Sunday, March 9, 2014

Going to a play

When I was little, I saw the J.M. Synge play Playboy of the Western World, which caused controversy in Ireland 100 years ago with its "stage Irish" paddywhackery.  It's about a stranger who arrives in an Irish village and announces he's killed his father, which make him a hero to the villagers--until Dad shows up alive.  (The Irish dialogue was a bit hard for me to understand.) I also saw Ionesco's absurdist one-act play The Lesson, about a teacher who ends up killing his pupil.  There's a line at the end where he orders about seventeen coffins for his victims.  I did not get it.

When I lived in London in the mid-1990s I saw a whole lot of plays.  You can often get good seats for just ten pounds or so on the morning of the show.  Once I even managed a front-row seat for the cut price, for Alan Bates in Ibsen's The Master Builder. (When you sit that close you can see spittle coming out of the actors' mouths!)

Some people collect theatre programs, but they don't interest me.  During that London stay I saw about ten shows but never bought a program, and so saved ten pounds, the price of a cut-rate ticket!

I always go to the theatre when I visit London or New York.  When I was in London in 2012 I saw quite a few musicals:  Carousel, Sweeney Todd and The Jersey Boys. (I could have seen The Jersey Boys in Toronto, of course, but I greatly enjoyed it anyway.)  I also saw two one-man shows.  Simon Callow as Charles Dickens was a tour de force, but when I saw Roger Rees talking about performing Shakespeare I dozed off.  I hope he didn't notice me!

There's usually something worth seeing at the National Theatre or the Old Vic.  During that visit London had an "open doors" event like Toronto in May, and I got a backstage tour of the Young Vic!

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