(no subject)
This weekend has been... well actually I think epic might almost be right. Trying to think back as far as Friday evening feels like trying to remember at least a week back if not a month :P
Still it's also been a pretty fab weekend <3
I finished work early on Friday and managed to do a bit more sorting in my room (two bin bags and two bags for charity out so far and I'm barely even a quarter of the way round the room, and the relatively empty quarter too!) as well as write lists of all the things I really ought to have got sorted for Christmas already *does not panic*
In the evening I headed off to the Roundhouse, Camden, to see the RSC's Romeo & Juliet <3 N and I tried out their new restaurant first as well. It was VERY yummy food but slightly iffy on the service (lots of smiles but not much, y'know, actually being around to take orders and bring food :P) Not entirely sure how it's going to work when the RSC isn't in residence and they've got gigs going on. It's not really that sort of a restaurant *g*
Romeo & Juliet- RSC @ Roundhouse, Camden
How was this ever going to go wrong really with Mariah Gale and Sam Troughton as the two leads? But it really was very good. This is there Long Ensemble company who've been acting together for two and a bit years now and they clearly were very comfortable around each other as you could tell in the dance and fight scenes.
It's not the most radical R&J in the world. The main concept is that R&J are in modern dress whilst all the rest are in period costume (I wanted Lady Capulet's ball dress SO MUCH) until the end when everyone switched. I did also rather adore the way they used the prologue. Romeo wandered on with head phones on, into what was clearly meant to be a church, and we got the opening words of the Prologue in (I think) Spanish and then Italian before the whole thing in that broken English you get on audio tours in other countries *g*
I'm sort of a bit in love with Sam Troughton now but I'm also sort of the opinion that one ought to be a bit in love with Romeo if the production's been good (or Juliet, as you prefer *g*)
I was MUCH amused to note that the woman next to me gasped when Juliet's feet started moving as Romeo drank the poison... surely she knew what was coming!
But yes. RSC and awesome actors and actually the first time I've seen R&J on stage believe it or not so a win all round.
After the play we struggled home. I say struggled, at least FCC was running some kind of a service but we had 4 carriages and nearly an hours worth of people so it was a little unbearable :-/ And when I got home it was snowing! It felt like a winter wonderland as I had the streets to myself <3
Of course by Saturday morning it was all melted and there was fog EVERYWHERE and as I walked to the station the fog got TICKER which seemed wrong as it's vaguely uphill... then I realised fog doesn't normally smell of smoke/steam and made the discovery that there was a steam train in our station! So that was rather surreal *g*
The early morning Saturday journey was because N and I had tickets to a special "unwrapped" Romeo & Juliet event back at the Roundhouse. We weren't entirely sure what to expect, I think I'd assumed a Q&A thing with some of the cast, but what we go was part workshop/part Q&A.
We had one of the company's Assistant Directors along with the understudies for Romeo & Juliet (who were both rather good) and they started by getting us doing various warm up vocal exercises and talking about how actors need to full a space like the Roundhouse (especially with a thrust stage). Then there was an exercise for a few of the audience using two of Juliet's speeches where they stood on stage and read the speech in their head whilst walking forwards and every time they reached a piece of punctuation they turned 90 degrees and each full stop was 180 degrees. It really was quite amazing to see visually how clearly the punctuation shows the state of Juliet's mind. The understudy for Juliet then did the speeches whilst doing the same exercise to make it even clearer.
Then the AD took a short section of a fake rehersal with the two understudies of the Balcony scene showing how they play with ideas and discard some and emphasise others.
And finally we got a bit of a Q&A during which the understudy Romeo told us he'd worked out he'd been on stage with the Company for 200+ hours! Which is pretty impressive. Especially given he isn't a lead in anything so has less stage time than some!
After that we caught a bus to Tottenham Court Road and walked up to John Lewis (dodging protesters outside TopShop and BHS) and did some shopping before N left me to my own devices.
I had lunch in Apostrophe ♥ (and by lunch I mean a small sandwich and a LARGE hot chocolate) and then walked along to the Winter Wonderland fair in Hyde Park and all around that <3 I even went on the Observation Wheel though apparently the staff all found it rather weird that I wanted to go on my own from their stares :P Plenteous pretzels and mulled drinks etc. were consumed and lovely things bought at the craft fair before I walked BACK to John Lewis (via a pause to listen to a rather fab Steel Drum group playing Christmas carols to raise money for the NSPCC) for tea with ciorstaidh and more wandering round <3
AND THEN I got a train down to the South Bank and looked at their Christmas Market <3 and had more hot chocolate and more yummy food and possibly Churros (though OMG nearly too many of those) and bought some more Christmas presents *g*
And FINALLY I wandered along to the Young Vic and somewhat collapsed into my seat for a quiet 20 minutes before the play began.
The Glass Menagerie @ Young Vic
So this too had a pretty incredible cast!
Deborah Findlay (from Cranford *g*) as the mother was magnificent (though her accent slipped a little) and every time she was just awful enough that you wanted to hate her she'd suddenly appear again as just wanting the best for her children. And she was wonderful/awful reliving her days of Gentlemen Callers in her best dress.
Leo Bill as Tom was very jittery and never really still when on stage except when he was narrating which was pretty much perfect. I loved the way he conducted the musicians and gestured to make the curtains rise and fall like a magician (as he says in the play)
Kyle Soller was Jim and reminded me quite a lot of... well somebody only I still can't work out who which is EPICALLY annoying. He was handsome and polite and so very very earnest and I very much wished the play wasn't going to end the way I knew it had to because he and Laura had such wonderful chemistry when they were dancing and chatting *sighs* This was a weekend of doomed romances I guess.
So then Laura was played by Sinead Matthews who I saw last year in Our Class which was one of the best performances I saw in 2009 and she was equally great this time. Something in her eyes as she polished her glass animals and in the way her hands fluttered as she tried to talk to Jim and just... well he broke my heart. Again. And I spent quite a lot of my journey home thinking about how glad I am to live NOW and not then. But I won't forget her face as she blew out the candles at the end of the play any time soon.
The Young Vic really is a very good place to see plays and I would very much recommend the Glass Menagerie, which is on till January I think.
And then I cam home and collapsed into bed and today I sang at one service, served at the next (thurifer so everything I own smells of incense but it was rather fun and I had one of our newer Boat Girls who was very good and didn't scowl when an elderly member of the congregation described her as being my little pixie... IDEK) and THEN it was Christingle and all my Rainbows behaved... well not beautifully but very well and didn't set anything on fire and didn't eat their sweets till after the service and asked interested questions about things and I was generally very proud of them.
And THEN I had a quick "training" in being a Clerk (they carry the Gospel book and are generally in charge of making sure everything the servers and clergy need is where it needs to be during the service) at our Parish Eucharist because I'm going to be doing that for the first time on Christmas Day :-/
And now I am home. And never want to move again. And am going to Birmingham tomorrow... SEE HOW I LOVE YOU tikiaceae!
Still it's also been a pretty fab weekend <3
I finished work early on Friday and managed to do a bit more sorting in my room (two bin bags and two bags for charity out so far and I'm barely even a quarter of the way round the room, and the relatively empty quarter too!) as well as write lists of all the things I really ought to have got sorted for Christmas already *does not panic*
In the evening I headed off to the Roundhouse, Camden, to see the RSC's Romeo & Juliet <3 N and I tried out their new restaurant first as well. It was VERY yummy food but slightly iffy on the service (lots of smiles but not much, y'know, actually being around to take orders and bring food :P) Not entirely sure how it's going to work when the RSC isn't in residence and they've got gigs going on. It's not really that sort of a restaurant *g*
Romeo & Juliet- RSC @ Roundhouse, Camden
How was this ever going to go wrong really with Mariah Gale and Sam Troughton as the two leads? But it really was very good. This is there Long Ensemble company who've been acting together for two and a bit years now and they clearly were very comfortable around each other as you could tell in the dance and fight scenes.
It's not the most radical R&J in the world. The main concept is that R&J are in modern dress whilst all the rest are in period costume (I wanted Lady Capulet's ball dress SO MUCH) until the end when everyone switched. I did also rather adore the way they used the prologue. Romeo wandered on with head phones on, into what was clearly meant to be a church, and we got the opening words of the Prologue in (I think) Spanish and then Italian before the whole thing in that broken English you get on audio tours in other countries *g*
I'm sort of a bit in love with Sam Troughton now but I'm also sort of the opinion that one ought to be a bit in love with Romeo if the production's been good (or Juliet, as you prefer *g*)
I was MUCH amused to note that the woman next to me gasped when Juliet's feet started moving as Romeo drank the poison... surely she knew what was coming!
But yes. RSC and awesome actors and actually the first time I've seen R&J on stage believe it or not so a win all round.
After the play we struggled home. I say struggled, at least FCC was running some kind of a service but we had 4 carriages and nearly an hours worth of people so it was a little unbearable :-/ And when I got home it was snowing! It felt like a winter wonderland as I had the streets to myself <3
Of course by Saturday morning it was all melted and there was fog EVERYWHERE and as I walked to the station the fog got TICKER which seemed wrong as it's vaguely uphill... then I realised fog doesn't normally smell of smoke/steam and made the discovery that there was a steam train in our station! So that was rather surreal *g*
The early morning Saturday journey was because N and I had tickets to a special "unwrapped" Romeo & Juliet event back at the Roundhouse. We weren't entirely sure what to expect, I think I'd assumed a Q&A thing with some of the cast, but what we go was part workshop/part Q&A.
We had one of the company's Assistant Directors along with the understudies for Romeo & Juliet (who were both rather good) and they started by getting us doing various warm up vocal exercises and talking about how actors need to full a space like the Roundhouse (especially with a thrust stage). Then there was an exercise for a few of the audience using two of Juliet's speeches where they stood on stage and read the speech in their head whilst walking forwards and every time they reached a piece of punctuation they turned 90 degrees and each full stop was 180 degrees. It really was quite amazing to see visually how clearly the punctuation shows the state of Juliet's mind. The understudy for Juliet then did the speeches whilst doing the same exercise to make it even clearer.
Then the AD took a short section of a fake rehersal with the two understudies of the Balcony scene showing how they play with ideas and discard some and emphasise others.
And finally we got a bit of a Q&A during which the understudy Romeo told us he'd worked out he'd been on stage with the Company for 200+ hours! Which is pretty impressive. Especially given he isn't a lead in anything so has less stage time than some!
After that we caught a bus to Tottenham Court Road and walked up to John Lewis (dodging protesters outside TopShop and BHS) and did some shopping before N left me to my own devices.
I had lunch in Apostrophe ♥ (and by lunch I mean a small sandwich and a LARGE hot chocolate) and then walked along to the Winter Wonderland fair in Hyde Park and all around that <3 I even went on the Observation Wheel though apparently the staff all found it rather weird that I wanted to go on my own from their stares :P Plenteous pretzels and mulled drinks etc. were consumed and lovely things bought at the craft fair before I walked BACK to John Lewis (via a pause to listen to a rather fab Steel Drum group playing Christmas carols to raise money for the NSPCC) for tea with ciorstaidh and more wandering round <3
AND THEN I got a train down to the South Bank and looked at their Christmas Market <3 and had more hot chocolate and more yummy food and possibly Churros (though OMG nearly too many of those) and bought some more Christmas presents *g*
And FINALLY I wandered along to the Young Vic and somewhat collapsed into my seat for a quiet 20 minutes before the play began.
The Glass Menagerie @ Young Vic
So this too had a pretty incredible cast!
Deborah Findlay (from Cranford *g*) as the mother was magnificent (though her accent slipped a little) and every time she was just awful enough that you wanted to hate her she'd suddenly appear again as just wanting the best for her children. And she was wonderful/awful reliving her days of Gentlemen Callers in her best dress.
Leo Bill as Tom was very jittery and never really still when on stage except when he was narrating which was pretty much perfect. I loved the way he conducted the musicians and gestured to make the curtains rise and fall like a magician (as he says in the play)
Kyle Soller was Jim and reminded me quite a lot of... well somebody only I still can't work out who which is EPICALLY annoying. He was handsome and polite and so very very earnest and I very much wished the play wasn't going to end the way I knew it had to because he and Laura had such wonderful chemistry when they were dancing and chatting *sighs* This was a weekend of doomed romances I guess.
So then Laura was played by Sinead Matthews who I saw last year in Our Class which was one of the best performances I saw in 2009 and she was equally great this time. Something in her eyes as she polished her glass animals and in the way her hands fluttered as she tried to talk to Jim and just... well he broke my heart. Again. And I spent quite a lot of my journey home thinking about how glad I am to live NOW and not then. But I won't forget her face as she blew out the candles at the end of the play any time soon.
The Young Vic really is a very good place to see plays and I would very much recommend the Glass Menagerie, which is on till January I think.
And then I cam home and collapsed into bed and today I sang at one service, served at the next (thurifer so everything I own smells of incense but it was rather fun and I had one of our newer Boat Girls who was very good and didn't scowl when an elderly member of the congregation described her as being my little pixie... IDEK) and THEN it was Christingle and all my Rainbows behaved... well not beautifully but very well and didn't set anything on fire and didn't eat their sweets till after the service and asked interested questions about things and I was generally very proud of them.
And THEN I had a quick "training" in being a Clerk (they carry the Gospel book and are generally in charge of making sure everything the servers and clergy need is where it needs to be during the service) at our Parish Eucharist because I'm going to be doing that for the first time on Christmas Day :-/
And now I am home. And never want to move again. And am going to Birmingham tomorrow... SEE HOW I LOVE YOU tikiaceae!