pumpkinstrokemarrow

This brought on by reading today in the Iliad that chucking rocks was certainly a normal battlefield activity during the Greek bronze age. Although in this case, the bigger the better. The idea was to kill, not to cause pain. Presumably, if one lives in an arid country where there are plenty of rocky plains on which to have battles and at a time when proper spears and what have you were rather expensive items, chucking rocks was a sensible alternative. A real hero could chuck a 25kg rock 25 metres.

And I now remember that competitive (rather than lethal) rock chucking also figures in the Icelandic section of the Neibelungenlied. Perhaps the rocks there come from rivers rather than plains. Certainly plenty of rocks in rivers in the Scottish highlands, maybe the nearest thing to Iceland to hand.

Yesterday evening to Richmond Theatre where we have another instance of the numbers game reported on yesterday. In this instance we have a one man show put on by Simon Callow, the programme for which features 12 credits beyond his and a total of 15 more people. OK, so it is rather an elaborate one man show taking in a dozen or more venues over several months, but interesting to see the amount of space the show dressers get. Direction, design, lights, music, video, production, stage and management, with some of these attracting more than one credit. But I suppose it would be wrong to mourn the passing of some simpler age when it was enough for the chap to stand up and spout. Audiences have always gone for fancy stage effects and that takes fancy people to put them on. Certainly since the fancy masques of the Elizabethans and Jacobeans.

Show itself a tour-de-force, in that one man of about my age is performing for a couple of hours with just one short break. His ability to speak several roles at once - the rehearsal scene in 'A Midsummer Night's Dream' - was most impressive. But being able to switch between role and voice like that is a very strange ability. Could you trust a man that can flip that fast? And I learned that the Bard had, by later standards, a short working life. Less than thirty years. And that he retired in good order, displaced by newer men, to mind his goods and chattels in Stratford, to be quietly buried in the church where he was christened.

House more or less full, not bad for summer mid week. Theatre a grand purpose built affair including the local library from the last but one century, with plenty of fancy (red) brick work outside and plenty of fancy plaster and papier-mache inside. Next time I need a GSCE geography project, I might try and map London's suburban theatres. Where are the proper theatres like that at Richmond, rather than the new-build affairs of Epsom, Leatherhead, Guildford and Woking? When is it theatres rather than music halls?

But, leaving the venue aside, not really the sort of thing I enjoy. Never been keen on medleys, greatest hits and great moments things. I prefer to consume the stuff in the sort of chunks in which it was produced - in this case plays (leaving aside the sonnets). This way one's mood is controlled and moves in the way intended. There is a performance. One is not jumping here, there and everywhere. Switching between roles might be hard for the performer, but jumping around the oeuvre is also a bit hard on the listener.

There is also the point that the greatest moments never seem so great when taken out of context. They are great because of where they are, not just because of what they are.