This morning I went and watched a bit of the London Marathon (wish I could have run it!)...
...then went to Shakespeare's Globe Theatre to watch a few hours of readings of the King James Bible celebrating the 400th anniversary of the text.
The readings went on for 6 hour slots, and you could come and go as you please.
One actor entered on stage at a time, and spoke a chunk of text. They wore iPod headphones which had recordings of the text they were saying - I imagine to help remember the ample amount of text they had to learn, as well as to maintain a good pace in order to fit within the 6 hour slot! Sometimes you could hear the headphones say something just before the actor said it, which was kind of fun.
| In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. And God said, Let there be light: and there was light. |
Unfortunately I'm a rubbish listener (more of a visual person) and so I found the production quite boring...Instead I just enjoyed being in the theatre. But when the actors played with rhythm, and us, or enjoyed the text, or were bigger physically, I liked them. I wonder what a more exciting way of presenting it might have been. Maybe acting them out? Or animations/images of some sort. Still, the simplicity was charming. It was about the words anyway.
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I decided to try out some classical music (as I've been getting into it a bit lately) and went to a concert at The Red Hedgehog, a tiny little intimate homely theatre...
...and listened to Peter Donohoe play the last three of Beethoven's piano sonatas (he'd been playing some every weekend for a while).
It was incredible playing! And beautiful powerful music - totally evokes the spirit. But I was tired and it wasn't interesting to watch (from where I was...although the audience was - playing along with their fingers, fist pumping when he got through a hard part!) so I nearly fell asleep. I enjoyed the music. And I guess live is always best. But I'm happy to listen to recordings I think.
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In the evening I met up with an old high school friend, Natalia De Palma, who I performed with in The Crucible back in the day. We went to go and see a site-specific production of Macbeth by a young theatre company called Belt Up...
...but when we got there the actors were drinking in the bar! And the producer came over to tell us that nobody had booked so they decided not to do the performance tonight! BOO! I tried to convince them that we were an audience and that should perform for us, even with a beer in their hand, but they weren't to be swayed. So Natalia and I had a drink there with them. They invited us to come back the next night to a performance specifically for the press. A review night. I decided against it. The professionalism they showed tonight didn't bode well for a professional show. And I'm glad I didn't.
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