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I gave Alexx a valentine gift bag (red suspenders and a book of noir porn), and it was delivered by the Valentine's Day bat
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0007QO4WC/ref=wms_ohs_product_img_T2
a character which may be familiar to those playing Echo Bazaar. (Btw: apologies to my friends who have sent me EB gifts--EB has been so slow for me lately that it really just hangs and fails to fully load, so I haven't been playing.)
The bat is really adorable with very elegant wings made of some sheer material that flutters very nicely. There was a bat trapped in the aerye a couple of years back and despite my attempts to persuade it that I was friendly, it pretty much just fluttered about hysterically until Alexx managed to trap it in a pair of his shorts and release it outside.
Alexx made me mp3s of all of the songs from the "Pirates of Penzance" production which starred Kevin Kline, Rex Smith, and Linda Ronstadt, which is one of my favorite musicals ever. Kevin Kline and the way he wears those boots...
Speaking of favorite media, Alexx and I also went to see the production of "The Lady's Not for Burning" currently playing in Davis Square. Thomas is absolutely wonderful, and his performance alone makes the production worth seeing. Richard and the Mayor are also excellent, and the rest of the cast with one exception is quite good. Unfortunately, the exception is the actress playing Jennet, the female lead.
Two things you need to know.
1. The original play is set in a vaguely medieval England evoking Shakespeare's pastoral plays. The theme of the play is presented through Thomas's point of view, which is a soul-weary disgust of the violence and hypocrisy of the human race after experiencing years of war. Yet Thomas is full of poetry, and his language is a sort of spring which touches this wasteland and revitalizes it. Jennet, a no-nonsense young woman who has been accused of being a witch, initially resists the magic of Thomas's language, but ultimately, upon falling in love with him, catches it herself.
2. The director of the current production decided to set the play in Appalachia, and he allowed the cast to use as much or as little of what they imagine to be an Appalachian accent as they wished. This has varying degrees of success, but in Jennet's case, it really fails big. The accent she chose to do is a caricature accent of the Deep South (that's right, it's not even a caricature Appalachian accent). Remember the Buffy episode where she turns Southern belle due to a cursed Halloween costume? it's like that, but goes on for two hours. In pursuit of her idea of a Southern accent, the actress also ends every other sentence on a raised inflection, which completely trips up the poetry of Fry's prose, , along with making her voice sound strident and strained.
I'm almost positive that someone went to a lecture or ran across a mention in a book of how Appalachian speech patterns resemble those of Elizabethan England. Unfortunately, no one seems to have done the research to really implement this concept, which is a pity because there are a number of free Internet sites which archive examples of regional accents.
I would still recommend this play, as the play itself is delightful and most of the performances are also. However, if listening to someone mangle poetry is an unbearably painful experience for you, you may wish to skip this production.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0007QO4WC/ref=wms_ohs_product_img_T2
a character which may be familiar to those playing Echo Bazaar. (Btw: apologies to my friends who have sent me EB gifts--EB has been so slow for me lately that it really just hangs and fails to fully load, so I haven't been playing.)
The bat is really adorable with very elegant wings made of some sheer material that flutters very nicely. There was a bat trapped in the aerye a couple of years back and despite my attempts to persuade it that I was friendly, it pretty much just fluttered about hysterically until Alexx managed to trap it in a pair of his shorts and release it outside.
Alexx made me mp3s of all of the songs from the "Pirates of Penzance" production which starred Kevin Kline, Rex Smith, and Linda Ronstadt, which is one of my favorite musicals ever. Kevin Kline and the way he wears those boots...
Speaking of favorite media, Alexx and I also went to see the production of "The Lady's Not for Burning" currently playing in Davis Square. Thomas is absolutely wonderful, and his performance alone makes the production worth seeing. Richard and the Mayor are also excellent, and the rest of the cast with one exception is quite good. Unfortunately, the exception is the actress playing Jennet, the female lead.
Two things you need to know.
1. The original play is set in a vaguely medieval England evoking Shakespeare's pastoral plays. The theme of the play is presented through Thomas's point of view, which is a soul-weary disgust of the violence and hypocrisy of the human race after experiencing years of war. Yet Thomas is full of poetry, and his language is a sort of spring which touches this wasteland and revitalizes it. Jennet, a no-nonsense young woman who has been accused of being a witch, initially resists the magic of Thomas's language, but ultimately, upon falling in love with him, catches it herself.
2. The director of the current production decided to set the play in Appalachia, and he allowed the cast to use as much or as little of what they imagine to be an Appalachian accent as they wished. This has varying degrees of success, but in Jennet's case, it really fails big. The accent she chose to do is a caricature accent of the Deep South (that's right, it's not even a caricature Appalachian accent). Remember the Buffy episode where she turns Southern belle due to a cursed Halloween costume? it's like that, but goes on for two hours. In pursuit of her idea of a Southern accent, the actress also ends every other sentence on a raised inflection, which completely trips up the poetry of Fry's prose, , along with making her voice sound strident and strained.
I'm almost positive that someone went to a lecture or ran across a mention in a book of how Appalachian speech patterns resemble those of Elizabethan England. Unfortunately, no one seems to have done the research to really implement this concept, which is a pity because there are a number of free Internet sites which archive examples of regional accents.
I would still recommend this play, as the play itself is delightful and most of the performances are also. However, if listening to someone mangle poetry is an unbearably painful experience for you, you may wish to skip this production.
