It's all Greek to me
Monday, 23 March 2009 15:47At the beginning of this year I resolved to go to the theatre more. It's now late March and I have seen exactly one play. But it was really good! It was Julius Caesar at the Tobacco Factory on Saturday night, and I thought it was an fantastic production. It was very engrossing, for a start: I was quite surprised to find that it was the end, since it seemed like it only about twenty minutes since the interval. The cast was great, I was a bit worried about Octavius at first as Mark Antony was going on about how much younger he was when he, well, clearly wasn't, but he did a really great job, so it didn't actually matter. Mark Antony was good too and Caesar looked exactly like you'd expect Caesar to. Portia only had a couple of scenes, but she was fantastic in them. It was done in civil war costumes, which was interesting: I'm not sure how much it really added to the production, but it was certainly different from wall-to-wall togas. I also liked the fact that the "Friends, Romans and countrymen" bit was drowned out by crowd noises, I thought that was better than making a huge deal of it, in a "pay attention, you lot, we have got to the famous bit" way. (Side note: you could tell it was a local cast, because looking in the programme it was obvious that anyone who'd done any TV work had done some Casualty, heh.)
Overall, Saturday was a really lovely day: Jess and Vanky came down from Cheltenham and Phil came over from Bath, and we all went up to the Downs (yes, I know) in the lovely sunshine. We went into the Camera Obscura and even though I'd seen it a few times before, I was still amazed by it. We were talking about how strange it must have been for a Victorian suddenly to be presented with this huge moving image, having never seen anything like it before. We also went down into St. Vincent's Cave; it made my legs hurt but it was worth it to be standing halfway up the Avon Gorge and looking out, wonderful.
And tonight is Law and Order night, hurrah! It's quite ridiculous how happy that thought makes me. I HOPE IT RUNS FOREVER.
Overall, Saturday was a really lovely day: Jess and Vanky came down from Cheltenham and Phil came over from Bath, and we all went up to the Downs (yes, I know) in the lovely sunshine. We went into the Camera Obscura and even though I'd seen it a few times before, I was still amazed by it. We were talking about how strange it must have been for a Victorian suddenly to be presented with this huge moving image, having never seen anything like it before. We also went down into St. Vincent's Cave; it made my legs hurt but it was worth it to be standing halfway up the Avon Gorge and looking out, wonderful.
And tonight is Law and Order night, hurrah! It's quite ridiculous how happy that thought makes me. I HOPE IT RUNS FOREVER.