It was alright. You should see it.
Short Theatre Review: Noises Off
Tag: theatre
Short Theatre Review: Lord of the Flies, 22 July 2023, Birmingham Rep
It was alright, but a one-off. You’d should have seen it through your broken glasses, Piggy.
Before the show, we saw Sunjay Brain — or, if our suspicions are correct, US Representative George Santos — do a set of largely blues covers. You should see him, as well:
Short Theatre Review: Home, I’m Darling
Disturbing little story about a delusional couple living in both the 1950s and today. You should see it.
February 2019 Recap and Photo Dump
Like last month, I’m dumping the photos that didn’t have another place to go. They came from sights on various runs, like the one I did to the Gay Village. When I got back to work, sweaty and out of breath, I rode up to my floor on the lift with a colleague from another lab.
“The Gay Village? You? You ran to the Gay Village? Why?” In this time of rampant wokeness, there was a level of unexpected insinuation in the colleague’s disbelief.
I responded, “I’m married, not dead.” That was a more satisfying reply than I had hoped.
It was a run, after all, and a neighbourhood (a gaybourhood?) I would like to consider buying into. Speaking of runs, here are the mileage stats:
Total: 95 miles
Average per run: 4.5 miles
Average per day: 3.4 miles
Long: 8.1 miles
I got some new kicks, too, and they came on the 28th so the old ones, above, got one last commuter run before dropping them in the bin. Rest in peace, old friends.
And, then there are the Public House and other bar stats: 16 total with 13 of those on runs. Still showing a bit of reserve since moving up here, but the map is steadily if not rapidly filling in.
Then, there was work, which seems to be going well (well…well enough). It’s not exactly what I pictured and if something closer to what I had in mind came along I’d give it serious consideration, but at least this is challenging. Details in private conversation for those of you who have private conversations with me.
The musical tour of the world got as far as the letter C.
And, we binge watched The Good Place.
And, we cleaned up our garden during a stretch of unseasonably warm weather.
In the olden days, a woman simply was not considered dressed without a hat:
Oh, mentioned a couple of times already, we saw a great production of Glengarry Glen Ross at the Alexandra. Here’s the set for Act 2 just after the curtain call:
So, we’re listening to the BBC News whilst cooking supper a couple of nights ago and the announcer quotes the Pope as calling kiddy-fiddlers in the clergy, “Tools of Satan.” Jackie starts to giggle uncontrollably, like a third member (unh-huh-huh) of Beavis and Butthead; is it any wonder I love this woman?
This is what amuses me most, lately. I saw a photo of one of these bins on Twitter with the caption, “I’ll NEVER salute you, you son-of-a-bitch.” I can’t walk past one without grinning like the idiot I am, anymore:
Really love this frieze on the engineering building next to Chemistry…reminds me of the WPA stuff on public buildings back in the States:
We seem to have missed our chance for the dance hall in the neighbourhood:
Abigail’s Party, Alexandra Theatre, Birmingham
Live theatre AND pub #2206:
“Don’t be so vuhguhr,” are the words I most associate with my dad’s mother with her distinctly Macon, Georgia accent as she admonished me on my lack of manners. It still amuses me no end that vulgarity is the best description for the wealth she accumulated bilking religious believers in tent “revivals” across the South during the late 1940s to early 1960s, parading my aunt out to deliver hellfire & brimstone sermons from the time she could speak and walk…sort of a Jon Benet Ramsey with a collection plate.
This production of Abigail’s Party prompted me to invoke Nanny’s favourite word to describe the characters on display.
It was really nice to get out to some theatre, though, and the bar had a piano player and a deal where you get the full bottle for three quid more than the price of two glasses. “But, curtain is in 20 minutes,” I pointed out but the barkeep said I should just put the cap back on the bottle and have the rest at intermission. Great advice.
The two couples on either side of the aisle directly in front of us seemed heavily invested in the comic aspects of the play, laughing loudly at (and, sometimes ahead of) every wry but not necessarily outrageous phrase. They obviously were thinking of each others’ reactions and this, in turn, reflected the monstrous characters on stage. I’ve volunteered with amateur and collegiate acting troupes that used plants in the audience to enhance the overall experience and I hope these folks got paid for the effort — although it was annoying for the first 20 or 30 minutes.
I think you can find competent synopses and analyses of Abigail’s Party on the interwebs. Briefly, Beverley and Laurence are in a contentious and loveless marriage and, for the most part, unworthy of anything better than that. Laurence is a pretentious snob despite his grubby job selling real estate and Beverley is a self-centred and quite whorish suburban kept-woman. They invite new arrivals to the neighbourhood, Angela and Tony, to the house for drinks (many, many drinks so they aren’t ALL bad). Ange is a nurse and all sweetness-and-light on the surface but cruel and uncaring to overtly cruel and uncaring husband Tone. Another neighbour, Sue, is also there; invited from the older, more established bit of the neighbourhood across the way, she is the only one with proper manners and would almost certainly not have chosen to spend the evening with either couple save that her 15-year-old daughter (Abigail) was having a party at her’s.
The entire play, credited to Mike Leigh, was written from extensive improvisations by the original cast. Many of the more horrifying revelations are implied. This production was spectacular and has stuck with me the last few days. It had a lot of Samuel Beckett to it, with these characters stuck in Hell and absolutely making the worst of it.
Endless British Pub Crawl (Part 3) 
