I’ve seen today this magnificient piece of writing. I understand that Éric-Emmanuel Schmitt work is translated in several languages, if you have the chance watch this play.
Month: November 2014
Feline update
Just in case you wonder how Beta and Maggie are doing. Beta has been just neutered, she was starting to rise her little ass up waiting for special attentions we can’t give her.
(Above: the girls when they arrived home)
In the meantime “mamma” accepts the girls, if not with enthusiasm, at least without Hanna Thornton haughtiness.
Main course
Hopefully in May 3rd 2015 at 2 p.m. I will be in the National Theatre watching the above gentleman, Mr. Ralph Fiennes, as G.B.Shaw’s Jack Tanner, protagonist of Man and Superman.
The leading lady is my very much appreciated Indira Varma (Lucius Vorenus’ wife in Rome) and the co-protagonists are Tim McMullan (Parade’s End – The Hollow Crown) and Elliot Barnes-Worrell.
That will be the main course of my theatre devoted weekend in London. The first one will be most probably Globe Theater’s The Merchant of Venice, as hubby knows the story.
Occupational hazards
It is said that the first representation of Rossini’s “Il Barbiere di Siviglia” was a compilation of stage disasters: the singer playing Bartolo stumbled in the threshold of his house and fell breaking some teeth, a black cat crossed the stage and so on. I read this years ago and most probably my imagination has altered the anecdote; I know, I could google it and check it, but, remember, I’m quite lazy.
What does Rossini appear in this post? Because I remembered it last night, while watching my husband’s performance in a theatre in Rome. No black cats nor broken teeth involved, but there were some technical problems with the sounds and microphones. He took it very well, those are things that happen and he was so happy for being on that stage that most probably neither accidents nor animals would have erased the smile on his face. It was his first serious professional engagement since… practically always, even if he’s been a musician all his life.
Last night he finally could play two shows in a theatre, with a group of professional musicians and in front of a paying audience: not in a pub for the usual group of friends and relatives. He was absurdely happy, and I was also for him. Most of all when he was called by the singer to receive the audience’s applause and “bravos” with embarrasment.
It’s always a pleasure…
to open the Old Vic website.
This is a weird period, made of sound and fury, laziness and creativity. As the latter involves writing in Spanish it may seem that I’m desaparecida from wordpress or tumblr, but I have made a decision (oh, wow, sounds so “serious”): I must finish the long and neverending fanfic and then work in the Unknown Captain Project. Which will be also in Spanish. I need to focus myself and concentrate, which is quite difficult with the above gentleman distRActing me constantly and amusing me with his tweets. Real food for thought in many senses… Cambridge Online Dictionary is my witness.
![DSC_0005[1]](https://wormwoodscrubs.files.wordpress.com/2014/11/dsc_00051.jpg)
I must and I should focus. I’m in mezzo del camin della mia vita and, as hubby says always: “When I will be in front of Saint Peter… what the hell would I tell him about what I have done with my life?” Most probably my keyboard ramblings will not lead me anywhere, but I must try. I guess that when preparing the Unknown Captain Project I will clean up the long and neverending fanfic of copyright protected references and loans, I don’t think it will be a Herculean fatigue, although I guess it will be quite difficult to convince anybody that my Marcus Fulvius Aquila was born before I ever knew about the existance of Marcus Flavius Aquila.
Regarding the laziness, boss is thinking about changing office’s computers. As you see I work with a machine still with XP installed on it, which has also a bug (thank you bloody *****er who created a mal-ad-ware in an apparently innocent program) impossible to delete that delights me with unwanted advertising pages everytime I use Chrome. But the thought of re-installing again all my programs, configurate the machine and so on simply annoys me.
This absurd I’m still alive and kicking post ends with my sincere congratulations for the Stakhanovist of the screen, Mr. Mark Strong.
Time travelling
This is a extraordinary tool developed by Stanford University: Orbis. Select place of origin, destination and season of the year and you will know how many days were necessary, and the cost, to make an specific travel during the Roman Empire. Needless to say that I am using it when writing my long and neverending Roman times fanfic.
Only Lovers Left Alive
Adam dresses in black, he has long black hair and lives in Detroit; he’s a musician, a “suicidal romantic scoundrel” and sometimes is tired of living because of the way zombies (us) are reducing the planet. Eve dresses in white, she has long blond hair, she loves living in Tangiers and her books. She has made the best of living three thousand years; she scorns Adam for having missed “the real fun, like the middle ages, the tartars, the inquisitions, the floods, the plagues”. They are married, they are the lovers although she is several thousands of years older than he is. Because Adam and Eve are not an ordinary couple, they are vampires, fighting for survive in a world made of contaminated blood. They do not behave anymore “like in the XVth century”, drinking zombies to death. They have their suppliers of “good stuff” and when they can’t be apart no longer they meet: Eve packs some of her books as hand luggage and travels to the other side of the world in night flights.
One of my favourite scenes of this movie is Eve packing her books; she chooses some of them. Literature from all around the world, in different languages. These are the titles or authors that I have been able to recognize: Ramón de Campoamor “Los amores en la luna”, “Die Frage der Zeit”, Elif Shafak, “Don Quijote”, “Infinite Jest”, Jules Verne’s “Les anglais au Pole Nord”, Franz Kafka. When she passes her fingers through Lodovico Ariosto’s “Orlando Furioso” she stops to observe the picture of one of Lorenzo Ghiberti’s door panels of in Florence’s Baptistery: Adam and Eve, the original sin and the expulsion of Paradise.
As emblematic as Eve’s books is the gallery of portraits in Adam’s house, pictures and engravings of people that probably Adam has met in his life. I only recognise some of them: Bach, Kafka, Schubert, Poe, Mark Twain, Newton, Zappa, Wilde and… Christopher Marlowe.
The quiet life of Adam and Eve will be shattered by the appearance of her sister, Ava. Everything will be turned upside down but the lovers will be left alive. I don’t want to spoil the film for those of you who have not seen it; my friendly advice is for you to watch it and enjoy Jarmusch’s vision of Adam and Eve’s world. Needless to say, being Adam and Eve vampires, there’s not a single daylight scene. The curious thing is that you don’t miss the light.
The Wrath of the Righteous
Several days after Richard Armitage’s tweet, Digital Theatre and CinemaLive have confirmed that The Crucible won’t be released in cinemas in USA and Canada, and that the download will be available in 2015.
I know that the “how does he feel about it” is quite a useless activity, but frankly speaking is almost imposssible for me as well-wisher not to make it given this circumstances. Although download will be available worldwide (the question is “when”? Maybe after the Australian cinema released scheduled for February?), he [allow me the fangirl selfishness, I’m aware that many other people are involved in this project] has been denied the chance to show in cinemas, to an audience of several hundreds of thousands (?) people his best performance so far. And, I suppose that it must be something really frustrating to think that American audience has been able to see his Gary Morris but not his John Proctor. To make a comparison, it is like having composed the most astounding five acts opera but being known for writing advertising jingles.
As I wrote in a previous post, I’ve had the sensation, watching some of his works, that he has always been ten steps above the jobs he was hired in. We all know that showbiz is a hard world, that unfortunately the list of underrated/unfairly unknown actors is huge. Moreover, step by step and working really hard he’s finally been able to show to the Old Vic’s audience what he’s capable of. Therefore, most probably, he has shrugged his shoulders and have given not a second thought to this; if he has not, he has the whole only right to feel the wrath of the righteous.
Wormwood Scrubs 