Friday, February 26, 2016

an ill-roasted egg

We do massive cribbing on the way to the theatre, as we drive to see a new NT Live, this time, As You Like It.  Rebecca has done preparation for all of us and brought the plot into meal time conversations, or at least made us familiar with the names of the characters. She also has 4 pieces of foolscap posted on the dining room door, each of them with famous quotes. In our group, if you  raise your hand when one of these quotes is said in the play, you get a dollar. That is even incentive for me to learn them.

On the way to the show tonight we rehearsed the 7 stages of man: the puking, mewling infant; the whining school boy, the sighing lover; the solider seeking reputation; fair rounded belly of the justice; the pantaloons with spectacles on his nose; and the second childhood, sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything.  All of us have run into that quotation before, and some of us, even tried to memorize it.  Now all we had to do is recognize when it was said in the play.

What a speech. And what a good way to get the boys to remember part of it – the promise of another dollar.



 Rosalie Craig and Joe Bannister 
as Rosalind and Orlando. 
Photograph: Tristram Kenton


I don’t know when I have ever felt more warmth in a play.

Rebecca said I was laughing all of the time. 

She is right.

Some of the time I was laughing out loud. 

Some of the time there was just a warmth inside of me, recognizing what a gift it is that I can go to a movie like this, something with so much charm.  And then we were home from the show in 17 minutes.  But I am still to wired up from the play to sleep.

We lingered for a while on one of the quotes as we drove home: "truly, thou art damned like an ill-roast egg, all on one side". Having never roasted an egg I came home to see what the internet has to say about such a practise.

In one word: don’t.

Roast the egg, that is.

Being damned has nothing to do with it.

Anyone else go see As You Like It?

I loved the following in no particular order:

1. the flock of sheep, their moving around, and I had to laugh when Celia had trouble moving through the flock.

2. the music was astonishing. To steal a line from the play, "O wonderful, wonderful, and most wonderful wonderful! And yet again wonderful, and after that ...[wonderful]".

3. hard not to keep one's eyes on Patsy Ferran (Celia). Rebecca remarked that there were times when the close-up was on someone else, but she was wanting to watch Patsy a bit more. And Rebecca is the one would caught the fact that Ferran played Jim in Treasure Island.

4. the sound effects in the Forest of Arden were magnificent.  On the way home, Rebecca tried some of them:  imitation, the highest form of flattery.  She was good with the sounds of a forest.

5. Rosalie Craig as Rosalind aced it for me. I was wondering how she would after I read an article naming the famous people who have also played this role: Maggie Smith, Helen Mirren, Vanessa Redgrave.

6. The forest as a prop was marvellous and the scenes changed so smoothly in it.

7. The dancing at the end was such a nice way to tie a bow on everything.  Into this I should lump all of the wonderful eye-rolls, shoulder shrugs, hip flexing and wild arm gestures that moved the play along.

8. And the fool was a fool for fools.  Wonderful acting.

Arta

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