right order, and there may be quite a few logistical difficulties, but that’s the plan.

As it’s a linear walk, we’ve already realised that it’s going to take a bit of organisation, for example, we have to leave a car at each end of the section, so we have to decide how far we can walk in a day. It’s not a good idea to get stuck in the middle, as there’s not a lot of public transport to be had. There’s also other minor issues, like making sure you have the right equipment in the right car, i.e. don’t leave your camera, your map, or your socks in the car at the end.

We did our first section on Sunday. Helmsley to Rievaulx. We were going to go further, but it was a bit rainy, and the path was very muddy, (and we’d forgotten the book). It’s a walk we’ve done numerous times, though usually there and back, so it actually seemed quite short. There’s a good tea shop at Rievaulx Abbey which does an excellent, and filling, bowl of hearty soup.

Of course this is going to be the alternative guide, with recommendations of all the best places to stop for refreshment along the route. Though, looking at the map, there are one or two sections where we may have to *gasp* take sandwiches. There will also be shopping. We finished on Sunday with a walk round Helmsley, J bought a lovely pair of boots.

It’s started well.

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Friday, January 08, 2010

Snow, snow, snow

It’s a long time since I’ve not been able to get to work because of snow, but this week, I’ve missed two days. Oh, we have some disruption every year, but it’s a long time since there’s been this much, and it’s lasted this long. It used to happen much more frequently, and I have photos of me standing on snow drifts as high as the hedgerows when I lived in the countryside.

I think that year it took them three days to get a snow plough through to us. But we didn’t panic buy (well, we couldn’t as there was no shop), and we just got out the shovels and dug paths. There was no reason to try and use the car, as even if you dug it out, you couldn’t go anywhere. If you were lucky, a tractor might get through.

What I don’t remember is there being the huge drama then that there is these days, particularly if it should happen to hit London. I know people travel much further to work now, and need to be informed of what the weather, and transport, are like, and the internet is a great and wonderful thing when it comes to information. Back then, you just had to set off with your wellies, and a shovel in the boot and hope for the best. And (and I know this makes me sound old), our house didn’t have any central heating. Flippin’ freezing it was.

This year, I have actually bought new wellies, and have been looking for some ‘snow boots’. No, I’m not quite sure what they are either, but I’m sure I used to have a pair, and they kept my feet warm and dry. A friend said 'are you sure you don't still have them?', as I'm known for my hoarding, and if I look in the right cupboard, well, maybe I'll find them.

But it is very pretty to look at, and there’s something about this sort of snow, dry, powdery, and somehow, clean, that just makes you want to get out in it and take photos. I would just like some warmer weather soon.

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Wednesday, January 06, 2010

What a difference a few years makes

I nearly went to see Griffin tonight. When I say ‘nearly’, J and I had plans to walk through the snow from hers to the Vicky Vaults for an acoustic gig. I set off from home, it was snowing, and once I hit the main roads which are usually clear, it was lying fast, and there wasn’t enough traffic to keep it clear. It was pretty scary.

I made it to Monkgate, before deciding I was being foolish, and if I made it to the pub, I might not make it back. I turned round, and drove back home, sliding back down the roads.

Later, I was on the phone to Corinne talking about this:

‘You went to Cardiff in awful weather and with overturned lorries not to see John, and we went to Liverpool that time, not to see James.’
‘Yes, and I also went to Stratford in snow when I got there and some of the actors didn’t’
‘In the past, you’d have abandoned your car, and walked. But now you wouldn’t cross town for him’
‘I know. It feels rather strange. I knew you’d understand’. We laughed.

Pause

‘Imagine if it had been this week last year*!’
‘Oh God!’

*That is the week of the last DT Hamlet, and Barrowman in panto

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Monday, January 04, 2010

This time the rest really is silence

In amongst all the various showings of episodes of Doctor Who, interviews with DT, radio programmes, quiz shows, etc etc, I'm sure it can’t have escaped your notice that the RSC/David Tennant Hamlet was also shown over Christmas. Yes, the BBC let us watch David Tennant die in two different roles over the holiday period, and, yes, I have wept a lot of tears over this (and it will probably be a long time before I can watch The End of Time without crying again).

A story which I thought had ended in January 2009 actually came to it’s conclusion on Boxing Day. Having said on here that it needed to be filmed, well, there was no way I wasn’t going to watch it. I pretty much planned my day around it.

Although the setting was opened out a little, so that it wasn’t just a film of the stage production, it retained much of the feel of the stage, with the use of mirrors, though the surveillance cameras gave a more intense sense of being watched.

Basically, the things I liked on stage, I still liked, and the things I didn’t like, I still didn’t, with one exception. Seeing it produced in a different medium got me annoyed about the cuts all over again. Watching the supporting Learning Zone programmes (hidden away in the early hours of the schedules but sleuthed out thanks to following David_Tennant on Twitter) provided insight into the reasons for some of them, so that even where I don’t agree, I now have more idea why they did it. For the record, I still don’t think a lot of them worked.
Whilst nothing will come close to that magical performance on 1 November 2008, I did love David’s performance. Though the soliloquies didn’t quite have the freshness that they had on stage, when it really did feel like he was saying the words for the first time, they were still immensely moving. He still broke me with 'the readiness is all', though I did manage to hold it together till that moment. I thought the closet scene was tremendous, and he and Penny Downie were magnificent, balancing the horror of Polonius's murder and Hamlet's accusation of Claudius with the mundane 'Goodnight Mother'. If I had been giving the supporting actor awards, they would have gone to Penny’s Gertrude, and Oliver Ford Davies’s Polonius, which were the two performances which still stood out, though I do have a soft spot for Rosencrantz and Guildenstern who deserve a much better epitaph than they get.

The performance which to me came across better on film than it ever had on stage was (Sir) Patrick Stewart's Claudius. Perhaps his performance was always more filmic? Ryan Gage was also good in the small role of Osric, his interplay with Laertes marking him out as someone else who is party to Claudius’s’ scheme.

I still didn’t like Ophelia at all. Apparently most of her mad scene was improvised so that the other actors didn’t quite know what she would do each night. Whatever, it didn’t work for me, and she failed to touch the heart. Similarly Mark Hadfield’s Gravedigger remained a very ‘hammy’ performance from an experienced RSC actor. As I’ve liked other performances of his, I can only blame the director.

I did think that you got a sense of the ensemble in the film, though not to the extent that you did on stage, though it was also clear that some actors were much more comfortable, and experienced in working with the camera than others. The doubling of parts seemed a little odd in a film, though it's a very familiar stage convention, I did wonder if some viewers would be puzzled by it.
Overall, it's a great reminder of the production, and it's also wonderful that so many others will now have the chance to see it, including those who ended up watching Ed Bennett's Hamlet (good, by all accounts, but I'm glad I didn't see it), rather than David's. Hopefully it might attract more new people to Shakespeare.
Just always make sure you leave a seat in the theatre for me.

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Sunday, January 03, 2010

There go the 'Noughties'

I’m not quite sure how we’ve reached the end of the first decade of the 21st Century so quickly, but it’s certainly been one of change. So, in keeping with all the TV shows, and media articles over the last week, I’ve done my own review of the decade. It’s taken me a while to pull this together, as reflecting back ten years has taken some doing.

At the start of the year 2000, Doctor Who was an old TV show which had trailed off into a sad decline over 10 years earlier, no one knew what reality TV was, Simon Cowell was unknown and Strictly and X factor, and God forbid, even Big Brother were unheard of. So much has changed.

On a more sombre note, I will always remember where I was when I first heard about the twin towers, and the London bus and tube bombings. In a lighter vein, I will also always remember where I was when England won the Rugby World Cup, for I was in a car on the way to Harlow, singing ‘Wherever You Will Go’!

It’s been a decade when I’ve got to grips with new technology (though I know I am always at least 6-12 months behind others), using mobile internet, social networking sites and forums in a way that I couldn’t have dreamt of 10 years ago when I was just starting to get to used to sending a text message. I also started this blog nearly 4 years ago. However technology has also meant that work is ever present. Rather than having more leisure time, it means that you are always accessible.

I’ve travelled to many countries (ok, mainly Italy), but only made it out of Europe once, with a brief stop in Tunisia on my cruise, and therefore have places to go in the next decade. I went to Eurovision, and that will always be a highlight.

It's been a decade through which I have managed to work part time, and still maintain a decent lifestyle. There have been ups, and downs, with work, the most shocking being when I was made redundant with very little notice, but you come through it, and out the other side. I’m better qualified than I was 10 years ago, but am not using those qualifications, which I regret to some extent (though I’m really not sure how you do use a degree in theatre film and tv?) but I also know that what is important to me is not what I do at work, but what I do outside. Work is what pays for the good stuff.

It’s been a decade with a great deal of theatre in it, though I doubt I’d have believed you if you’d told me at the beginning that I’d have seen one show 21 times in less than 12 months. Before JCS, ‘obsessive’ meant seeing a show 3 times. I visited the Globe for the first time (and a few times afterwards), Stratford of course, particularly for the ‘Glorious Moment’ of all 8 history plays in 4 days, and for David Tennant’s Hamlet.

Music has shaped this decade more than any other, because not only did it mean that I travelled places, and did things I never thought I would, but mainly because I met the most wonderful bunch of people who amazingly I had other interests in common with. Bizarre really, I did an OU course on Shakespeare thinking I was bound to meet like minded people, and didn’t, and joined an internet Forum, and found people who love theatre, and culture, and cocktails, and clothes, and dressing up, and David Tennant and John Barrowman, just as much as I do.

It would therefore be wrong of me not to mention both Griffin, and Fox, here. If it hadn’t been for a certain reality tv show, and a forum, there is so much that I wouldn’t have done in the last ten years. My life might have been very different. I very much doubt it would have been better.

To everyone I've shared it with, thank you. There are some wonderful memories to look back on. I know that I can be high maintenance, and yes, obsessive (or, to use my word, enthusiastic) about things, but that's me, and I'm probably not going to change much now. Thank you for the laughter, for helping me through the tears, and just for being there. It means a lot.

At the start of the next decade, I do wonder what it will bring. I haven’t done as much acting as I would have liked, and my current work limits the opportunity, so that needs to change. I know I want to work nearer home, so that I can do more things outside work. I want to do more travelling, and, of course, I want to see lots and lots of theatre.

As someone once said (and there are no better words to end this) ‘Bring it On’.

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Saturday, January 02, 2010

'I don't want to go'

(Huge spoiler alert, should anyone not have seen The End of Time yet)

The final words of the Tenth Doctor. I think many of us watching felt the same way. We’ve known it was coming since late October 2008, we’ve known who the new Doctor will be for almost a year, but finally, it’s here. We’ve been on one hell of a journey, but journey’s end for this Doctor seems to have come far too soon. They did well to save this for New Year’s Day, for it would have made for a miserable Christmas night.

As with many of RTD’s big epics, the real heart was in the small scenes, not the big set pieces, and credit has to go to Bernard Cribbins for simply breaking your heart as Wilf, old soldier, and staunch supporter, but, finally, the Doctor’s doom, because he couldn’t let a good man die.

The scenes where the Doctor revisited his companions for the last time were self indulgent, yes, but I’m prepared to forgive them that for the end of the story. Whilst I’m not sure it’s canon to be able to fit all this in before regenerating (just call me pedantic, ok?), it was also Russell’s farewell to the characters he had created.

His ‘reward’ was to change their lives, to save Martha and Mickey from the Sontarans, save Luke for Sarah Jane, provide Jack with a companion (and how perfect was it that it should be Alonso Frame from Voyage of the Damned), and give Donna a winning lottery ticket. He even visited the descendant of Joan Redfern, just to make sure she had been okay. His encounter with Rose was the most moving. He couldn’t resist seeing her one last time, but he had to go back to a time before they met, and she had no idea who he was, and would not even remember her encounter with a random ‘drunk’ at New Year. And then, finally, Ood Sigma appeared again with a promise that they would ‘sing him to his rest’. I can’t be the only person who had another play, and another performance, in my head at that point.

Thank you Russell, for all the story lines, the laughter, the tears, but most of all, thank you David Tennant for the most amazing dramatic performance on TV. I don’t have enough superlatives for just how good an actor you are.

The programme will return, with the Eleventh Doctor, Matt Smith. A good actor by all accounts, and of course I will watch, and will probably enjoy the programme. With Steven Moffatt at the helm, it has lots of potential. But isn’t he just a little bit too young, and how can he ever come close to the way that David could break your heart with just a look?

There is a tiny spark out there which reminds me that somewhere in an alternate universe there is a half human Doctor who will forever look like David, and will age as he does. Don’t try and tell me that this isn’t a possibility, for I remember The Five Doctors when all previous incarnations of the Doctor were brought together.

But for now, it’s time to bid a grateful, and tearful, farewell. Perhaps it isn’t inappropriate to borrow a few words which seem suitable for the occasion. He was ‘our’ Doctor and ‘(we) shall not look upon his like again’.

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