Friday, January 13, 2012
Noises off
Excellent steak and kidney yesterday, confected from some nicely marbled shin of beef and kidneys of sheep. Plus a little lard, a little water, three onions and eight mushrooms. Served with mashed potato and crinkly cabbage. Good grub which prompted a conversation about livers, their sizes (FIL estimated 2 gallons) and why we don't seem to eat them from sheep. I get around to asking Google and he seems to be more interested in liver flukes than liver fried, although he did offer a recipe from Turkey. I must ask the butcher.
Rounded off the day with visits to the Old Vic and the nearby Duke of Sussex, the first sold out and the latter rather quiet. Rather too quiet for a Thursday.
The Old Vic was offering Frayn's (F1) 'Noises Off', a farce which turned out to a very incestuous affair. A farce (F2) about a farce (F3) being put on by that extinct breed, a company of travelling players. Travelling players who stay in theatrical digs with landladies. For good measure, F3 also involved a house which was owned by a playwright. And as it happened, we were also offered theatrical chatter after the show in the form of a Q&A session with some of those involved, presumably including F1 himself as had graced one of the boxes during F2. We declined Q&A in favour of the 'Duke of Sussex' where the drink was a good deal cheaper than at the 'Old Vic'. Quite a decent pint of Greene King IPA.
The programme explained that F2 grew up from small beginnings, has been a huge success in dozens of languages and hundreds of venues and has been extensively reworked over the years. The version we saw was in three acts: in act 1 we see the dress rehearsal of F3 from the audience side, in act 2 we see a performance from the back side and then in act 3 we are back with the audience for a catastrophic closing performance. A cunning design, which started off very well with lots of nice cracks and japes about the lives and loves of strolling players. But for me, it had all started to wear a bit thin by the end, although they were, to be fair, still pulling off stunts, both verbal and physical, right up to said end. The thing could have done with being a bit shorter. Maybe they lost control of the catastrophe: the programme suggests that successful farce requires meticulous attention to timing and detail - which requires rehearsal time which may not be available these days. Maybe we do not have the skilled practitioners either, farce not being a common offering these days. First one I have been to anyway.
Full credit to King Kev though. He continues to deliver interesting offerings, very handy to those who happen to live in Epsom.
Rounded off the day with visits to the Old Vic and the nearby Duke of Sussex, the first sold out and the latter rather quiet. Rather too quiet for a Thursday.
The Old Vic was offering Frayn's (F1) 'Noises Off', a farce which turned out to a very incestuous affair. A farce (F2) about a farce (F3) being put on by that extinct breed, a company of travelling players. Travelling players who stay in theatrical digs with landladies. For good measure, F3 also involved a house which was owned by a playwright. And as it happened, we were also offered theatrical chatter after the show in the form of a Q&A session with some of those involved, presumably including F1 himself as had graced one of the boxes during F2. We declined Q&A in favour of the 'Duke of Sussex' where the drink was a good deal cheaper than at the 'Old Vic'. Quite a decent pint of Greene King IPA.
The programme explained that F2 grew up from small beginnings, has been a huge success in dozens of languages and hundreds of venues and has been extensively reworked over the years. The version we saw was in three acts: in act 1 we see the dress rehearsal of F3 from the audience side, in act 2 we see a performance from the back side and then in act 3 we are back with the audience for a catastrophic closing performance. A cunning design, which started off very well with lots of nice cracks and japes about the lives and loves of strolling players. But for me, it had all started to wear a bit thin by the end, although they were, to be fair, still pulling off stunts, both verbal and physical, right up to said end. The thing could have done with being a bit shorter. Maybe they lost control of the catastrophe: the programme suggests that successful farce requires meticulous attention to timing and detail - which requires rehearsal time which may not be available these days. Maybe we do not have the skilled practitioners either, farce not being a common offering these days. First one I have been to anyway.
Full credit to King Kev though. He continues to deliver interesting offerings, very handy to those who happen to live in Epsom.
# posted by Jim @ 6:42 AM 
