Hung man, hanged man
Jul. 5th, 2007 01:01 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
slemslempikeActors' penes seen in the flesh thus far this year:
1. Harry Potter's wand
2. Gandalf's staff.
As I believed I have squeed about in these pages, I spent Saturday night at the Theatre Royal in Newcastle watching King Lear.
They set it in late 19th/early 20th century Russia, which meant really beautiful dresses for the women, huge skirts and satiny. Cordelia was in white with frills down the back. Then marvellous coats over the top. The set fell apart over the course of the play, started out hung with red opulence, then they come down, and the balustrade's missing a bit, and the floorboards drop out from the balcony, and a wall goes through.All very, very good. I wasn't terribly convinced about Regan as a bit child-like mad, clapping hands excitedly when the blinding went on, but she did it well. Romola Garai was very like she always seems to be, but it wasn't jarring. Ian McKellen was just amazing. mesmerising, and even though my bum was hurting from sitting, and I find it difficult to pay complete attention to plays I know a bit, it was completely brilliant. Sylveser McCoy was also very good, sitting on Ian McKellen's knee, looks quite puckish. They hanged the Fool, which I was confused about until they said at the end in the talk that it wasn't in the text. It was just before the interval, and there wasn't a curtain, and he was just hanging there swinging slowly before about five minutes later soldiers came and cut him down. I do rather like plays where they don't shield you from the bits normally hidden behind a curtain.
At the end, as I was reeling out in happiness, there came an announcement that there would now be an after show talk, so I hotfooted it back in, elbowing past the old and infirm to secure myself a seat at the front of the stalls. It was a very good talk. NAME HERE, the assistant director, was in black socks with lime green toes and heels. They started straight in with questions from the audience, and those who suffered through my Rock and Roll babbling will doubtless be relieved to hear that I did not ask one. This was largely because the only thing I wanted to know was where Megan Dolan's beautiful red boots came from, and this seemed like a far too specialised question for such a broad audience, and I was also unsure that I could keep such a question under 300 rambling words. The other people on the stge were...William Gaunt very good at talking about the play.
Question about setting - 1890s Russia (up to 1918) - they liked the dresses, got to use swords and guns, very hierarchical society. Later a man got a bit het up about the non-periodness of the guns, and why couldn't they have done it in Shakespeare's own time. They explained fairly calmly that actually Lear was an old text, and there wasn't any Christianity, so wouldn't have been elizabethan anyway, and the american one said that anyway, Shakespeare's lot just did it contemporary, so they could do what they liked.
Question about Kent - leave with a drawn pistol, and they said that they have it as him going off to commit suicide, but made a decision that they wouldn't have the gunshot as it would overshadow the action on stage. Then a woman in the audience said that for her, it was the other way round, she was so tense watiing for the shot that she didn't pay any attention to the rest of it. They all laughed.
They had a question about the decision to leave the Fool hanging when the interval started. Meant to discompose the audience, also the start of the change from threatened violence to actual vilence. Broke there because the blinding takes too long to get through. Then woman in audience (different one) pointed out that this discomposure was also the role of the Fool, in discombobulating society. And then they all pretended that they'd thought of that themselves.
Question about family roles, generations and abusive relationships. Edmund man said about how the gods were called on mostly by the older people. Megan Dolan said that they'd decided based on hair colour that Romola Garai was from a different mother, who Lear really loved, and the coronet was hers. They also cut Cordelia's asides at the start, partly because they wanted more suspense about her response, and partly because in Stratford they started with the audience on three sides, and staging would be difficult.
Question about Regan drinking - started as an almost joke when they had finished a scene, and Trevor (is it Trevor Nunn??) kept adding more in. But she also drinks all the way through The Seagull and was worried about becoming known for that.
When I left it was absolutely pissing it down, and it didn't look like it was goig to calm down, so I just went for it. The wrong way, it turned out. So what should have been a five/ten minute brisk walk turned into maybe 20-30 mins, and I was absolutely soaked. The water running down the hill just from the rain was over the rubber bits of my shoes, the gutters were well up to my ankles. And yet, the back of me was barely damp. The front made up for it, though. I spent the next day feeling decidedly damp.
1. Harry Potter's wand
2. Gandalf's staff.
As I believed I have squeed about in these pages, I spent Saturday night at the Theatre Royal in Newcastle watching King Lear.
They set it in late 19th/early 20th century Russia, which meant really beautiful dresses for the women, huge skirts and satiny. Cordelia was in white with frills down the back. Then marvellous coats over the top. The set fell apart over the course of the play, started out hung with red opulence, then they come down, and the balustrade's missing a bit, and the floorboards drop out from the balcony, and a wall goes through.All very, very good. I wasn't terribly convinced about Regan as a bit child-like mad, clapping hands excitedly when the blinding went on, but she did it well. Romola Garai was very like she always seems to be, but it wasn't jarring. Ian McKellen was just amazing. mesmerising, and even though my bum was hurting from sitting, and I find it difficult to pay complete attention to plays I know a bit, it was completely brilliant. Sylveser McCoy was also very good, sitting on Ian McKellen's knee, looks quite puckish. They hanged the Fool, which I was confused about until they said at the end in the talk that it wasn't in the text. It was just before the interval, and there wasn't a curtain, and he was just hanging there swinging slowly before about five minutes later soldiers came and cut him down. I do rather like plays where they don't shield you from the bits normally hidden behind a curtain.
At the end, as I was reeling out in happiness, there came an announcement that there would now be an after show talk, so I hotfooted it back in, elbowing past the old and infirm to secure myself a seat at the front of the stalls. It was a very good talk. NAME HERE, the assistant director, was in black socks with lime green toes and heels. They started straight in with questions from the audience, and those who suffered through my Rock and Roll babbling will doubtless be relieved to hear that I did not ask one. This was largely because the only thing I wanted to know was where Megan Dolan's beautiful red boots came from, and this seemed like a far too specialised question for such a broad audience, and I was also unsure that I could keep such a question under 300 rambling words. The other people on the stge were...William Gaunt very good at talking about the play.
Question about setting - 1890s Russia (up to 1918) - they liked the dresses, got to use swords and guns, very hierarchical society. Later a man got a bit het up about the non-periodness of the guns, and why couldn't they have done it in Shakespeare's own time. They explained fairly calmly that actually Lear was an old text, and there wasn't any Christianity, so wouldn't have been elizabethan anyway, and the american one said that anyway, Shakespeare's lot just did it contemporary, so they could do what they liked.
Question about Kent - leave with a drawn pistol, and they said that they have it as him going off to commit suicide, but made a decision that they wouldn't have the gunshot as it would overshadow the action on stage. Then a woman in the audience said that for her, it was the other way round, she was so tense watiing for the shot that she didn't pay any attention to the rest of it. They all laughed.
They had a question about the decision to leave the Fool hanging when the interval started. Meant to discompose the audience, also the start of the change from threatened violence to actual vilence. Broke there because the blinding takes too long to get through. Then woman in audience (different one) pointed out that this discomposure was also the role of the Fool, in discombobulating society. And then they all pretended that they'd thought of that themselves.
Question about family roles, generations and abusive relationships. Edmund man said about how the gods were called on mostly by the older people. Megan Dolan said that they'd decided based on hair colour that Romola Garai was from a different mother, who Lear really loved, and the coronet was hers. They also cut Cordelia's asides at the start, partly because they wanted more suspense about her response, and partly because in Stratford they started with the audience on three sides, and staging would be difficult.
Question about Regan drinking - started as an almost joke when they had finished a scene, and Trevor (is it Trevor Nunn??) kept adding more in. But she also drinks all the way through The Seagull and was worried about becoming known for that.
When I left it was absolutely pissing it down, and it didn't look like it was goig to calm down, so I just went for it. The wrong way, it turned out. So what should have been a five/ten minute brisk walk turned into maybe 20-30 mins, and I was absolutely soaked. The water running down the hill just from the rain was over the rubber bits of my shoes, the gutters were well up to my ankles. And yet, the back of me was barely damp. The front made up for it, though. I spent the next day feeling decidedly damp.
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no subject
Date: 2007-07-05 12:30 pm (UTC)Apart from the Seagull, I've only seen her in ICTC and, er, a bit of Vanity Fair but I sent that back to Lovefilm after half an hour for being super annoying. Anyway, I was horribly disappointed by her Cordelia - far too vapid at the start and ALWAYS PUTTING HER HANDS UP TO HER FACE. That was her major characterisation, to the extent that, when I saw The Seagull the following night and the writer looks out the back window and yells, who's there, I wanted to yell back, it's Romola! Can't you tell? She HAS HER HANDS UP AT HER FACE.
Ian McK, I've already raved about I think.
no subject
Date: 2007-07-05 12:34 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-07-05 12:42 pm (UTC)those who suffered through my Rock and Roll babbling will doubtless be relieved to hear that I did not ask one
The thought could not have been further from my mind. :-)
no subject
Date: 2007-07-05 12:49 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-07-05 12:59 pm (UTC)I am very jealous, I love that you got a talk, yay.
no subject
Date: 2007-07-05 01:04 pm (UTC)An entirely unexpected talk! The best kind!
no subject
Date: 2007-07-05 02:07 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-07-05 02:14 pm (UTC)I don't know the text well at all, and tended to not pay terribly much attention to Cordelia at that point beyond "oh, dead. Oh well."
no subject
Date: 2007-07-05 02:37 pm (UTC)I'm not either. I mean, (SPOILER!) they're never onstage at the same time, but Cordelia would have to have been played by one of the girlish adolescent/teenaged boys - especially given that Lear carries her in at the end and can't have been hauling around a full-grown man; would the Fool have worked as a pubescent?
no subject
Date: 2007-07-05 04:23 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-07-05 08:22 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-07-05 05:31 pm (UTC)HARRY POTTEREquus GAH).no subject
Date: 2007-07-05 08:19 pm (UTC)