If music be the food of love...
Jun. 7th, 2005 08:37 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ventaFriday evening saw me whizzing down to London (again) to meet up with ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
snow_leopard before she departs for Northern climes. Requiring a feeding venue near Regents Park, we settled on Pizza Express. I thought I'd risk a "pizza bianca", which was described as "pizza with a twist", while not actually telling me what the twist was.
It turns out that, for reasons I can't hazard, Pizza Express have started serving a pizza in which the tomato and mozarella have been replaced by béchamel sauce. Which is weird, but actually rather nice. No points to the restaurant for having a chip and PIN machine which is so Fearsome and Complicated that it completely outwitted me, and Snow_Leopard had to fend it off with cash (and after I'd promised to buy her dinner, too :( ). I assure you the machine was extremely Fearsome; it is not that I am incompetent and didn't read the instructions properly.
Regents Park proximity was required because we were heading on down to see a production of Twelfth Night in the open air theatre there. Did you know there was a purpose-built great big red theatre in Regents Park ? No, neither did I. It comes fully equipped with squashy damp seats and a bar which looked at us funny and claimed to be closed.
The damp seats were rendered (mostly) harmless by the bin bags theatre staff were distributing, and the bar eventually agreed to play nice and sell us (nearly) mulled wine in the interval. By which time thousands of little fairy lights had come on among the trellis and greenery and it all looked very pretty. Still cold and rather damp, but it seems unfair to blame the theatre for that.
I knew nothing at all about Twelfth Night, so was faced not just with enjoying the production but with trying to work out what was going on. Viola tried to make it difficult for me at times by speaking too quietly to be heard at the back, but in general the voices were remarkably audible for an unamplified performance. It's hardly a natural amphitheatre, but it all seems to work. I'm not quite sure how.
Having seen no other productions to compare, I'm not sure how much of my opinion is based on the play, and how much on this production in particular. Sebastian seemed strangely bland, there only as a necessary plot-prop. The Duke also seemed terribly two-dimensional, appearing only on stage to make unreasonable demands of his employees.
By contrast, Sir Toby Belch and Sir Andrew Aguecheek seemed incredibly well-drawn - the former ponderous and wine-soaked, the latter capering and skittish. Then again, maybe I'm just showing my taste for low society, there :)
The Illyria of rhe production was of a sun-soaked Spanish flavour, with Olivia in a mantilla and her ladies in broad, colourful skirts. The fool (who is, of course, no fool - OK, Shakespeare, we've got the bit about fools being wise now, you can stop putting it into every other play) seemed to be a North American-style Shaman, for no obvious reason. He was a good fool, and has a lovely singing voice, but I'm confused about his origins.
I don't feel qualified to comment on whether it's a good production to the cognoscenti, but I certainly enjoyed it. Tickets for the back row (if you book early enough while there are some left) come in at a tenner, so I'd certainly recommend it as an evening out for London-based types.
There's just one thing... Malvolio. OK, so he's not the most likeable of characters (though, owing to slight inaudibility and slight incomprehension I largely missed what's so terribly dislikable about him. He certainly didn't seem much more offensive than the demanding and overbearing Duke). But really, he doesn't deserve to have a trick like that played upon him.
In case anyone is as ignorant of Shakespeare as I: Malvolio is in the employ of a lady named Olivia. Olivia's serving lady and various other characters leave a letter where he will find it. It is a forgery, and purports to be a cryptic letter from Olivia declaring her love for Malvolio, and requiring him to act and dress in very particular ways to please her.
Malvolio falls for it hook, line and wotsit. He promptly disgards his sober attire in favour of the specified ridiculous yellow stockings, and begins acting wholly out of character. He spends most of the rest of the play locked up as a madman and, though he is ultimately exonerated when the scheme is uncovered, it is still with the rest of the characters laughing at him. No Shakespearean ending of a wedding for him; at the closing curtain he is still single, and the butt of the joke.
As far as I can tell, he had never been malicious during the play, merely a little pompous. It strikes me as terribly sad someone should go to such lengths - wearing clothes he himself hates and behaving insanely - to win the love of his lady, only to find that his reasons for doing so were based on a cruel joke. Had the play ended as others do, with couples rammed haphazadly together to pair off all the spare characters I suspect I wouldn't have minded. But as the characters plan a double wedding for Olivia and the Duke, Malvolio is left in his yellow, having lost the lady he never even had, to begin the probably hopeless job of recovering his dignity.
snow_leopard before she departs for Northern climes. Requiring a feeding venue near Regents Park, we settled on Pizza Express. I thought I'd risk a "pizza bianca", which was described as "pizza with a twist", while not actually telling me what the twist was. It turns out that, for reasons I can't hazard, Pizza Express have started serving a pizza in which the tomato and mozarella have been replaced by béchamel sauce. Which is weird, but actually rather nice. No points to the restaurant for having a chip and PIN machine which is so Fearsome and Complicated that it completely outwitted me, and Snow_Leopard had to fend it off with cash (and after I'd promised to buy her dinner, too :( ). I assure you the machine was extremely Fearsome; it is not that I am incompetent and didn't read the instructions properly.
Regents Park proximity was required because we were heading on down to see a production of Twelfth Night in the open air theatre there. Did you know there was a purpose-built great big red theatre in Regents Park ? No, neither did I. It comes fully equipped with squashy damp seats and a bar which looked at us funny and claimed to be closed.
The damp seats were rendered (mostly) harmless by the bin bags theatre staff were distributing, and the bar eventually agreed to play nice and sell us (nearly) mulled wine in the interval. By which time thousands of little fairy lights had come on among the trellis and greenery and it all looked very pretty. Still cold and rather damp, but it seems unfair to blame the theatre for that.
I knew nothing at all about Twelfth Night, so was faced not just with enjoying the production but with trying to work out what was going on. Viola tried to make it difficult for me at times by speaking too quietly to be heard at the back, but in general the voices were remarkably audible for an unamplified performance. It's hardly a natural amphitheatre, but it all seems to work. I'm not quite sure how.
Having seen no other productions to compare, I'm not sure how much of my opinion is based on the play, and how much on this production in particular. Sebastian seemed strangely bland, there only as a necessary plot-prop. The Duke also seemed terribly two-dimensional, appearing only on stage to make unreasonable demands of his employees.
By contrast, Sir Toby Belch and Sir Andrew Aguecheek seemed incredibly well-drawn - the former ponderous and wine-soaked, the latter capering and skittish. Then again, maybe I'm just showing my taste for low society, there :)
The Illyria of rhe production was of a sun-soaked Spanish flavour, with Olivia in a mantilla and her ladies in broad, colourful skirts. The fool (who is, of course, no fool - OK, Shakespeare, we've got the bit about fools being wise now, you can stop putting it into every other play) seemed to be a North American-style Shaman, for no obvious reason. He was a good fool, and has a lovely singing voice, but I'm confused about his origins.
I don't feel qualified to comment on whether it's a good production to the cognoscenti, but I certainly enjoyed it. Tickets for the back row (if you book early enough while there are some left) come in at a tenner, so I'd certainly recommend it as an evening out for London-based types.
There's just one thing... Malvolio. OK, so he's not the most likeable of characters (though, owing to slight inaudibility and slight incomprehension I largely missed what's so terribly dislikable about him. He certainly didn't seem much more offensive than the demanding and overbearing Duke). But really, he doesn't deserve to have a trick like that played upon him.
In case anyone is as ignorant of Shakespeare as I: Malvolio is in the employ of a lady named Olivia. Olivia's serving lady and various other characters leave a letter where he will find it. It is a forgery, and purports to be a cryptic letter from Olivia declaring her love for Malvolio, and requiring him to act and dress in very particular ways to please her.
Malvolio falls for it hook, line and wotsit. He promptly disgards his sober attire in favour of the specified ridiculous yellow stockings, and begins acting wholly out of character. He spends most of the rest of the play locked up as a madman and, though he is ultimately exonerated when the scheme is uncovered, it is still with the rest of the characters laughing at him. No Shakespearean ending of a wedding for him; at the closing curtain he is still single, and the butt of the joke.
As far as I can tell, he had never been malicious during the play, merely a little pompous. It strikes me as terribly sad someone should go to such lengths - wearing clothes he himself hates and behaving insanely - to win the love of his lady, only to find that his reasons for doing so were based on a cruel joke. Had the play ended as others do, with couples rammed haphazadly together to pair off all the spare characters I suspect I wouldn't have minded. But as the characters plan a double wedding for Olivia and the Duke, Malvolio is left in his yellow, having lost the lady he never even had, to begin the probably hopeless job of recovering his dignity.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2005-06-07 07:08 pm (UTC)Sadly, it then wanted me to enter the amount of the tip, so when I entered the full amount I wanted to pay, everything went a bit downhill. I mean, it worked, but I had to apologetically ask them to cancel it.