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.

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