Come not between the dragon and his wrath
2:42 pm Wednesday, 14 November, 2007
I’ve just managed to get a decent ticket to King Lear in January. Hurrah!
Archive for the 'Theatre' Category
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2:00 pm Wednesday, 14 November, 2007
Last night we went to see Swimming With Sharks. It was on in the Vaudeville Theatre on the strand and I have to say that I wasn’t impressed with the venue. Aside from taking their time to deal with a drunk and loudly singing punter, it was just noisy from start to finish.
The plus side is that again, and again on a Tuesday, we got bumped up in seats. Handy to know for the future. We moved to second row of the Dress Circle during the interval and they were pretty good seats. Anyway I enjoyed it quite a bit. The cast were pretty good, I thought that the cast did a pretty good job in particular the fella (Matt Smith) playing Guy. Slater was decent and Helen Baxendale was for the most part very good. I’d tend to agree with the Guardian review that it’s a shame it descends into sensationalism at the end as it was much more enjoyable until that point. Anyway a fun evening out.
Lots of gigs coming up in the next week. First up is Ryan Adams on Friday evening, then Saturday and Sunday is Arcade Fire in Ally Pally (been a long time since I did two nights running at anything), Tuesday is Duke Special down in Bush Hall, Wednesday is Duke Spirit in 229 and then finally Friday brings Cherry Ghost in Koko. Somewhat of a mad week ahead. I’m thinking to myself that perhaps it might be a bit much but while I think that, I’m booking gigs for the first three months of next year (BSP tour in January!) and pleased to see that Colin MacIntyre (formerly known as Mull Historical Society) is finishing up that fourth album and has a London gig before the end of the year so I think I’m in for that too.
They say jump, you say how high
3:47 pm Monday, 5 November, 2007
It is just gone past two pm on Monday. I’m sat at my desk catching up on the past few days and I’m listening to half of the new Sigur Ros album, Heim to be specific. I must admit that I’m not as blown away as I hope I would be. There is very little here new for me. I’ve heard various versions of most of these songs over the years. Don’t get me wrong, it’s glorious but I still feel somewhat letdown even though I know it’s for no good reason.
Tonight however promises to be an amazing evening. More on that to follow I’m sure.
Some catchup stuff.
We recently went to see Glengarry Glen Ross in the Apollo theatre. It was very much overshadowed by having just seen Macbeth next door a few days before hand but it was still pretty damn good. Jonathan Pryce and Aidan Gillen were excellent. We managed to get upgraded seats as our cheap seats were closed for the evening and we moved to the circle. They turned out to be quite decent and I’m certainly going to re-consider doing cheap seats again, I think if we had our proper seats that they would have been terrible. Anyway it was quite a good show, I enjoyed it.
The cast at the end made an appeal as part of a collections week for some entertainment charity or other (you can see how much attention I paid to that). Jonathon Pryce, in what I’m sure was the same speech as he used all week, told a story of how the night before when a patron was leaving and passing an usher with a bucket, the patron said:
“Neither a borrower nor a lender be - William Shakespeare”
And the usher responded
“Fuck you - David Mamet”
Which cracked me up. Good stuff.
On another note, I also saw Christy Moore recently. It was a fully seated gig in the Hammersmith Apollo which was somewhat disappointing until I realised I was still feeling like shit and I had managed to get a ticket for the fourth row, almost dead centre. It was a good evening with a pretty decent set and the usual bit of banter. It was a good night out and did actually make me feel quite better. No Planxty songs though which was a shame, I was hoping for Well Below or Raggle-Taggle, still a good night.
Anyways just back from Dublin and I’m pretty tired. I’ll write up about some of that over the coming few days. It’s left me, as ever, trying to figure some stuff out though I’m pleased to have tidied at last some of it away.
There is no turning back, there is no turn
7:51 pm Sunday, 21 October, 2007
It’s Sunday evening and I feel like shit.
On Tuesday night KG, a friend of hers, my sister and I went to Water Rats in Kings Cross to see King Rat. It was always going to be an odd evening, we were there to play wingman/accompany KG’s friend as she took a look at a fella. The band were okay, the music was ok but the lead singer I didn’t think fit very well. Anyway it didn’t work out and we left fairly early on. KG and I went for a quick drink and I decided that I was in the mood for a bit of a walk and that I really wanted to buy the next book in the series I’m reading. So I walked down to Borders on Charing Cross Road (open till 11 6 nights!) and picked it up. It had been a odd day and indeed evening and so I was enjoying the walk but it was a little damp and I think that was when I picked up this cold. It’s been growing since then and really hit me on Saturday. The walk itself was good though, I enjoyed it. The soundtrack for it was Fur and Gold by Bat for Lashes which I’ve very much gotten into recently. Oh and I got my books so that’s good. Scroll down for more on that.
Anyway right so Wednesday was work drinks which was quite good. Lots going on and good to finally have a chance to catch up with some people I hadn’t seen in a while. I had some holidays to use up so I was off Thursday and Friday. This meant a nice lie in the morning after and then a little while assembling some furniture. All good. Then off into town for McKitten’s Suburban Glamour signing and of course drinks afterwards. Lots of people out for the evening but wasn’t really in the right mood and I didn’t stay too late, I suspect I left around 9.30 or so.
More sleeping in on Friday before assembling some more furniture and stocking most of what had been put together before going into town for the night out with KG. We had a nice dinner in Kettners before heading around to the Gielgud theatre where KG had gotten us third row tickets for Macbeth as it was my birthday. The play was amazing. I know that I’ve not seen a massive amount of shows but it was miles above anything I’d ever seen before in every single way. The cast were truly astounding, it’s sometimes easy to forget that Patrick Stewart is such a great actor or to dismiss him for the genre work he’s so famous for but he’s a long time stage and in particular Shakespearean actor. I have seen him on stage before in Mamet’s A Life In The Theatre in which he was excellent but in this he’s truly phenomenal. The rest of the cast by the way are almost without exception fantastic, in particular Kate Fleetwood as Lady Macbeth and Michael Feast as Macduff. Wonderful stuff all around. Of particular note is the scene at the banquet when Macbeth see’s the ghost of Banquo. This is acted out twice for us, once going into the interval and then again straight after. Once the scene is shown from Macbeth’s viewpoint and the second from the others present. It’s a powerful piece of work. Anyway I cannot recommend it highly enough. It’s had five star reviews all over the place and I strongly urge you to see it if you have the chance.
I must, must, must get into the habit of seeing more theatre. I have several plays booked over the next few weeks and I need to keep that going. Though I doubt that I will see anything as good as that performance was again.
We’ll skip the part about then getting home and waiting for my sister to get home from her slightly drunken adventures at Disney on Ice and move straight ahead to Saturday morning. It was fairly lazy, I was starting to feel a lot worse by then but It wasn’t so bad because I was pleased to have made it through Friday night without coughing or wheezing the entire time. So after a quick run out for some fresh croissants, I cooked breakfast and then we went out for a walk on Hampstead Heath which was lovely. It was quite a nice day and I was pleased with some of the photos.
Saturday evening, well I was feeling a little better and knowing that Neil, Doug, Alasdair and Jamie were all heading to Derek’s party and that it was pretty much just down the road I figured I’d stop by for a little while. A little while turning out to be from eight thirty until two am. Oops. I was mainly sober for the evening, I wasn’t in the mood for massive amounts of drinking with my cold and stuck to vodka and cokes. Though thinking back, there may have been quite a few of them. I successfully avoided tequila which was good. Odd evening really. Lots of drama going on all over the place it seems, at times I thought it might even end with blows. Luckily it did not though everytime I though the evening was going to be sensibly called a night, someone would always change their mind and go to the bar. So not a bad evening, just odd, exceptionally odd really.
Today I have mainly stacked shelves and vegged. I have emptied all of my book boxes onto shelves and all of my dvd boxes. I look forward to getting time to sort them properly soon. I have also watched a huge amount of stuff! House season 4 is entertaining, it’s nice to see some changes to the status quo and I really like the group of applicants house is fucking with. Heroes is hugely disappointing. I do keep reminding myself that I turned off the second episode of the first season in disgust and only went back because so many people talked of the noticeable increase in quality from the end of episode four. As I recall the first two were terrible, the third was okay and the fourth was pretty bad until the first “holy shit” moment when future Hiro arrives. Then with only a couple of missteps the rest of the season was awesome. I’m really hoping for something like that soon in season two. It’s really odd how season one was at it’s best when Hiro or Peter was on screen and without spoiling at, when neither appear in episode 4 of season 2, it’s quite a relief. I’ll give it a another few and see how it does.
I’m almost up to date with Weeds now too. I have one more left to watch. It’s kinda all over the place. It’s a shadow of it’s season 1 self but it’s still a bit funny and Mary-Louise Parker is always always watchable. So I’ll watch that next with some toast and some hot chocolate. I really should go out to Tesco for some nice hot chocolate but I just don’t feel up to it.
Oh yes I had no idea that volume II of Absolute Sandman is out already. I wasn’t expecting it for another few weeks. I have huge objections to paying £65 for the Titan edition that FP want for it when it’s an entire $62 for the proper edition on Amazon.com. To be fair Amazon.co.uk do have it for £46 but again, the Titan edition. I’m trying to figure out if it’ll get through customs or how much I’d be charged if it doesn’t. Not sure how that works for books. I really want it though, and I want it now, the first one is absolutely beautiful. It’s kinda moot point though, I’m pretty much skint till payday. The deposit for the last flat still hasn’t come back and so I’m down a large chunk of change for longer than I expected. I really really don’t want to go into my overdraft but seen as I’m in need of a quiet enough week till then it should be all okay.
Oh, don’t know if I have mentioned it but I’m going to Dublin at the end of the month. I’ll be around for 4 days seeing family and friends. Not entirely sure which friends, been having an odd relationship with one of them for a while now, something seemed to go odd just before I went to the US and now I’m not getting replies to texts or emails. It could just be busyness, in fact it probably is but I shall make a call this week to see what I can find out and hopefully meet up. That would be good, I’d like to clear that up if needs be.
So I mentioned books above. Last week I was in need of a book for a journey home and I was totally in the mood for sci-fi and *only* for sci-fi. I spent the guts of an hour in Borders on Oxford Street looking for something and nothing caught my fancy. I eventually decided that because of the recent updates to trade covers for Gollancz novels that I’d given Dan Simmon’s Hyperion a try. It had never really caught me before but I was desperate at this stage. And well it was excellent, it was one of the most enjoyable reads I’ve had in quite a while. So finding out that there were now 4 books that make up the Hyperion Cantos, I have been acquiring them and I’m coming to the end of the third book. Surprisingly there has been no drop off in quality yet and I’m enjoying the hell out of the series. So that’s pretty good.
I guess that’s where I am at the moment. I have no idea now if I’ll go to work tomorrow. Sitting here no, I don’t think I’ll be in but I’m hoping that a long sleep and lots of calpol will help…though it didn’t last night and I feel so much worse now.
Right, some food and some tv. Thanks to all for birthday wishes.