"Stammering is the native eloquence of us fog people"
Okay, Wow!
The Dublin Theatre Festival is really outdoing itself this year. Last year, there actually wasn't anything I wanted to see (
donnaustin and I have been somewhat trepidatious about the festival's offerings ever since the infamous Hamlet of 2003), but they've really pulled out all the stops for their fiftieth anniversary and gotten an incredible assortment of plays. (In fact, it was obvious that everyone knew the Dublin Theatre Festival was outdoing itself for their fiftieth year, because some shows were selling out the second day the box office was open!)
Last weekend was the first week, and I've been trying since last Saturday to express the experience of seeing my first Butoh dance performance. Hibiki really transcends description though. (I'll still try at some point possibly.)
Anyhow, we saw two plays this weekend, and what a contrast! Yesterday was the Abbey's new centenary production of The Playboy of the Western World . . . updated and adapted by Roddy Doyle and Bisi Adigun. Instead of 1907's wilds of Mayo, this one is set in the wilds of a Northside Dublin inner city pub, pink track suits and all. Christy Mahon is now Christopher Malomo, just off the plane from Nigeria. And, my gosh it transposed well. We were all roaring with laughter. Talk about topical, you walked out of the theatre and into the set. I was glad to have lived here a few years before seeing this, as I'd have had a good bit of trouble with some of the references and idioms when completely fresh off the plane. (I do remember trying to get someone to explain a few years back why everybody called people "muppets," as it just didn't make sense to me as an insult.) As it was, my throat was sore from laughter by the time the play ended. I think the image of a very tall Christopher "Christy" Malomo leaving the pub barefoot and in a too-small, hot pink tracksuit with "BITCH" printed across the butt while shouting about how Pegeen has "made a hard man of me" will last for quite a while. :D
Tonight, instead, my neck was sore from craning it trying to see around the very tall woman in front of me for four and a half hours. The lady must have been six foot tall and mostly torso! The man she came with was even taller, and if Sore neck aside, it was an amazing production -- the Druid theatre company's full length production of Long Day's Journey into Night. I don't know if we could have had a stronger difference in tone from the previous day. While there were moments of humor in tonight's play, they really only intensified the tragedy of the family's disintegration. I would say that you didn't feel the play was as long as it was, but you did. It was very long, and it felt it. But, every moment was riveting.
The acting in both plays was excellent all around. One of the funny things about going to see plays in Dublin is that as they don't do playbills and the "souvenir programmes" are so heinously overpriced that we usually don't buy them, we often end up playing a game of, " why does s/he look familiar?" (Unless, of course, it's something like the production of Playboy we saw a couple years ago, where Christy was played by Cillian Murphy. Very recognizable.) This weekend, we bought programmes for both plays, which definitely helped place the actor who played Pegeen yesterday . . . she'd previously wowed us as the title role in Portia Coughlan. The Widow Quinn got placed as Molly Bloom in the movie of Ulysses that we walked out of. (I haven't seen The Commitments, so no amount of telling me that Angeline Ball was in that helped, thank you very much.) Today, well, probably half the people in the audience were coming to see James Cromwell (a.k.a. Jack Bauer's Dad, that guy who was in The West Wing, or the Farmer in Babe), so he was recognizable. We'd also recently seen Jamie declaiming that Brutus is an honorable man at the Abbey (though, he's far too good an actor for me to realize that till perusing his bio after the play). I'm going to try to remember to keep an eye out for Michael Esper. Everybody in the cast of Long Day's Journey into Night was incredible, but I found myself drawn to watching Esper's reactions to everyone else. There was a beautiful vulnerability to his performance.
I'm falling asleep, so I'd better sign off for now. Next week if I remember to journal it, Uncle Vanya and a stage adaptation of the "Grand Inquisitor" chapter of The Brothers Karamazov. And maybe one of these days I'll try to analyze my reaction to Hibiki. It seems that the more I want to say something, the fewer words I have.
The Dublin Theatre Festival is really outdoing itself this year. Last year, there actually wasn't anything I wanted to see (
donnaustin and I have been somewhat trepidatious about the festival's offerings ever since the infamous Hamlet of 2003), but they've really pulled out all the stops for their fiftieth anniversary and gotten an incredible assortment of plays. (In fact, it was obvious that everyone knew the Dublin Theatre Festival was outdoing itself for their fiftieth year, because some shows were selling out the second day the box office was open!)
Last weekend was the first week, and I've been trying since last Saturday to express the experience of seeing my first Butoh dance performance. Hibiki really transcends description though. (I'll still try at some point possibly.)
Anyhow, we saw two plays this weekend, and what a contrast! Yesterday was the Abbey's new centenary production of The Playboy of the Western World . . . updated and adapted by Roddy Doyle and Bisi Adigun. Instead of 1907's wilds of Mayo, this one is set in the wilds of a Northside Dublin inner city pub, pink track suits and all. Christy Mahon is now Christopher Malomo, just off the plane from Nigeria. And, my gosh it transposed well. We were all roaring with laughter. Talk about topical, you walked out of the theatre and into the set. I was glad to have lived here a few years before seeing this, as I'd have had a good bit of trouble with some of the references and idioms when completely fresh off the plane. (I do remember trying to get someone to explain a few years back why everybody called people "muppets," as it just didn't make sense to me as an insult.) As it was, my throat was sore from laughter by the time the play ended. I think the image of a very tall Christopher "Christy" Malomo leaving the pub barefoot and in a too-small, hot pink tracksuit with "BITCH" printed across the butt while shouting about how Pegeen has "made a hard man of me" will last for quite a while. :D
Tonight, instead, my neck was sore from craning it trying to see around the very tall woman in front of me for four and a half hours. The lady must have been six foot tall and mostly torso! The man she came with was even taller, and if Sore neck aside, it was an amazing production -- the Druid theatre company's full length production of Long Day's Journey into Night. I don't know if we could have had a stronger difference in tone from the previous day. While there were moments of humor in tonight's play, they really only intensified the tragedy of the family's disintegration. I would say that you didn't feel the play was as long as it was, but you did. It was very long, and it felt it. But, every moment was riveting.
The acting in both plays was excellent all around. One of the funny things about going to see plays in Dublin is that as they don't do playbills and the "souvenir programmes" are so heinously overpriced that we usually don't buy them, we often end up playing a game of, " why does s/he look familiar?" (Unless, of course, it's something like the production of Playboy we saw a couple years ago, where Christy was played by Cillian Murphy. Very recognizable.) This weekend, we bought programmes for both plays, which definitely helped place the actor who played Pegeen yesterday . . . she'd previously wowed us as the title role in Portia Coughlan. The Widow Quinn got placed as Molly Bloom in the movie of Ulysses that we walked out of. (I haven't seen The Commitments, so no amount of telling me that Angeline Ball was in that helped, thank you very much.) Today, well, probably half the people in the audience were coming to see James Cromwell (a.k.a. Jack Bauer's Dad, that guy who was in The West Wing, or the Farmer in Babe), so he was recognizable. We'd also recently seen Jamie declaiming that Brutus is an honorable man at the Abbey (though, he's far too good an actor for me to realize that till perusing his bio after the play). I'm going to try to remember to keep an eye out for Michael Esper. Everybody in the cast of Long Day's Journey into Night was incredible, but I found myself drawn to watching Esper's reactions to everyone else. There was a beautiful vulnerability to his performance.
I'm falling asleep, so I'd better sign off for now. Next week if I remember to journal it, Uncle Vanya and a stage adaptation of the "Grand Inquisitor" chapter of The Brothers Karamazov. And maybe one of these days I'll try to analyze my reaction to Hibiki. It seems that the more I want to say something, the fewer words I have.