no more tickets

It was a fat little envelope, filled with tickets--now it is empty. tears welling up in eyes--No more RSC!!...all gone! upper lip trembling unhWAAAAAAA!!
Caesar was okay. It was warm and sleepy in the theatre and I have to point out that my belief that JC should NOT be the first Shakespeare kids encounter was confirmed. LONG speeches and last night they were performed rather monotonously--droning and zzzzzz
*head snap*
What?? No. I am good--quick glance at stage to confirm..yep Marc Antony is still talking-- and talking and talking--they did this weird thing with the assassination --the audience couldn't see it--they did this weird thing with the battles--they ran off stage--just talking and talking

There were rumors that this performance was to be especially bloody--well the blood packets didn't burst properly. Nope no Gallagher esque splatterings for us! In fact three little packs lay in the middle of the EMPTY stage- like sassy little leeches-glistening and ready to burst--but sadly whole. The other fun thing about the EMPTY set was when they pluck the "gaudy feathers" from the statue of JC--the prop was actually white streamers (feathers... streamers whatever)--like toilet paper--which then lay heaped on the stage for the whole first act, as if a naughty kitten had gotten in the pissoir; and YES--in classic slapstick form the TP was getting caught on the actor's shoes. So here are these conniving and distraught men pacing about Rome with blood stained TP stuck to the soles of their boots--it was menstrual at best... A menstrual show??

Tony & Cleo

Nicely done. I truly enjoyed seeing the RSC performance last night. The costumes were perfect. Suddenly I have this fondness for men in Roman Garb--better than kilts! Going in I thought perhaps the babe, Harriet Walters playing Cleopatra was gonna be too old, but then Patrick Stewart should up and they sizzled! Chris Jones of the Chicago Trib had this lovely paragraph which I shall share with my darling readers: "Harriet Walter's endlessly fascinating Cleopatra is no camp, gilded icon in the classic Elizabeth Taylor mode -- rather, she's a smart, decent, passionate woman who knows how to snare her guy, sure, but also offers her Antony a more burnished life than his sniveling Roman pals. But good intentions aside, she still turns Stewart's Antony into an unhappy man caught between two worlds and, by the second act, viable in neither. His descent is beguiling to watch."
mmmm good stuff

Novel Stimuli

Such a purist....

Prospero=Patrick Stewart, good—I like it-- but in the ARCTIC?? Ariel is a dude?? A hot dude??

There was a time in my life when If I heard live music that deviated from the recording I had memorized I would have little immature hissy fits. That same sense of discomfort is awakened when movies don’t stick to the text. I still have a niggling worm of unease in the theatre when massive setting costume changes take place—for example Richard as a Nazi-- or as I anticipate Thursday—Julius Cesar in samurai garb?? THEY better not F THAT up!) But now I can see Ian McKellan as brilliantly terrifying and I am okay with the irony of the Assorted Lords scrabbling through the ice pack and discussing the lush green grass. It was funny.

I have always read Ariel in The Tempest as a little waif fairygirl with this disturbed angry old man. And the RSC has now pushed all of that imagery right out my window. We start out on Titanic shipwreck kinda thing and end up with Inuits and dead seals. “So people who think they're going to get an elderly man with a long white beard sitting on a rock, talking about his life, are in for a surprise.'' (Mckee A2 News)

The bizarre unfamiliarity of the frozen Arctic, coupled with a Peter Murphy-like Ariel and a Caliban who is drop dead gorgeous provided a magical if lusty--space for Shakespeare's last drama to unfold.

"Ultimately, it's a play about finding forgiveness in the most unlikely place,'' said Stewart. "For me, an act which resonates very powerfully ... is how much of a difference it makes to both the interior as well as the exterior life if you can, if only for a few minutes, put yourself in another's shoes, see the world through their eyes." The Tempest asks a single quiet question, one that Shakespeare has posed in many of his other plays and what Mr. Bloom just finished writing a book about-- What is a human being?

YEAH BAY-BY!

Hot damn! that was Awesome!
a. NO parking spaces!! I freaking love it!
b. There was a line that had to "snake" at 8am
c. OUT with the incumbents (Not you Bill yer okay!) in w/ the Green party. That was a fantastic feeling. So many Greenpeeps running! We are EVERYWHERE, the senate the congress, the state board of education, UoM, MSU, WSU. My freak flag is flying high and proud. LOVE IT!
d. and a nice simple paper ballot where ya fill in the dot--right next to your write in candidate!

Now what shall I wear to the RSC tonight?? Tempest and then fly to the idiotbox for results.

GO VOTE!

Get off your ass and go vote! NOW. Shut off the 'puter and go to your poll. If you live in Ypsi write in Steve Pierce for mayor. If you don't like the idea of a successful business man in charge of a struggling downtown, wait scratch that, if you don't like the idea of a historic district getting rehabbed by somebody who has already accomplished just that (saving/restoring a historic home) write in yourself, write in anybody (Jon Stewart? Tom Waits? Oprah? Pedro?) just please don't support the old school status quo--It isn't working. VOTE GREEN!!
This campaign ad was paid for by the citizen for more coffee and less bullshit.