(no subject)
I knew eventually this week would have to slip. Thankfully it's only slipping timeise (I woke up late, packing for tomorrow has been entirely abandoned but I need to check TdF news, work out how the heck I'm getting into London with half the tube down, plus tea is happening before I leave the house!)
Jerusalem at the Royal Court was FANTASTIC just as all the reviews said and if there are any tickets left and you can go then DO.
I mean I think it would have had to be very bad for me not to like it bearing in mind Mark Rylance but it was great.
It was one of those plays that starts out really funny, shocked laughter from the younger members of the audience at all the sex and drugs, just hilarity from the older members of the audience which was strange but there you have it) and then as the play goes on you register the fact that there is literally no way this can end well and by the end everyone was sitting in a ort of shocked silence.
The whole of the cast was good, a lot of younger kids (half of whom had been in Skins), the Professor I definitely recognised but wasn't sure from where and Mackenzie Crook worked as a sort of gang that hung around Johnny Byron (Mark Rylance) but who were mostly there for the drugs. Then there was Byron's son (who looked rather shellshocked during the applause it has to be said, he was only a wee lad) and the child's mother (who was played by... I've forgotten her name but she was the mtf love of Denham's life in the IT Crowd and she was really very good).
Mackenzie Crook has an endless capacity to look slightly hurt and also slightly out of it. His acid trip in the second act was one of the funniest things I've seen in a while (only beaten actually by one of the other guys in the first act trying to repeat a story from the previous evening and cracking himself up so much he couldn't talk, it was just so perfectly how that goes the whole place was giggling madly).
And then there was Phaedra, the missing girl who partly sparks off the bad ending who looked beautiful and ethereal and then when she finally spoke was just another teenaged irl. And her stepfather who was genuinely terrifying.
But oh Mark Rylance was just... I mean I know I'm biased and all but he was SO good. It's a part made for him. Lots of tall tales for him to tell, sudden flashes of different emotions, but then need (underneath it all) to be incredibly human and warm and somehow seem safe even when he was saying he really wasn't.
Plus there was this look in his eyes. During the play he stopped various people and made them look him straight in the eyes and there would be these odd reactions and the thing is with Mark you believe they saw something even if you're not sure what. And you half believe his tall tales even when you know they're ridiculous and you're both playing along in a superior way and also drawn in.
And then the ending was horrible and made me feel sick and yet where else could it have gone (if I tell you we had the sounds of a beating, then the smell of burning flesh, then the smell of petrol and then this really unnerving curse and beating of a drum (from Mark that last bit)... well yes.
I suspect it was trying to say something but I'm ot entirely sure what it was. He was being a safer space for the kids of the town but he looked the most dangerous? Something about outsiders too I suppose and quite a lot about how we can be quite friendly towards someone whilst simultaneously never quite registering them as human/worth care and attention.
I'll have to go bak ad read it (I do love the Royal Court for making the play text your programme!)
And now I'm off to Mark Rylance's old stomping ground The Globe. Or I am if the trains will let me get there :P
Jerusalem at the Royal Court was FANTASTIC just as all the reviews said and if there are any tickets left and you can go then DO.
I mean I think it would have had to be very bad for me not to like it bearing in mind Mark Rylance but it was great.
It was one of those plays that starts out really funny, shocked laughter from the younger members of the audience at all the sex and drugs, just hilarity from the older members of the audience which was strange but there you have it) and then as the play goes on you register the fact that there is literally no way this can end well and by the end everyone was sitting in a ort of shocked silence.
The whole of the cast was good, a lot of younger kids (half of whom had been in Skins), the Professor I definitely recognised but wasn't sure from where and Mackenzie Crook worked as a sort of gang that hung around Johnny Byron (Mark Rylance) but who were mostly there for the drugs. Then there was Byron's son (who looked rather shellshocked during the applause it has to be said, he was only a wee lad) and the child's mother (who was played by... I've forgotten her name but she was the mtf love of Denham's life in the IT Crowd and she was really very good).
Mackenzie Crook has an endless capacity to look slightly hurt and also slightly out of it. His acid trip in the second act was one of the funniest things I've seen in a while (only beaten actually by one of the other guys in the first act trying to repeat a story from the previous evening and cracking himself up so much he couldn't talk, it was just so perfectly how that goes the whole place was giggling madly).
And then there was Phaedra, the missing girl who partly sparks off the bad ending who looked beautiful and ethereal and then when she finally spoke was just another teenaged irl. And her stepfather who was genuinely terrifying.
But oh Mark Rylance was just... I mean I know I'm biased and all but he was SO good. It's a part made for him. Lots of tall tales for him to tell, sudden flashes of different emotions, but then need (underneath it all) to be incredibly human and warm and somehow seem safe even when he was saying he really wasn't.
Plus there was this look in his eyes. During the play he stopped various people and made them look him straight in the eyes and there would be these odd reactions and the thing is with Mark you believe they saw something even if you're not sure what. And you half believe his tall tales even when you know they're ridiculous and you're both playing along in a superior way and also drawn in.
And then the ending was horrible and made me feel sick and yet where else could it have gone (if I tell you we had the sounds of a beating, then the smell of burning flesh, then the smell of petrol and then this really unnerving curse and beating of a drum (from Mark that last bit)... well yes.
I suspect it was trying to say something but I'm ot entirely sure what it was. He was being a safer space for the kids of the town but he looked the most dangerous? Something about outsiders too I suppose and quite a lot about how we can be quite friendly towards someone whilst simultaneously never quite registering them as human/worth care and attention.
I'll have to go bak ad read it (I do love the Royal Court for making the play text your programme!)
And now I'm off to Mark Rylance's old stomping ground The Globe. Or I am if the trains will let me get there :P