oh hello, it's you
Ahhhhhhhhh man.
Just back from Rock 'n' Roll with sheba_finesse.
The only way it could have been better is if the character of Jan was played by my favourite theatrical actor or, y'know, Rufus Sewell. And if I knew fuck all about Czech history before purchasing the program.
Other than those two failings, it was pretty much perfection. Gah.
It's this thing Stoppard does, isn't it? That he starts off with all these disparate elements and you're thinking "What the fuck are you going on about now, what does this have to do with that, why is this other thing necessary, this is so messy, I don't understand, what are you doing?" And then suddenly the whole thing slams together and you're left dumbfounded with sheer fucking awe and feeling a bit like a fool for ever doubting him.
For me --- and I'm certain this isn't unique --- it was the objective/subjective argument that culminated in that incredible awful moment between Eleanor and Max. Oh god. And I still can't believe I actually followed that whole discussion of Sappho, that I was totally and utterly convinced by Max's argument and totally sucked in, set up to have my knees sliced out from under me. Gah. Stoppard. *moans*
William Zappa was every bit as magnetic and effortless and wonderful as I'd hoped. But Genevieve Picot stole the entire show for me, that she got me to love both characters she played, so very different women and especially the second being the sort of woman I would entirely expect to loathe but didn't purely because she played Esme with such compassion, such humanity that I just felt for the poor woman. She couldn't help that the brains did skip a generation, it was so true and she knew it and yet she tried. I couldn't help but think "you poor bugger" and love her for the way she grew up and still retained the girlish soul. God, I hope Genevieve Picot gets a Helpmann or something for that performance.
Mind you, they were supported quite well, I thought, verrah true performances from all the rest of the cast.
All right. Okay. All day I've been thinking "Argh, Matthew Newton" and grinding my teeth. But then every time, I'd remind myself "no, wait, lots of Syd Barrett stuff, it'll be okay, just focus on that."
*groan* I just. I couldn't. Urgh. I barely warmed to his character. There was no core to his reality, I couldn't believe him at all. Between the awful accent and the way he garbled his lines when he wasn't doing the accent, his performance just frustrated me so very much. It was utterly without subtlety and I kept feeling assaulted --- ha, yes! no, really --- by his speech rhythms and emphases. His voice was so ... I kept thinking 'stentorian' and wondering if I even know what that means. Ha! Okay, yes I do.
To give him the benefit of the doubt, perhaps it was a certain authenticity to the Czech accent and speech rhythms he was going for. I don't know, I have no experience of the Czech accent for comparison. It just didn't work for me at all, fatally damaged my appreciation of his character and maybe that's my fault and my loss. Nurts to me.
The thing is I knew the character of Jan would most likely be the one I'd relate to, the young music lover defining himself against the establishment, whatever that may be. With things the way they were, I got to the point where he'd say a line and I'd think "now how would Rufus say it?" and try and imagine a different inflection and emphasis. Laurence Fucking Olivier AWARD WINNING PERFORMANCE!! What could have been, man, with this one character. *sigh*
Still the play itself was so utterly marvellous and so relevant in its universality if not the political specifics that I could ignore the prickling annoyance of Newton.
Loved the set, loved it. That deliberate stage set up and how marvellously they used the lowering and raising of the light rig and the sort of marquee. Made perfect sense and it was infinitely exciting to have this space where I go for an entirely different experience --- Plays not gigs --- suddenly reinvented as a endearingly familiar music stage set up. *sigh*
Is music geek, is made indescribably happy by the mere sight of Marshall amps and light rigs. Squeeeeeee would be the word I'm groping for here.
And yes, I pretty much went starry eyed with wondrous adoration at the first character we saw and that the first song was Golden Hair. Most mortifying facial expression, I'm sure. Cos the only thought in my head was "Ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh ..." And the Piper was so perfectly dressed with the velvet coat and the hair and oh fuck that wicked highly intelligent laugh. It was quite an eerie gorgeous moment.
And well, look. Of all the music, they opened with a Syd song and not just any Syd song but the Syd song which is a James Joyce poem put to music. And in a Stoppard play. I'm sorry, could this get any better for me?
Well, yes, aside from those two aforementioned points. NO. So couldn't!
It was heartbreaking and wonderful to see Syd invoked, to have him made relevant, to see people care about him, to hear his music loud and filling the space, to see people react to his music and then later react with outrage on his behalf. When the vinyl album of The Madcap Laughs was slid out of its package, I made this soft and completely melting sound which prolly alarmed the dude next to me. And when the records crashed down from the rafters in the last scene before the interval, all I wanted to do was rescue Syd's vinyl. Yes, I even found myself mouthing the words of my favourite Syd song along with Matthew Newton. Yeeurk! And omg to see snippets of that original live performance up on the screen, to see his beautiful young face in the home movie footage.
Oh god. An unexpected treasure.
Even something as simple and marvellous as the play being set partly in Cambridge where Syd lived so there was always the very near presence of him, the sense of his life proceeding at the same time as these people, and how dismally his decline mirrors their confusion and/or declining health. And when Esme told of how she went to his last performance with all her fangirlish sincere enthusiasm, I knew it was the Stars she was talking about and omg I could see it as she described it. So beautiful. So precious, that meld of fiction and fact. Oh Stoppard. Could I heart thee any more?
I like to think Stoppard's an actual fanboy as opposed to just seizing on Syd as a convenient symbol. Yes, indeed. *coughs*
As for the politics, I was for the most part quite frustrated by my own lack of knowledge and lack of context, try as I did to cram-read the program before the show and during the interval. But the curious thing about the massive political content and all those impassioned arguments is I was somewhat startled to remember that back when I was studying Modern History in school and high school, I was quite enamoured with Communism.
It wasn't just me, was it? Most of us young ones ignorant of the real world went through that phase, right? When you learnt about Marxism and the Russian Revolution? My god, I hope I wasn't only one of a few who went "hey, that makes a lot of sense, man ... why doesn't it work?"
Even more startling was the realisation that now, having worked and paid bills and being quite a voracious consumer of capitalism, I'm really not that naive any more. And yet there is that tiny hope, that soft idealist wail of "noooo, but it could be good!"
Completely fascinating. I really hope I'm not in the minority in finding that aspect of the play utterly involving and challenging. Do we trust people for the social good or do we in our cynicism expect absolute corruption? Can we actually factor individual perversity of free will into the greater social economic good? Did I actually use the word 'economic' and omg what the fuck have you done to me, Stoppard?!
What did unnerve me was the whole argument of activism versus complacency because just yesterday I was having almost the same discussion with mikey66e, about my social conscience and refusal to engage in any activism despite the stereotype of the militant Aquarian banging on about every goddamned injustice under the sun. I have my own plan of how to express my social conscience because yes, that's very much a stereotype I loathe ... but where lies complacency, eh?
But that end was so marvellous. Well, not the ending scene so much. I thought that lacked a bit of punch, wasn't quite as roaring fabulous as they were going for cos it didn't help that we had no idea what the band sounded like so couldn't really engage with their rock concert joy. Pity, that.
But it could be forgiven cos oh man, how I loved that romantic ending to the story of Esme and Jan. I did want her to chase after him with the Syd album but totally understood why she didn't, the poor bugger. So there I am, mournful faced, watching her smoke mournfully, and I'm thinking "see, if I wrote this, it wouldn't end like this, it would be totally soppy and romantic and thank goodness I'm not Stoppard cos this is how amazing he is. Amid all the music and the politics and the intellectual wranglings, he's still managed to perfectly illustrate the messiness of humanity with this tiny heartbreaking story of unrequited OMIGODHECAMEBACK EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!"
And oh god how I laughed with tears in my eyes at the lil exchange of "willyoucomewithme?yes." Perfectly paced, perfectly played. Yes, even if it was Matthew Newton. Dude, if it was Rufus, I would be bawling my eyes out in unmitigated hideous soppiness. No, actually it'd be the hiccup through tearful beaming thing. Oh god, shut up.
Miss Sheba made this absolutely fabulous point about how the structure of the play differed before and after the interval which I'm noting here for my own reference: that the first half was all little scenes whereas the second half was pretty much one long scene bookended by two small scenes. Bloody excellent insight. *nod* I was totally oblivious.
It was indeed Night With The Actors and Tom Wright was there in a very dapper suit and looking most yummy again. Miss Sheba came down to join me and I watched fondly as Tom Wright spoke in one long paragraph about how this was a Melbourne Theatre Company production, etc. Writers and playwrights, man. They never speak in short jagged bursts of unrelated sentence fragments. Noooooo, they actually do speak in thesaurus-crammed paragraphs, barely drawing breath. I know Luke Davies does it. I think, from memory, Gaiman does it but tomorrow night will confirm that. God love 'em.
The question and answer session took a while to get going. Bit of a shy audience, I think. Also maybe still wrestling with the play we had just seen. I was very curious as to how the Melbourne production had to be adapted for the Sydney stage and apparently that was just a matter of acoustics. Cos the Victorian Arts Centre Playhouse is carpeted and therefore absorbs sound. Whereas Sydney Theatre is plywood floors so reflects the sound clearer. "Brighter," as William Zappa described. I was nodding sagely at that, finally understanding why some of them were so fucking loud.
Also, apparently the set with its lights and marquee and screen fit better on the Sydney stage. That puzzled me somewhat cos since the Australian production originated in Melbourne, wouldn't it fit better there? Argh, no matter. It looked fine, it looked wonderful, I had no quibbles.
One of the first questions was if the footage we saw was actual real documentary footage. I was so appalled I nearly lunged out of my seat with a "ShYEAAAAHHHHHH!!" Talk about the world's stupidest question, has she never seen John Lennon or Mick Jagger before, what the fuck? Miss Sheba actually had to restrain me. Cos, well, there I was completely overwhelmed that I had just witnessed actual home video and live performance footage of Syd Barrett and not on my DVD player. What the fuck kind of question was that?!
Lots of focus on the accent thing and particularly towards Matthew Newton. The curious thing is I totally ran into one of the court officers at my favourite jurisdiction today in the lift. Who told me, quite unprompted, that he'd just seen Rock 'n' Roll. I hit him and said "omg, no way, I'm seeing it tonight!" And when asked, he said Matthew Newton's accent kinda went in and out. I said "ohhh, really?" and tried to forget it in the interest of fairness.
As it was, yes, I did notice his Czech accent disappearing and reappearing but then I explained it away to myself as the character plays up his Czech accent when he's talking to English people and plays up his English affectations when he's talking to Czech people.
Inventive, huh?
Cos Matthew Newton explained it as the character speakng Czech-accented English to the English people and us hearing it as such. But when he's speaking to Czech people, he's actually speaking Czech. So even though we hear it as English, it's actually fluent unaccented Czech.
I squinted a bit at that but it makes a sort of sense and I suspect that may well be a playwright note from the original West End production. Personally, I like my explanation better. Heh.
Danielle Cormack, who played Lenka, spoke about their Czech dialect coach who was fairly new from the country so the challenge as an actor was to layer her own performance to reflect Lenka as a Czech who'd lived in England for a while over the course of the play. Which I rather liked. And heh, she was funny when she said that the other night she sounded Irish instead.
What else was asked? How hard was it to learn such a "linguistically complicated" play? Apparently, you just do it. And a lot of them didn't understand a lot of it for a lot of the time. William Zappa had this awesome moment when he told us that earlier tonight --- or was it last week? --- he was standing in the wings watching a bit and went "Oh my god, THAT'S what that means!" It was hysterical.
How much of Czech history did they have to read up on before they started? The incredibly hot Christopher Brown --- omg so hot --- said that he'd actually been to Prague a while back and had absorbed a lot of the history then so he had a bit of an advantage over the rest. And the girl who played young Esme and Alice, Chloe Armstrong, said they read for a week before they started rehearsals. William Zappa described butcher paper stuck to the rehearsal room walls with all these significant events for them to contextualise. And apparently Alex Menglet who is actually Russian got asked a lot of questions.
And Matthew made the point that the director Simon Phillips stressed that they needed to understand the political and intellectual stuff they were arguing so that they could do it with passion and really engage the audience. Which I think they did marvellously. Interestingly, the benchmark they were supposed to reach was to have the passion of those scenes match the intensity of the Eleanor/Max moment. Now that's an incredibly high standard. Yaow.
I don't think much else of consequence was asked. One guy actually asked why particularly Czechoslovakia rather than Hungary or Russia or any other East European country? I'm fairly certain the entire audience and company looked at him in this silent moment of "Stoppard's Czech, you moron?" Which Matthew Newton said rather nicely and without the moron bit.
Oh the young and quite lovely Grant Cartwright made a bit of a deal about how they all get along fairly well, which Christopher (yum) Brown echoed by comparing it to other productions where the run isn't nearly as long. I wasn't too moved by that cos I kept thinking "dude, you think five months is long for working with the same people? Have you heard about the last two years of the Sydney Actors Company?"
Ah me.
Genevieve Picot didn't stay for the Q&A which was a damned shame cos I really would have loved to hear her take on things, especially playing those two characters.
This rather excellent lady asked about the differences between Sydney and Melbourne audiences. William Zappa tried to be diplomatic by saying they'd had five weeks of practice up in Melbourne. Christopher Brown interjected with "But aren't Sydney audiences just smarter?" Which of course is exactly what we all wanted to hear so much uproarious laughter. Yes, me too. And William Zappa --- I can't shorten his name, it just feels too weird, even though Tom Wright did call him Bill --- mentioned something about someone saying "Sydney gets it, don't they?"
Well, I would bloody well hope so. No less than Melbourne, anyway. It's not that hard, really. Music = politics = complicated notions of freedom = a whole lot of love from the personal to the political to the universal. And Syd Barrett rocks.
I did want to ask about him because it suddenly clicked in my head that this play premiered in 2006 and he died in 2006 but when exactly did the two events happen? Figured I may as well come online and research it.
And oh jeez, he died during the play. Argh, spooky.
Of course I had to come home and listen to The Madcap Laughs and wrap all the legend and love around me again. It's just so incredible, so humbling to have something so deeply personal as a musical love you share with relatively few people be reflected and amplified back to you not just on a larger scale but with meaning and depth and scope and such blistering intelligence.
*sigh*
I'm babbling. Who cares?
Also, in rather marvellous double coincidence, I came home to a notification of our Salome tickets waiting for me at the post office. And a letter from the Bell Shakespeare Company regarding tickets for Hamlet, yaaaaaaaaaaaaayyyyyy! Brendan Cowell and Barry Otto and I'm verrah intrigued that Sarah Blasko is doing the music. Wha hey?
The play's the thing!
(oh, i had to.)
Just back from Rock 'n' Roll with sheba_finesse.
The only way it could have been better is if the character of Jan was played by my favourite theatrical actor or, y'know, Rufus Sewell. And if I knew fuck all about Czech history before purchasing the program.
Other than those two failings, it was pretty much perfection. Gah.
It's this thing Stoppard does, isn't it? That he starts off with all these disparate elements and you're thinking "What the fuck are you going on about now, what does this have to do with that, why is this other thing necessary, this is so messy, I don't understand, what are you doing?" And then suddenly the whole thing slams together and you're left dumbfounded with sheer fucking awe and feeling a bit like a fool for ever doubting him.
For me --- and I'm certain this isn't unique --- it was the objective/subjective argument that culminated in that incredible awful moment between Eleanor and Max. Oh god. And I still can't believe I actually followed that whole discussion of Sappho, that I was totally and utterly convinced by Max's argument and totally sucked in, set up to have my knees sliced out from under me. Gah. Stoppard. *moans*
William Zappa was every bit as magnetic and effortless and wonderful as I'd hoped. But Genevieve Picot stole the entire show for me, that she got me to love both characters she played, so very different women and especially the second being the sort of woman I would entirely expect to loathe but didn't purely because she played Esme with such compassion, such humanity that I just felt for the poor woman. She couldn't help that the brains did skip a generation, it was so true and she knew it and yet she tried. I couldn't help but think "you poor bugger" and love her for the way she grew up and still retained the girlish soul. God, I hope Genevieve Picot gets a Helpmann or something for that performance.
Mind you, they were supported quite well, I thought, verrah true performances from all the rest of the cast.
All right. Okay. All day I've been thinking "Argh, Matthew Newton" and grinding my teeth. But then every time, I'd remind myself "no, wait, lots of Syd Barrett stuff, it'll be okay, just focus on that."
*groan* I just. I couldn't. Urgh. I barely warmed to his character. There was no core to his reality, I couldn't believe him at all. Between the awful accent and the way he garbled his lines when he wasn't doing the accent, his performance just frustrated me so very much. It was utterly without subtlety and I kept feeling assaulted --- ha, yes! no, really --- by his speech rhythms and emphases. His voice was so ... I kept thinking 'stentorian' and wondering if I even know what that means. Ha! Okay, yes I do.
To give him the benefit of the doubt, perhaps it was a certain authenticity to the Czech accent and speech rhythms he was going for. I don't know, I have no experience of the Czech accent for comparison. It just didn't work for me at all, fatally damaged my appreciation of his character and maybe that's my fault and my loss. Nurts to me.
The thing is I knew the character of Jan would most likely be the one I'd relate to, the young music lover defining himself against the establishment, whatever that may be. With things the way they were, I got to the point where he'd say a line and I'd think "now how would Rufus say it?" and try and imagine a different inflection and emphasis. Laurence Fucking Olivier AWARD WINNING PERFORMANCE!! What could have been, man, with this one character. *sigh*
Still the play itself was so utterly marvellous and so relevant in its universality if not the political specifics that I could ignore the prickling annoyance of Newton.
Loved the set, loved it. That deliberate stage set up and how marvellously they used the lowering and raising of the light rig and the sort of marquee. Made perfect sense and it was infinitely exciting to have this space where I go for an entirely different experience --- Plays not gigs --- suddenly reinvented as a endearingly familiar music stage set up. *sigh*
Is music geek, is made indescribably happy by the mere sight of Marshall amps and light rigs. Squeeeeeee would be the word I'm groping for here.
And yes, I pretty much went starry eyed with wondrous adoration at the first character we saw and that the first song was Golden Hair. Most mortifying facial expression, I'm sure. Cos the only thought in my head was "Ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh ..." And the Piper was so perfectly dressed with the velvet coat and the hair and oh fuck that wicked highly intelligent laugh. It was quite an eerie gorgeous moment.
And well, look. Of all the music, they opened with a Syd song and not just any Syd song but the Syd song which is a James Joyce poem put to music. And in a Stoppard play. I'm sorry, could this get any better for me?
Well, yes, aside from those two aforementioned points. NO. So couldn't!
It was heartbreaking and wonderful to see Syd invoked, to have him made relevant, to see people care about him, to hear his music loud and filling the space, to see people react to his music and then later react with outrage on his behalf. When the vinyl album of The Madcap Laughs was slid out of its package, I made this soft and completely melting sound which prolly alarmed the dude next to me. And when the records crashed down from the rafters in the last scene before the interval, all I wanted to do was rescue Syd's vinyl. Yes, I even found myself mouthing the words of my favourite Syd song along with Matthew Newton. Yeeurk! And omg to see snippets of that original live performance up on the screen, to see his beautiful young face in the home movie footage.
Oh god. An unexpected treasure.
Even something as simple and marvellous as the play being set partly in Cambridge where Syd lived so there was always the very near presence of him, the sense of his life proceeding at the same time as these people, and how dismally his decline mirrors their confusion and/or declining health. And when Esme told of how she went to his last performance with all her fangirlish sincere enthusiasm, I knew it was the Stars she was talking about and omg I could see it as she described it. So beautiful. So precious, that meld of fiction and fact. Oh Stoppard. Could I heart thee any more?
I like to think Stoppard's an actual fanboy as opposed to just seizing on Syd as a convenient symbol. Yes, indeed. *coughs*
As for the politics, I was for the most part quite frustrated by my own lack of knowledge and lack of context, try as I did to cram-read the program before the show and during the interval. But the curious thing about the massive political content and all those impassioned arguments is I was somewhat startled to remember that back when I was studying Modern History in school and high school, I was quite enamoured with Communism.
It wasn't just me, was it? Most of us young ones ignorant of the real world went through that phase, right? When you learnt about Marxism and the Russian Revolution? My god, I hope I wasn't only one of a few who went "hey, that makes a lot of sense, man ... why doesn't it work?"
Even more startling was the realisation that now, having worked and paid bills and being quite a voracious consumer of capitalism, I'm really not that naive any more. And yet there is that tiny hope, that soft idealist wail of "noooo, but it could be good!"
Completely fascinating. I really hope I'm not in the minority in finding that aspect of the play utterly involving and challenging. Do we trust people for the social good or do we in our cynicism expect absolute corruption? Can we actually factor individual perversity of free will into the greater social economic good? Did I actually use the word 'economic' and omg what the fuck have you done to me, Stoppard?!
What did unnerve me was the whole argument of activism versus complacency because just yesterday I was having almost the same discussion with mikey66e, about my social conscience and refusal to engage in any activism despite the stereotype of the militant Aquarian banging on about every goddamned injustice under the sun. I have my own plan of how to express my social conscience because yes, that's very much a stereotype I loathe ... but where lies complacency, eh?
But that end was so marvellous. Well, not the ending scene so much. I thought that lacked a bit of punch, wasn't quite as roaring fabulous as they were going for cos it didn't help that we had no idea what the band sounded like so couldn't really engage with their rock concert joy. Pity, that.
But it could be forgiven cos oh man, how I loved that romantic ending to the story of Esme and Jan. I did want her to chase after him with the Syd album but totally understood why she didn't, the poor bugger. So there I am, mournful faced, watching her smoke mournfully, and I'm thinking "see, if I wrote this, it wouldn't end like this, it would be totally soppy and romantic and thank goodness I'm not Stoppard cos this is how amazing he is. Amid all the music and the politics and the intellectual wranglings, he's still managed to perfectly illustrate the messiness of humanity with this tiny heartbreaking story of unrequited OMIGODHECAMEBACK EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!"
And oh god how I laughed with tears in my eyes at the lil exchange of "willyoucomewithme?yes." Perfectly paced, perfectly played. Yes, even if it was Matthew Newton. Dude, if it was Rufus, I would be bawling my eyes out in unmitigated hideous soppiness. No, actually it'd be the hiccup through tearful beaming thing. Oh god, shut up.
Miss Sheba made this absolutely fabulous point about how the structure of the play differed before and after the interval which I'm noting here for my own reference: that the first half was all little scenes whereas the second half was pretty much one long scene bookended by two small scenes. Bloody excellent insight. *nod* I was totally oblivious.
It was indeed Night With The Actors and Tom Wright was there in a very dapper suit and looking most yummy again. Miss Sheba came down to join me and I watched fondly as Tom Wright spoke in one long paragraph about how this was a Melbourne Theatre Company production, etc. Writers and playwrights, man. They never speak in short jagged bursts of unrelated sentence fragments. Noooooo, they actually do speak in thesaurus-crammed paragraphs, barely drawing breath. I know Luke Davies does it. I think, from memory, Gaiman does it but tomorrow night will confirm that. God love 'em.
The question and answer session took a while to get going. Bit of a shy audience, I think. Also maybe still wrestling with the play we had just seen. I was very curious as to how the Melbourne production had to be adapted for the Sydney stage and apparently that was just a matter of acoustics. Cos the Victorian Arts Centre Playhouse is carpeted and therefore absorbs sound. Whereas Sydney Theatre is plywood floors so reflects the sound clearer. "Brighter," as William Zappa described. I was nodding sagely at that, finally understanding why some of them were so fucking loud.
Also, apparently the set with its lights and marquee and screen fit better on the Sydney stage. That puzzled me somewhat cos since the Australian production originated in Melbourne, wouldn't it fit better there? Argh, no matter. It looked fine, it looked wonderful, I had no quibbles.
One of the first questions was if the footage we saw was actual real documentary footage. I was so appalled I nearly lunged out of my seat with a "ShYEAAAAHHHHHH!!" Talk about the world's stupidest question, has she never seen John Lennon or Mick Jagger before, what the fuck? Miss Sheba actually had to restrain me. Cos, well, there I was completely overwhelmed that I had just witnessed actual home video and live performance footage of Syd Barrett and not on my DVD player. What the fuck kind of question was that?!
Lots of focus on the accent thing and particularly towards Matthew Newton. The curious thing is I totally ran into one of the court officers at my favourite jurisdiction today in the lift. Who told me, quite unprompted, that he'd just seen Rock 'n' Roll. I hit him and said "omg, no way, I'm seeing it tonight!" And when asked, he said Matthew Newton's accent kinda went in and out. I said "ohhh, really?" and tried to forget it in the interest of fairness.
As it was, yes, I did notice his Czech accent disappearing and reappearing but then I explained it away to myself as the character plays up his Czech accent when he's talking to English people and plays up his English affectations when he's talking to Czech people.
Inventive, huh?
Cos Matthew Newton explained it as the character speakng Czech-accented English to the English people and us hearing it as such. But when he's speaking to Czech people, he's actually speaking Czech. So even though we hear it as English, it's actually fluent unaccented Czech.
I squinted a bit at that but it makes a sort of sense and I suspect that may well be a playwright note from the original West End production. Personally, I like my explanation better. Heh.
Danielle Cormack, who played Lenka, spoke about their Czech dialect coach who was fairly new from the country so the challenge as an actor was to layer her own performance to reflect Lenka as a Czech who'd lived in England for a while over the course of the play. Which I rather liked. And heh, she was funny when she said that the other night she sounded Irish instead.
What else was asked? How hard was it to learn such a "linguistically complicated" play? Apparently, you just do it. And a lot of them didn't understand a lot of it for a lot of the time. William Zappa had this awesome moment when he told us that earlier tonight --- or was it last week? --- he was standing in the wings watching a bit and went "Oh my god, THAT'S what that means!" It was hysterical.
How much of Czech history did they have to read up on before they started? The incredibly hot Christopher Brown --- omg so hot --- said that he'd actually been to Prague a while back and had absorbed a lot of the history then so he had a bit of an advantage over the rest. And the girl who played young Esme and Alice, Chloe Armstrong, said they read for a week before they started rehearsals. William Zappa described butcher paper stuck to the rehearsal room walls with all these significant events for them to contextualise. And apparently Alex Menglet who is actually Russian got asked a lot of questions.
And Matthew made the point that the director Simon Phillips stressed that they needed to understand the political and intellectual stuff they were arguing so that they could do it with passion and really engage the audience. Which I think they did marvellously. Interestingly, the benchmark they were supposed to reach was to have the passion of those scenes match the intensity of the Eleanor/Max moment. Now that's an incredibly high standard. Yaow.
I don't think much else of consequence was asked. One guy actually asked why particularly Czechoslovakia rather than Hungary or Russia or any other East European country? I'm fairly certain the entire audience and company looked at him in this silent moment of "Stoppard's Czech, you moron?" Which Matthew Newton said rather nicely and without the moron bit.
Oh the young and quite lovely Grant Cartwright made a bit of a deal about how they all get along fairly well, which Christopher (yum) Brown echoed by comparing it to other productions where the run isn't nearly as long. I wasn't too moved by that cos I kept thinking "dude, you think five months is long for working with the same people? Have you heard about the last two years of the Sydney Actors Company?"
Ah me.
Genevieve Picot didn't stay for the Q&A which was a damned shame cos I really would have loved to hear her take on things, especially playing those two characters.
This rather excellent lady asked about the differences between Sydney and Melbourne audiences. William Zappa tried to be diplomatic by saying they'd had five weeks of practice up in Melbourne. Christopher Brown interjected with "But aren't Sydney audiences just smarter?" Which of course is exactly what we all wanted to hear so much uproarious laughter. Yes, me too. And William Zappa --- I can't shorten his name, it just feels too weird, even though Tom Wright did call him Bill --- mentioned something about someone saying "Sydney gets it, don't they?"
Well, I would bloody well hope so. No less than Melbourne, anyway. It's not that hard, really. Music = politics = complicated notions of freedom = a whole lot of love from the personal to the political to the universal. And Syd Barrett rocks.
I did want to ask about him because it suddenly clicked in my head that this play premiered in 2006 and he died in 2006 but when exactly did the two events happen? Figured I may as well come online and research it.
And oh jeez, he died during the play. Argh, spooky.
Of course I had to come home and listen to The Madcap Laughs and wrap all the legend and love around me again. It's just so incredible, so humbling to have something so deeply personal as a musical love you share with relatively few people be reflected and amplified back to you not just on a larger scale but with meaning and depth and scope and such blistering intelligence.
*sigh*
I'm babbling. Who cares?
Also, in rather marvellous double coincidence, I came home to a notification of our Salome tickets waiting for me at the post office. And a letter from the Bell Shakespeare Company regarding tickets for Hamlet, yaaaaaaaaaaaaayyyyyy! Brendan Cowell and Barry Otto and I'm verrah intrigued that Sarah Blasko is doing the music. Wha hey?
The play's the thing!
(oh, i had to.)