fr_defenestrato (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
fr_defenestrato) wrote2007-01-29 11:39 am
fr_defenestrato) wrote2007-01-29 11:39 am
miscellaneous, miskatonic, misprision, misanthropy, michel mon beau
So, uh... I'm not at all sure if I was supposed to know this prior to my just having learnt it, but my bro is on YouTube. How cool is that?
So, uh... Kathleen Turner did a splendid if beleaguered job as Martha in Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf, the last Kennedy Center performance of which I saw in matinee yesterday with Carl. Early in Act One she mistakenly said, of Nick, "He's in the history... he's in the math department." Not a departmental confusion you'd want given the further discussion of the Math, Biology, and History Departments. Then, in Act Three, as she prepared to give "her recitation" on "our son," poor Ms. Turner inhaled a droplet of her stage booze and had a coughing fit that lasted a good 15 seconds and whose effects recurred a couple times throughout her following speeches. Alas. Otherwise her interpretation of this notoriously difficult part was inspired.
Bill Irwin was also good as George, though his delivery of George's more convoluted lines was contrivedly odd; I believe he was trying to get at the arcane way George's mind puts together such complex sentences, but it played like Shatner doing Albee, with semantically anti-intuitive pauses in the middle of sentences and no pauses between sentences. Also, in Act One, probably all a-fluster from Martha's conflating the university departments, he said, bizarrely, "Well, where are we?" instead of "Well, where are they?" (re the expected guests)—an accidentally honest question given the messy stage situation. Still, Irwin got the gist of George down, though for my money (having seen the play staged thrice now), Richard Burton in the (not wholly successful) film version is the best George I've seen.
As for what's-their-name, Nick was a gorgeous lunkhead as required and Honey seemed to have patterned her entire performance on Sandy Dennis's turn in the film, but notched up her voice to eleven on the annoyometer.
What was really spiffy about this version—something I'd not noticed in the previous stagings and which is conspicuously absent from the film—is the amount of non-verbal humor that can be leveraged through reactions, frowns, laughter, pregnant pauses, etc. Throughout the first act, in particular, each occasion where George asks someone if they want another drink punctuates an awkward silence or a crescendo of temper in one of the characters.
The text was revised in 2004, according to the Playbill, presumably by Albee.![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
rozebud and I saw a staging directed by Albee in the late '80s, methinks, at the Grand Opera House in Wilmington, Del., and we were pleased to note at that time that George's awkward and out-of-the-blue Act One warning to Martha about "starting in on the bit about the kid" was excised from that version (also that Martha screams "Fuck you!" instead of "Screw you!" in the original or "Goddamn you!" in the film). However, there's one awkward cut or an entire brief scene at the end of Act Two in which George formulates, in Honey's presence, how he will get at Martha in Act Three. Presumably this scenelet was thought to show George and/or the playwright in a negative, mean-spirited light w/r/t their treatment of Honey. But without this scene, Honey's knowing protestation at George's impending "murder" of his and Martha's son doesn't make any sense (are we to surmise this person, who is way drunk and really is something of a simp in the long run, has guessed what George is up to? I think not), and the repeated stage business with the door chimes—dutifully performed here—have no follow-up (initially Honey asked George "Who rang?" giving him the idea of a telegram announcing the death of Sonny Jim).
The rest of the weekend was fairly productive: I got a good start on my photo-scanning project (long procrastinated, but I'm already up to 1984, probably a tenth done); and I emptied, moved, and restacked bookshelves, relocating them from living room to hallway (now claustrophobically narrow). Shifted the collection (more needed) and did a modicum of weeding (my second least favorite chore in the world, after scrubbing catshit off the floor—which, happily, did not arise chez moi during my 5 days in New Jersey on work travel).maestro_live mentioned my activities to his office mates and his boss emphatically defended me: "YOU CAN'T THROW AWAY BOOKS!"
It can't exactly be called productivity, but I also watched the second half of Season Three of Nip/Tuck on Friday night. This show took a remarkable turn toward the silly in this season (it already teetered precipitously through the first two seasons; here it plunged; that's not necessarily an absolute condemnation, mind you). And of course I met up with Carl at Green Lantern Saturday night and proceeded to get pukingly drunk on Bacardi. (Rum and I have not been good friends since my first liquor-puking, on Bacardi 151, which burns as much coming up as going down.) As this was underwear night, I wore a singlet, which ought to have been very popular; unfortunately by the time I checked my clothes and started mingling with the other mostly naked people I was already too drunk to remember much. I'm pretty sure I saw and maybe briefly hung out withperegrin8, misterdarkness, and Mr. Pink later that night, but it's all really blurry. Gack: my first serious overdrinking in quite some time. You'd think after 24 years or so of alcohol abuse I'd know when to slow down. Gack.
peregrin8 and bxiie are going to Burning Man this year, while I am sitting here thinking I am too old and stodgy and misanthropic for it. Yes. I'm not kidding.
My last day of work is Wednesday; my new job starts Monday. In the interim, I'm going to Florida. Hooray! The temperatures there currently hover in the 40s and 50s, but they're supposed to be back up to the more normal 60s and 70s by Thursday.
So, uh... Kathleen Turner did a splendid if beleaguered job as Martha in Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf, the last Kennedy Center performance of which I saw in matinee yesterday with Carl. Early in Act One she mistakenly said, of Nick, "He's in the history... he's in the math department." Not a departmental confusion you'd want given the further discussion of the Math, Biology, and History Departments. Then, in Act Three, as she prepared to give "her recitation" on "our son," poor Ms. Turner inhaled a droplet of her stage booze and had a coughing fit that lasted a good 15 seconds and whose effects recurred a couple times throughout her following speeches. Alas. Otherwise her interpretation of this notoriously difficult part was inspired.
Bill Irwin was also good as George, though his delivery of George's more convoluted lines was contrivedly odd; I believe he was trying to get at the arcane way George's mind puts together such complex sentences, but it played like Shatner doing Albee, with semantically anti-intuitive pauses in the middle of sentences and no pauses between sentences. Also, in Act One, probably all a-fluster from Martha's conflating the university departments, he said, bizarrely, "Well, where are we?" instead of "Well, where are they?" (re the expected guests)—an accidentally honest question given the messy stage situation. Still, Irwin got the gist of George down, though for my money (having seen the play staged thrice now), Richard Burton in the (not wholly successful) film version is the best George I've seen.
As for what's-their-name, Nick was a gorgeous lunkhead as required and Honey seemed to have patterned her entire performance on Sandy Dennis's turn in the film, but notched up her voice to eleven on the annoyometer.
What was really spiffy about this version—something I'd not noticed in the previous stagings and which is conspicuously absent from the film—is the amount of non-verbal humor that can be leveraged through reactions, frowns, laughter, pregnant pauses, etc. Throughout the first act, in particular, each occasion where George asks someone if they want another drink punctuates an awkward silence or a crescendo of temper in one of the characters.
The text was revised in 2004, according to the Playbill, presumably by Albee.
rozebud and I saw a staging directed by Albee in the late '80s, methinks, at the Grand Opera House in Wilmington, Del., and we were pleased to note at that time that George's awkward and out-of-the-blue Act One warning to Martha about "starting in on the bit about the kid" was excised from that version (also that Martha screams "Fuck you!" instead of "Screw you!" in the original or "Goddamn you!" in the film). However, there's one awkward cut or an entire brief scene at the end of Act Two in which George formulates, in Honey's presence, how he will get at Martha in Act Three. Presumably this scenelet was thought to show George and/or the playwright in a negative, mean-spirited light w/r/t their treatment of Honey. But without this scene, Honey's knowing protestation at George's impending "murder" of his and Martha's son doesn't make any sense (are we to surmise this person, who is way drunk and really is something of a simp in the long run, has guessed what George is up to? I think not), and the repeated stage business with the door chimes—dutifully performed here—have no follow-up (initially Honey asked George "Who rang?" giving him the idea of a telegram announcing the death of Sonny Jim).The rest of the weekend was fairly productive: I got a good start on my photo-scanning project (long procrastinated, but I'm already up to 1984, probably a tenth done); and I emptied, moved, and restacked bookshelves, relocating them from living room to hallway (now claustrophobically narrow). Shifted the collection (more needed) and did a modicum of weeding (my second least favorite chore in the world, after scrubbing catshit off the floor—which, happily, did not arise chez moi during my 5 days in New Jersey on work travel).
maestro_live mentioned my activities to his office mates and his boss emphatically defended me: "YOU CAN'T THROW AWAY BOOKS!" It can't exactly be called productivity, but I also watched the second half of Season Three of Nip/Tuck on Friday night. This show took a remarkable turn toward the silly in this season (it already teetered precipitously through the first two seasons; here it plunged; that's not necessarily an absolute condemnation, mind you). And of course I met up with Carl at Green Lantern Saturday night and proceeded to get pukingly drunk on Bacardi. (Rum and I have not been good friends since my first liquor-puking, on Bacardi 151, which burns as much coming up as going down.) As this was underwear night, I wore a singlet, which ought to have been very popular; unfortunately by the time I checked my clothes and started mingling with the other mostly naked people I was already too drunk to remember much. I'm pretty sure I saw and maybe briefly hung out with
peregrin8, misterdarkness, and Mr. Pink later that night, but it's all really blurry. Gack: my first serious overdrinking in quite some time. You'd think after 24 years or so of alcohol abuse I'd know when to slow down. Gack.peregrin8 and bxiie are going to Burning Man this year, while I am sitting here thinking I am too old and stodgy and misanthropic for it. Yes. I'm not kidding.My last day of work is Wednesday; my new job starts Monday. In the interim, I'm going to Florida. Hooray! The temperatures there currently hover in the 40s and 50s, but they're supposed to be back up to the more normal 60s and 70s by Thursday.