Friday, January 30, 2009

Lords of the flies

Twelfth Night at the Pearl was very enjoyable. That is a play that is particularly close to my heart (it has been ever since I played Malvolio in sixth grade - in a shortened version adapted by me for the class to put on at school!), and I would have to say that this isn't how I would direct it myself: they were playing very broadly for laughs, and though the audience was still clearly moved at points, the production is mostly just very funny and not quite stylized and patterned and magical enough for my taste.

This comes with some upside, though. There was a fly very conspicuously buzzing round the actors' heads in the first half, and they were able to get some good mileage out of it: enough so, anyway, that I had a sudden distracting realization that when I got home I would have to go upstairs, get my camera and then take the elevator back downstairs to document this rather hilarious thing that caught my eye earlier in the day!

Dinnerwas just as good as the play. G. ordered the Sancerre, and when the waitress came back out, she said very apologetically that they only had the half-bottle. "Then we'll have two of them!" G. said - and we did! He had the trout and I had the bouillabaisse (delicious!) and then tarte tatin for dessert, since I still had room!
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1 comment:

  1. Anonymous1/30/2009 4:21 AM

    I've always loved this play, too, since studying at school at age 11. I wished I had been called Olivia (though now it is the most popular name for girls in the UK). When my younger daughter (the one who shares your name) was studying the Tudors in year 5 (9-10 years old) she picked Shakespeare as her specialist topic, and we went to Stratford upon Avon to see Twelfth Night, her favourite Shakespeare play (admittedly from reading various synopses rather than the Complete Works!). It was a fantastic production - we all loved it. We also attended, for the princely sum of £1 each, an afternoon workshop before the play, in which the actors, director and other crew (correct term?) members showed us all kinds of demonstrations of their production "behind the scenes". Fantastic!

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