Feast of Fools

Right, I have vast amounts to blog so I'm going to split it into separate entries. This one will be reviews of my weekend's media consumption; namely, Trojan Women, Touched by Fire, and Van Helsing. Two very good plays and one very, *very* bad film. ^_^

Trojan Women: A play by Euripides from 415 BC, given a modernistic feminist working over by an Oxf PhD student. Drum'n'bass music, chants, facepaint, hormones and *glorious* costumes should have made it something like the Commonwealth Institute exhibition from hell, but actually it was truly great. The actress who played Andromache has a great future ahead of her, and the kid actor who played dead onstage for a good ten minutes without moving a muscle will always be able to find work as a shop dummy.

Touched By Fire: Brand new four-man play by Ciaran McConville, a sort of surreal, dreamy piece that starts off as a straight story about a loony bin and slowly gets stranger and more mythical as it progresses, all the time backed by the progress of what is *nearly* the Moscow theatre siege. One of those wonderful structures where, by the end, every single tiny random thread and throwaway line ties in to one comprehensive whole. And it's not what you thought it was. I'm not going to describe it in any more depth in case you see it some day, but it was wonderful and you should see it. Also, the acting was uniformly great (rather important in a four-man job), and quality directing was provided by her mate Jo. ^_^

(random note: I was sitting directly opposite a bloke in the Burton Taylor while watching that who looked *exactly* how Jon is going to look when he's about 35. That was weird. :-D)

And finally: Van Helsing! I haven't laughed so much since Star Wars Episode II. I love, love, love sarky Oxford audiences on a Saturday night in termtime. Possibly the cheesiest film IN HISTORY, with a most shameful assortment of film references and good actors who should know better. It took about an hour before the whole cinema was laughing hysterically at every single line....

Highlight of the whole film; Kate Beckinsale bends tenderly over her expiring brother, who opens his mouth to gasp his final words - and someone near the front lets out a ginormous burp, which is a kind of mental onomatopoeia for *exactly* what everyone else is thinking, and he gets a rousing cheer and a round of applause. ^____________^ And Katy's face. Oh, Katy's face. That was worth the price of admission alone. And I WANT A RICHARD ROXBURGH DRACULA for my very very own! Go to see it. Laugh till you cry.