Theatre, Doctor Who and Easter services
A very happy Easter to all those observing it. I've had quite a busy Easter weekend, all in all.
I met up with monanotlisa on Saturday and we went to see Six Degrees of Separation (front-row centre complimentary seats, courtesy of the amazing athena25 ) which was wonderful. Paul is a young black conman who takes in Flan and Ouisa, a pair of upwardly mobile New Yorkers. I think that it is set during the 80s - certainly the prevailing zeitgeist was very 80s in flavour - although I suppose that it is equally applicable today, especially in terms of the racial politics at play. Paul more or less gatecrashes Flan and Ouisa's business dinner, mugged and injured. He presents himself as a friend of their children's and - more importantly - the son of Sydney Poitier. It is this last that gets him the unreserved interest of Flan and Ouisa, who quickly decide to assist hm by putting him up for the night. A few hours later, they walk in him - and the male one-night-stand he picked up - and throw them both out.
They then meet up with another couple, who tell them excitedly of being able to rescue Sydney Poitier's son from muggers and look after him for the night. Flan and Ouisa are outraged at being taken in, and try to go to the police. The problem is, Paul didn't steal anything, or break anything, or do anything they didn't invite him to. Little by little, the couple unpick Paul's life, and we see bits and pieces, never enough to get the full picture. The ending of it all is tragic and somewhat inevitable.
Obi Abili is excellent as the young Paul, investing him with a charm and a pathos I am not sure the script had on its own. He seems almost psychopathic in his zeal to create a life for himself that will allow him to ingratiate himself into this social circle - and to remain there. His single-mindedness claims at least one life, but Paul is only partly culpable. He is just so good at convincing people of this person that he has invented that they can't help but be taken in and want to give him everything. Technically, Paul never steals, never hits anyone, never does anything wrong. His only problem is, he doesn't really exist. 'He' is actually a person created by someone with an address book and a list of stories designed to help him fit in. Abili is in turns charming and almost insubstantial as Paul fades in and out of view, and we are never quite sure who he is. We are left feeling that he was never quite sure either.
Ouisa is played ably by Lesley Manville (last seen - but sadly not reviewed - in the Old Vic's All About My Mother). She starts off brittle, a mirror of her husband, and gradually her outrage fades to uncertainty until, at last, she thaws completely. She seems to be the sort of person who looked to others to help define her, and when they were not able to do so, she simply modelled herself on what she thought she should be. Seeing someone genuinely needing her allows her to step forward and formulate her own opinions and experiences - sadly, a half hour too late.
Anthony Head is Flan, and is truly wonderful. You start off empathising with him because Flan seems so invested in his life, in securing backing for the purchase of a painting that would otherwise result in ruin for himself and his wife. He is living hand-to-mouth, as the play says, just on a different sort of level. One wrong deal and his whole world could come crashing down. As the play progresses, however, Flan's character remains unchanged. Fundamentally, this is who he is - someone who is actually doing something he likes, however shallow and vapid this might seem to others - and a threat to that is viewed with hostility. He doesn't have time for Ouisa's sudden interest in Paul, any more than he has time for Paul's attempts to inveigle his way back into their life. Flan has his life, thank you very much, and it pains him to have other people intruding on it. Ultimately, Flan loses the audience's sympathy by the end because he is so fixed and unyielding. Interestingly,
Overall, I thought the direction and actors were superb. Our seats were right on the cusp of the stage, which meant that several of the monologues were delivered straight to me, with Abili and Head looking straight into my eyes. (I didn't mind. Sadly, Manville faced the other way for her monologues.) It did mean that I got an inadvertent close-up of the full-frontal nudity that suddenly appeared half-way through (I didn't notice the warning on the playbill!), although it did make a nice mirroring of Flan and Ouisa's outrage and the shaking-up of the audience's complacency. I guess the only thing that let the play down on occasion was - well - the play. That is, the script. At times it just seemed a little lacklustre in places, although the cast plowed on with aplomb and frequently managed to rise above it. I think that in the end, they managed to make it into something that was very enjoyable, and bring it to the cusp of something that had profound things to say. Sadly, that last extra step was not quite taken by the script.
A very fun time out, just the same!
*
Later on that day, we went to the Retro Bar for a drink and to watch the New Who. Which was wonderful! I am going to rewatch it tonight because obviously with the squeeing and people cheering, we lost about one line in five, but what we did catch was wonderful.
I understand that a lot of people hate the new theme tune; I can't say I noticed it, to be honest, it was lost in the cheering. I wasn't too sure of the new title sequence, but the new logo and the new TARDIS I think more than made up for it.
I really, really liked little Amelia Pond, and maybe like not-so-little Amy Pond almost as much. She seems to have very few ties to her life on Earth, which makes me wonder where they are going to take her character. I would be surprised if they tried another romance, to be honest, but I have very little experience with non-romantic companions (I guess there's Donna and now Ace, but I am mostly a New Who person, so Rose imprinted on me quite early on as the 'typical' companion - which is strange, because she's not typical at all!). The monster was suitably scary, at least the bits where we couldn't see it. The sharp teeth in other people's mouths were also scary, although the actual snake thing itself wasn't, not really.
I loved the choppiness of the Doctor's entry and exits (and a side-bar - really liked the food skit, of course with new tastebuds all his favourite foods will no longer be favourite...), it really hammered home how his perspective is different to the rest of the universe. I felt that his initial overly manic bursts of energy was very reminiscent of Ten (or, rather, Tennant), but I am hopeful that this will fade soon into something more specifically Eleven. His lack of reliability will hopefully lead to a new dynamic with Amy, one that is less based on his infallibility. She already knows that, and has already got over it and what it meant to her life. (Four psychiatrists!) So I hope that she will continue to challenge him as much as she did here (loved her trapping his tie in the door. OK, technically her obstinacy could have meant that he failed to save the world in time, but actually that's his fault for blindly assuming that everyone will follow him because he's just that fantastic. Newsflash: you may well be fantastic, but you're not wearing that on your shirtsleeve. More to the point, if you act like a dick, people will treat you like a dick).
What else... the new TARDIS! Love the outside, love love love the outside. The inside, strangely, I'm of two minds about. I like the semi-steampunky look of it, and the random twiddles and flippy things. I love the flippy clock rolling backwards. What I don;t like is the horrid yellow plastic wallpaper thing that's smeared all over it. It's like that random knobbly wallpaper you get, the wood-chip stuff, and the colour is awful. Who thought that up? It distracts from the lovely glass pulse-y thing (that's kinda like a giant pippette/condom tip, let's face it, but pretty nonetheless).
Other stuff: the montage! The montage was fun. It establishes continuity and it made me shamelessly glowy and teary. It also left me of two minds, however, because you have the shameless teary glow on the one hand, but as I am not quite yet convinced of Eleven as his own entity (although his 'Ten on crack' impression is spot on) it left me a little muddled. I think it's one of those things that will get better with a rewatch once Eleven has been established (and I do think he needs a couple of episodes, as he is indeed "still cooking").
Overall: very very enjoyable, although it does strike me as something that, much like Eleven, isn't quite finished yet: a story in progress. Which is good for a beginning, I suppose, so you can't argue with that. So, what does New Showrunner have for the future? Well, "the silence" will clearly play a role, whatever that means.
So let me segueway into a complete side-street here and rant a little bit about the reality-bomb of the Daleks in Journey's End, which pissed me off (and is relevant, I promise). I hear 'reality bomb' and I think: a bomb that will blow up/erase reality. Which I visualised as things being erased from existence, i.e. a hard-wipe of all other life and all other existence. When the 'reality bomb' turned out to just be a really big bomb, albeit one to kill everyone, I was really disappointed. The image I had of everything being wiped out, erased, was more frightening to me than of everyone being killed. Nullifying someone isn't the same as killing them, it erased everything they have done and accomplished. It locks away every memory and every impact they made on those around them. Which is not as scary as just 'everyone dies'. Because, really, any determined human can accomplish that (at least for other humans) just as easily (Iif not set to orchestral music).
So why am I ranting about that now? Well, 'the silence' has for me those same implications and invokes that same sort of archetypal terror - the terror of being unwritten, of being erased. What if you woke up tomorrow and you never existed? One thing I have never understood about the Time Lords is that, if they were locked away in a Time War, how come everyone knew who they were? If they were locked away in every time, every possible moment, then surely they would never have existed, they would never have interacted with anyone else. So how could anyone even remember them? I would dearly love 'the silence' to be some sort of giant meta-eraser, something powerful enough to do just that. (I guess something like The Inquisitor from Red Dwarf). I want something that threatens not just the Doctor in this body and this regeneration, but in every regeneration, every single point of his life, every single vulnerability, every single thing he has ever done.
Make the very existence of the Doctor the thing that is at stake, and that will scare me witless, guaranteed.
Until then, "basically, RUN. "
*
Today, I went to the Choral Eucharist service at Southwark Cathedral, which was really lovely. Rather more activist and political than I was expecting: there were several people there dressed in day-glo cycling gear, and the sermon and readings were about Zimbabwe and the need for activism and solidarity. After the service there was an organised march to the Zimbabwe embassy for a protest. Sadly, I was already promised elsewhere - I was visiting my convalescing mother for Easter lunch. After that, it was meeting athena25 and a few others for a drink down the pub, and by that point I was ready to come home and go to bed! I will settle for a cup of tea instead.
Currently, am watching Secret Diary of a Call Girl, which I hadn't seen before. It is... interesting.
I met up with monanotlisa on Saturday and we went to see Six Degrees of Separation (front-row centre complimentary seats, courtesy of the amazing athena25 ) which was wonderful. Paul is a young black conman who takes in Flan and Ouisa, a pair of upwardly mobile New Yorkers. I think that it is set during the 80s - certainly the prevailing zeitgeist was very 80s in flavour - although I suppose that it is equally applicable today, especially in terms of the racial politics at play. Paul more or less gatecrashes Flan and Ouisa's business dinner, mugged and injured. He presents himself as a friend of their children's and - more importantly - the son of Sydney Poitier. It is this last that gets him the unreserved interest of Flan and Ouisa, who quickly decide to assist hm by putting him up for the night. A few hours later, they walk in him - and the male one-night-stand he picked up - and throw them both out.
They then meet up with another couple, who tell them excitedly of being able to rescue Sydney Poitier's son from muggers and look after him for the night. Flan and Ouisa are outraged at being taken in, and try to go to the police. The problem is, Paul didn't steal anything, or break anything, or do anything they didn't invite him to. Little by little, the couple unpick Paul's life, and we see bits and pieces, never enough to get the full picture. The ending of it all is tragic and somewhat inevitable.
Obi Abili is excellent as the young Paul, investing him with a charm and a pathos I am not sure the script had on its own. He seems almost psychopathic in his zeal to create a life for himself that will allow him to ingratiate himself into this social circle - and to remain there. His single-mindedness claims at least one life, but Paul is only partly culpable. He is just so good at convincing people of this person that he has invented that they can't help but be taken in and want to give him everything. Technically, Paul never steals, never hits anyone, never does anything wrong. His only problem is, he doesn't really exist. 'He' is actually a person created by someone with an address book and a list of stories designed to help him fit in. Abili is in turns charming and almost insubstantial as Paul fades in and out of view, and we are never quite sure who he is. We are left feeling that he was never quite sure either.
Ouisa is played ably by Lesley Manville (last seen - but sadly not reviewed - in the Old Vic's All About My Mother). She starts off brittle, a mirror of her husband, and gradually her outrage fades to uncertainty until, at last, she thaws completely. She seems to be the sort of person who looked to others to help define her, and when they were not able to do so, she simply modelled herself on what she thought she should be. Seeing someone genuinely needing her allows her to step forward and formulate her own opinions and experiences - sadly, a half hour too late.
Anthony Head is Flan, and is truly wonderful. You start off empathising with him because Flan seems so invested in his life, in securing backing for the purchase of a painting that would otherwise result in ruin for himself and his wife. He is living hand-to-mouth, as the play says, just on a different sort of level. One wrong deal and his whole world could come crashing down. As the play progresses, however, Flan's character remains unchanged. Fundamentally, this is who he is - someone who is actually doing something he likes, however shallow and vapid this might seem to others - and a threat to that is viewed with hostility. He doesn't have time for Ouisa's sudden interest in Paul, any more than he has time for Paul's attempts to inveigle his way back into their life. Flan has his life, thank you very much, and it pains him to have other people intruding on it. Ultimately, Flan loses the audience's sympathy by the end because he is so fixed and unyielding. Interestingly,
Overall, I thought the direction and actors were superb. Our seats were right on the cusp of the stage, which meant that several of the monologues were delivered straight to me, with Abili and Head looking straight into my eyes. (I didn't mind. Sadly, Manville faced the other way for her monologues.) It did mean that I got an inadvertent close-up of the full-frontal nudity that suddenly appeared half-way through (I didn't notice the warning on the playbill!), although it did make a nice mirroring of Flan and Ouisa's outrage and the shaking-up of the audience's complacency. I guess the only thing that let the play down on occasion was - well - the play. That is, the script. At times it just seemed a little lacklustre in places, although the cast plowed on with aplomb and frequently managed to rise above it. I think that in the end, they managed to make it into something that was very enjoyable, and bring it to the cusp of something that had profound things to say. Sadly, that last extra step was not quite taken by the script.
A very fun time out, just the same!
*
Later on that day, we went to the Retro Bar for a drink and to watch the New Who. Which was wonderful! I am going to rewatch it tonight because obviously with the squeeing and people cheering, we lost about one line in five, but what we did catch was wonderful.
I understand that a lot of people hate the new theme tune; I can't say I noticed it, to be honest, it was lost in the cheering. I wasn't too sure of the new title sequence, but the new logo and the new TARDIS I think more than made up for it.
I really, really liked little Amelia Pond, and maybe like not-so-little Amy Pond almost as much. She seems to have very few ties to her life on Earth, which makes me wonder where they are going to take her character. I would be surprised if they tried another romance, to be honest, but I have very little experience with non-romantic companions (I guess there's Donna and now Ace, but I am mostly a New Who person, so Rose imprinted on me quite early on as the 'typical' companion - which is strange, because she's not typical at all!). The monster was suitably scary, at least the bits where we couldn't see it. The sharp teeth in other people's mouths were also scary, although the actual snake thing itself wasn't, not really.
I loved the choppiness of the Doctor's entry and exits (and a side-bar - really liked the food skit, of course with new tastebuds all his favourite foods will no longer be favourite...), it really hammered home how his perspective is different to the rest of the universe. I felt that his initial overly manic bursts of energy was very reminiscent of Ten (or, rather, Tennant), but I am hopeful that this will fade soon into something more specifically Eleven. His lack of reliability will hopefully lead to a new dynamic with Amy, one that is less based on his infallibility. She already knows that, and has already got over it and what it meant to her life. (Four psychiatrists!) So I hope that she will continue to challenge him as much as she did here (loved her trapping his tie in the door. OK, technically her obstinacy could have meant that he failed to save the world in time, but actually that's his fault for blindly assuming that everyone will follow him because he's just that fantastic. Newsflash: you may well be fantastic, but you're not wearing that on your shirtsleeve. More to the point, if you act like a dick, people will treat you like a dick).
What else... the new TARDIS! Love the outside, love love love the outside. The inside, strangely, I'm of two minds about. I like the semi-steampunky look of it, and the random twiddles and flippy things. I love the flippy clock rolling backwards. What I don;t like is the horrid yellow plastic wallpaper thing that's smeared all over it. It's like that random knobbly wallpaper you get, the wood-chip stuff, and the colour is awful. Who thought that up? It distracts from the lovely glass pulse-y thing (that's kinda like a giant pippette/condom tip, let's face it, but pretty nonetheless).
Other stuff: the montage! The montage was fun. It establishes continuity and it made me shamelessly glowy and teary. It also left me of two minds, however, because you have the shameless teary glow on the one hand, but as I am not quite yet convinced of Eleven as his own entity (although his 'Ten on crack' impression is spot on) it left me a little muddled. I think it's one of those things that will get better with a rewatch once Eleven has been established (and I do think he needs a couple of episodes, as he is indeed "still cooking").
Overall: very very enjoyable, although it does strike me as something that, much like Eleven, isn't quite finished yet: a story in progress. Which is good for a beginning, I suppose, so you can't argue with that. So, what does New Showrunner have for the future? Well, "the silence" will clearly play a role, whatever that means.
So let me segueway into a complete side-street here and rant a little bit about the reality-bomb of the Daleks in Journey's End, which pissed me off (and is relevant, I promise). I hear 'reality bomb' and I think: a bomb that will blow up/erase reality. Which I visualised as things being erased from existence, i.e. a hard-wipe of all other life and all other existence. When the 'reality bomb' turned out to just be a really big bomb, albeit one to kill everyone, I was really disappointed. The image I had of everything being wiped out, erased, was more frightening to me than of everyone being killed. Nullifying someone isn't the same as killing them, it erased everything they have done and accomplished. It locks away every memory and every impact they made on those around them. Which is not as scary as just 'everyone dies'. Because, really, any determined human can accomplish that (at least for other humans) just as easily (Iif not set to orchestral music).
So why am I ranting about that now? Well, 'the silence' has for me those same implications and invokes that same sort of archetypal terror - the terror of being unwritten, of being erased. What if you woke up tomorrow and you never existed? One thing I have never understood about the Time Lords is that, if they were locked away in a Time War, how come everyone knew who they were? If they were locked away in every time, every possible moment, then surely they would never have existed, they would never have interacted with anyone else. So how could anyone even remember them? I would dearly love 'the silence' to be some sort of giant meta-eraser, something powerful enough to do just that. (I guess something like The Inquisitor from Red Dwarf). I want something that threatens not just the Doctor in this body and this regeneration, but in every regeneration, every single point of his life, every single vulnerability, every single thing he has ever done.
Make the very existence of the Doctor the thing that is at stake, and that will scare me witless, guaranteed.
Until then, "basically, RUN. "
*
Today, I went to the Choral Eucharist service at Southwark Cathedral, which was really lovely. Rather more activist and political than I was expecting: there were several people there dressed in day-glo cycling gear, and the sermon and readings were about Zimbabwe and the need for activism and solidarity. After the service there was an organised march to the Zimbabwe embassy for a protest. Sadly, I was already promised elsewhere - I was visiting my convalescing mother for Easter lunch. After that, it was meeting athena25 and a few others for a drink down the pub, and by that point I was ready to come home and go to bed! I will settle for a cup of tea instead.
Currently, am watching Secret Diary of a Call Girl, which I hadn't seen before. It is... interesting.