London Oct 2012

Oh boy,  fall 2012 London, spoiled for choice on what to see and so little time!

Ended up seeing an oldie, long running show "The Woman in Black", very nice, this is supposed to be a scary thriller kind of play, and it was on it's own, but the bunch of school kids sitting in the rows before me gave an extra special dimension... who would have thought that teenagers these days scare so easily, the shrieking and gasping at every scary scene or sound made the whole evening almost a comedy. Love you kids!

Twelfth Night

Next up my reason for coming to london on this trip: "Twelfth Night" at the Globe.  So glad I decided to make this trip. This all male production was hilarious! such an excellent cast, great use of the unique space that the Globe offers. This production, if a little on the funny side, must be one of the definitive productions of Twelfth Night ever (more in a dedicated post later).

Not quite recovered from  the "Twelfth Night" matinee it was a short walk to the National, press night for 'Scenes from an Execution'. Never had the opportunity before to attend a press night at the National, it comes with a certain atmosphere. I thought this was a good production, first act could have benefited from a little more editing, but the second act was great. Some technical difficulties with the set righ before the end. I felt so bad for the cast for this to happen on press night, but the audience was supportive and the Cast handled the mishaps with style. 

 B56 Middle Gallery,
East Tower Bay M Restricted View 

One more day left, packed with Shakespeare. Matinee performance of 'The Taming of the Shrew" got to say my seat with restricted view, was quite restricted but very much doable. Taming is a play that comes with some trepidation, feminist issues and all that but there are interesting theories about that, will try to elaborate on that in a dedicated post later.

On with the finale of this trip, another Globe visit, "Richard III". OMG so good! same cast (sans Stephen Fry) as "Twelfth Night" I can't get over how good this cast is in these plays that are performed in repertory. Certainly the special atmosphere at the Globe adds to the experience. I am very happy I was able to change my courtyard (standing) ticket for a seat. It rained almost the entire performance, and the Globe being half open air, poor groundlings... (more later)

Richard III

Playbills

I've been working on getting a headstart on the playbills... 

it's kind of a boring task to scan them (without destroying the original), reformat the pages, crop the scans and resize the pages to fit the standard size I set for the website.

Ski Dubai

While not perfect, I think the scans are fairly readable, making higher resolution scans would probably make them better, but then the files would be so big, loading the page might take too long... So, sorry I decided to compromise, the small print had to suffer the consequences.

I've added 5 new playbills today: Blackbird, August Osage County, Ski Dubai, I Sailed with Magellan and Graceland.

I Sailed with Magellan

These plays all hold great memories - which made the task more pleasant but also slow because I couldn't help but stop and read every now and then. Some of these plays are already added as an individual play-page to the accompanying website (at theatermusings.com), the others will follow soon.

All of these will get their own blog entry with my own thoughts and impressions of the play.... later...

   




Theatermusings.com

Harold Pinter

Harold Pinter page is added, so far only basics, there is so much material about him out there it will take some sifting through. I've included a video gallery to this page, if I like it I might add one to more pages.

about Harold Pinter...
he passed away christmas 2008, just a few days before I saw my first Pinter play performed.  A few days after his death I attended a talk by Michael Billington, he has been the theater critic for the UK newspaper The Guardian for many years. He was talking about the hot plays in town, what to see and what would be impossible to get tickets for (a tease and a challenge all rolled in one) but due to events ended up talking quite a lot about Pinter. a few anecdotes that I will not share here, but I will say that Michael spoke so fondly and with such passionate (professional) admiration that I instantly felt I should see his work and read up about him... I did buy a few books on Pinter, and am fortunate to have seen some of his work performed since, but real life distracted me and most of the books sit on the 'to read' pile at home. Now that I am typing this out I can only say that that pile of books has gotten way out of hand, I really should make time to simply read!

So the (Billington)talk I attended was in London, I was on this fabulous(!) theater trip, really one of the best trips of my life, theater related or not. A few days later, the last play of the trip was the Pinter play... No Man's Land, at the Duke of York, I think it was the very last performance of the run. It had a fabulous all star cast: Michael Gambon, David Bradley, David Walliams and Nick Dunning. Going in fairly blind on the makings of Pinter (I had in preparation of the trip read the play but found it impossible to make sense of) I was stunned. it was riveting, mesmerizing, still incomprehensible at times but in a way seeing it on stage instead of on paper it all made sense to me... of course when talking to others in my group after the play it turned out they had made sense of it too, just with a completely different take on meaning... I think for me that will always be the essence of Pinter.

Afterwards two of us waited outside at stage door to catch a glimpse of the great Gambon, he was gracious as ever in shaking off his fans quickly :)

note: Gambon is a seasoned stage actor, he worked with Pinter on and off for 30 years. He performed in Pinters plays and was also directed by him. Pinter came to see this production on opening night, just a few months before he died. On my Michael Gambon page  I have included his farewell to Pinter, from the No Man's Land stage. I feel very lucky to have seen this production, and also that Gambon was part of the cast in my first Pinter experience.

That day January 3rd 2009, this evening holds very special memories to me, those of you that might read this and were there that evening, you may know and remember, those of you that were not present, sorry I'll not elaborate much, suffice it to say that 'No Man's Land', at this time, with this cast, and in the  enlightening company I was in... unforgettable very dear memories!

Gabriel Byrne and August Osage County

Gabriel Byrne and August Osage County pages added to Geeksareus.nl

Gabriel Byrne
Gotta love his d'Artagnan in The Man In the Iron Mask. I'd never really took notice of the man's work before, apart from "The Usual Suspects" but that movie is so mindboggling story wise the actors doing such a great job with it didn't really register with me individually.
I decided to have a look at his work, past and future. The fun part of something like this happening is that actors often have such an eclectic body of work there are bound to be little known gems in there. This was certainly true with Gabriel Byrne... I'd recommend "Into the West" for one... or "Weapons of Mass Distraction" a completely different genre and even artistic merit but very enjoyable, or "Miller's Crossing", "Last of the High Kings", "Smilla's Sense of Snow" and "A Polish Wedding"  the list goes on... and while I am at it "The Poetry of William Butler Yeats" in audiobook, not to be missed if you want to get into the works of Gabriel Byrne.

This Dublin borne, LA based actor is more mainstream these days if not for "The Usual Suspects" a few years ago then certainly for the tv show "In Treatment". I'm happy that I had already added him to my list of 'bodies of work to be collected' years ago...


August: Osage County

Eventually I will retrace all plays on the site in their own dedicated review blog, for now just a few impressions.


So first time in Chicago, first time Steppenwolf, first preview of this brand new play, over 3 hours of excellent entertainment. Maybe not the perfect choice fresh off the plane with a jet lagged mind but excellent none the less. We witnessed a hit in the making! such good memories...

Having just come off a plane from Europe that afternoon, picking up the tickets at box office it was a bit of a shock when the lady said "you do know this is a 3,5 hour play?"… that'll teach me to look at play details before booking tickets for my first night in town!

Thus we came back to the theater after dinner a little apprehensive on the long evening awaiting us with this very new unknown play. A long evening it turned out to be, but an exciting one! We had the good fortune to see the very first preview of this play, actors still getting a feel for it but it already stood firm, the plot was highly entertaining, not a dull moment in those 3,5 hours. and the acting! here's where the worth of an ensemble really comes in, many of the cast were Steppenwolf ensemble members, I think the fact that this complex, exhausting (to the actors) play simply clicked in this first preview ever can be chalked up to the ensemble familiarity. 

Special mention to Deanna Dunagan, not an ensemble member, so above mentioned ensemble benefit reasoning is already disputed somewhat, because did she give a fantastic performance! some images of her Violet have made such an impression on me, I can play them back in my mind second by second, and this is a play I saw 5 years ago!

I'm not exaggerating I think in saying the whole cast gave a fabulous performance, it's really not fair to single some people out.  Having had a chance to talk to a few of them over time about this play made me realize how gracious Chicago actors can be with their time, in my experience most are honestly bemused to baffled  that we the audience even want to talk to them in person or discuss the play. to them it's their job, a job that they love but not something they think we'd be interested in much above and beyond seeing the result on stage.

I for one am interested...

Michael Gambon & Dublin Carol

basics of the Michael Gambon page and the Dublin Carol (trinity rep) page are uploaded.

Dublin Carol
It's so much fun to backtrack on theater visits... once I've caught up I'll only upload (close to) real time experiences, but Trinity Rep's Dublin Carol was over 5 years ago, and really the start of my present Theater interest. Copying old reviews onto the website has been a trip down memory lane, a real treat.

2006 was terrible year in my private life, suffice it to say that a big loss prompted me to be more of a 'seize the day'  kind of person, resulting in a spur of the moment trip to Vegas and New York that summer. Made some new friends in Vegas, among them other theater fans, and among them my now oft travel buddy for Theater trips... serendipity.

So Dublin Carol in Providence RI was already a plan before flying out to Vegas/NYC. I remember being in New York on the day that public sales for Dublin Carol opened. This was 2006, internet access in hotels was either expensive or wonky to say the least. Managed to login on time to grab some front row seats right before the connection went out, victory was mine!

Why Dublin Carol in Providence of all places? this was a special occasion, one of my favorite tv actors had announced to take some time off from his tv show and go back to do a short stint of Stage work. This hit the news at an all time low in my life, apparently my survival instincts honed  in on it as a diversion, and it worked nicely.

So William Petersen wanted to be back on stage for a while, and he picked this nice small theater in Providence RI to do it...  more on Dublin Carol later.

Michael Gambon
There is a lot to say about Michael Gambon, no doubt I will post more about him when talking about the plays he was in because as much as Dublin Carol was an important play for me, Gambon's performance in Pinter's "No Man's Land" I saw a couple of years later in London was another landmark.

For now I will leave you with the observation that mr Gambon is an excellent actor both on stage and on screen, but more than that he is a very gracious star, who takes time for his fans and then manages to get lost in the crowd without anyone bothering him... talent.

Mr Stephen Fry vs Shakespeare

Next trip I think will be filled with Shakespeare.

Back when Shakespeare's Globe Theater announced their 2012/13 season I jumped on the chance to get a ticket for their Twelfth Night production,  it sold out incredibly fast!

Twelfth Night is reasonably often produced but not with an all male cast and certainly not with Stephen Fry in the cast. Mr Fry's rare appearance on stage is a good enough excuse to plan a trip to London for a theater geek like me.

With Twelfth Night set, this week I've looked at London's Theater websites to figure out what else to see when I get there. Plenty of interesting things to see on West End or the National, but a closer look at the Globe's schedule was even more interesting.

Mark Rylance is performing in two productions at the Globe this season... I didn't realize this when I glanced over the program first but those two productions are played in Rep in the performance schedule... having Rylance switch between plays. I don't think I've ever seen an actor work in two simultaneous productions on this level before.

Mark Rylance will be 'Olivia'  in Twelfth Night (to Stephen Fry's Malvolio) and 'Richard' in Richard III, both plays running for 2-3 hrs, performed in rep.

So I will find a way to fit Richard III into my trip... and now that it will be heavy on Shakespeare, I think I'll try to catch the Globe's version of The Taming of the Shrew while I'm at it.

That's the plan at least.. will see if I can find tickets for these last two for the dates that I'll be in London,  fingers crossed!

tinkering away

still tinkering away with the basic pages! I need to stop, and add some content before I drive myself mad...I think I'm happy enough with the blue print pages, need to make some choices on the photo album but I need to do some major collecting on suitable photo's for many plays anyway so the photo pages will tag along later mostly.

I'm pretty pleased with the Playbill feature I added, anyone reading here, please go ahead and have a look! any and all comments on the whole site are welcome of course. I'm particularly interested in any comments on the playbill, which photo album is preferable and which blog-page ... I've integrated this blog in two different ways into the page, am not really satisfied with either but one of them will have to do I think. Also have a look at my attempt at creating a 'tag cloud'!

anyway... I will move along with content in the meantime, probably Dublin Carol will be next and for the Artist... I think I'll go with Michael Gambon.

the issues

the things you didn't know you wanted until you find out it's hard to implement... then suddenly you NEED to have them!

So my website building experiment has run into some issues... one of course that the project is growing way to big, so much work to be done while my mind is stuck on tinkering with the blue print pages.

apart from that apparently I am expecting too much... I want to incorporate this blog into the website, that looks like a fairly simple thing to accomplish, next I want to have a blog tag cloud that is relevant to the specific site pages to appear on those pages... so for instance on the Blackbird Page there should be a little tag cloud containing "Blackbird, Victory Gardens, David Harrower, William Petersen, Mattie Hawkinson, Dennis Zacek etc" with those tags taking you directly to the Blog tag cloud so you can cross reference easily... I have yet to find a way to make such a little specific tag cloud appear on the regular site pages. Working on a few ideas but I'm not sure my mind or imagination is as logical as the world of bits and bytes to put it mildly.

Next up to tackle the challenge of adding playbills to the play-pages... without making visitors wait too long for the site to load.

the start of things

I've been working on setting up a website to chronicle my Theatre experiences, plays I've seen, reviews, info on favorite artists and such... it's been an interesting experience to say the least, so many possibilities to dress up a website, too many as it turns out since the whole thing was turning into a carnival of special effects! I'm tuning things down again, still looking for a good way to publish a copy of the Playbills and have not found the ultimate (for me) Picture Gallery but I will soldier on regardless. I have started off by creating one play page and one artist page, they are supposed to be a blueprint for all future pages. If you have any comments, no matter if it is style, color scheme, content, missing stuff or too much, please let me know! this is my first real attempt at building a site, I will walk happily into all the traps that are cliche for novices I'm sure.

Blue print play page is the magnificent play Blackbird, not a very happy play, dark drama if you will, but for me still a love story of sorts. One of my all time favorite plays, hence it's selection to be the blue print play page. Blue print artist page is the multi-talented Hugh Laurie, simply because he is an inspiration.

geeksareus.nl