I’m going to the theatre a lot these days! This week I went to see two more shows. The first was ‘The Importance of Being Earnest’ which was alright, not great. I’m very familiar with the 1952 film version with Michael Redgrave which was so good it makes me a severe critic of the show. The actors playing Algernon and Cecily were pretty good but the rest were rubbish. Too demonstratively dumb. The performance of Lady Bracknell was quite agonising. The actress spoke all her lines very slowly and never once changed pace! It got very frustrating. They added one element which was both ingenious and hilarious. The actor playing the butler (at both locations) would break the fourth wall in an attempt to show the audience what a great actor he was. It turned two rather boring bit-parts into a brilliant comic role.
The second was a show called ‘Master Class’ about the fiery opera singer Maria Callas. An acquaintance from All Souls who works in theatre very kindly procured four complimentary tickets for me for the press night, so my three lovely flatmates and I got to see this great show for free! And it was superb. It took the form of an actual live workshop and Tyne Daly playing Callas would speak directly to the audience. This was interrupted at intervals with flashbacks of significant moments in Callas’ life retold through monologue, sound and lighting. It was an immersive experience and I felt afterwards that I’d actually been through a singing master class and had really learnt some great stuff. Markoesa and I appreciated it on an even deeper level because a lot of what ‘Callas’ said to her students was exactly what we get taught on our course. After all, singing is basically acting.
We had more snow this week and I got a bit of a cold, which wasn’t all that fun. My old friend sleep depravation is back again as well. Already. It’s only week four. Somehow I found the time to watch some films this week too. One was Sense and Sensibility which is the film that inspired Markoesa to want to become an actor in England. We watched it in our cosy living room with dressing gowns on and the snow outside and it was, as the Dutch say, gezellig. It actually reminded me of home a lot, since it’s been a favourite in our household for a few years now. I also finally got round to watching Trainspotting (totally different). I thought since it’s most people’s picture of Scotland I’d best sound it out and I thought it was a well-made and entertaining movie. Ewan McGregor and Danny Boyle kick-starting some pretty impressive careers. Shame they’re not talking to each other anymore.
I did something silly this weekend. It was just too tempting. I went to the extras casting for the upcoming film version of Les Miserables starring Hugh Jackman, Russell Crowe, Helena Bonham Carter and a hundred other stars. Filming starts in March at Pinewood Studios and it’s due for release in January 2013. It would be so awesome to play a French soldier in the Revolution, and maybe get a chat with Wolverine or Maximus! I’ve since discovered that Mr Crowe is set to play Noah in Aronofsky’s upcoming version of Noah’s ark! Anyway I turned up at Guildhall School of Music & Drama, where the casting was taking place, on a cold Sunday morning with a few of my classmates and there was a huge queue of hopeful extras. So big in fact that the production guys told us, and everyone past a certain point, just to go home because they had enough people. Being a bit more filmmaking-savvy than most, and knowing this was probably just a crowd-control measure, we ignored them and continued queuing. Later they were handing out forms to specific people, saying they were only looking for a specific look so only those people need come in. I got given a form, which was kind of exciting but also quite rubbish because my classmates didn’t… But we all kept queuing. When I got in I had to fill out a form with general information then get measured, then have my photo taken. My classmates and I then queued again and second time round we all got forms! So we all got seen and though most likely nothing will come of it I still enjoyed the experience and it was a good lesson in patience, especially the patience required for major big-budget movies.
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