Okay – so here we go: review number one
I’ve decided I’m a traditionalist. I saw “The Importance of being Earnest” last night at The Maidment. It’s hard to go wrong with an Oscar Wilde play; the dialogue carries it. The spoken words are just too downright clever to let you screw the whole production up. Right? Hmmmmm, maybe. Lines like, “I carry my journal with me at all times. One should always have something exciting to read on the train”, and “flowers in the countryside are as common as people in London” always get a laugh and rightly so. So, how can you go wrong? Well, simply by changing the setting from a Victorian parlour and country-house to a perceived real-cool 1960s (?) bachelor pad. Envisage all the actors in whiter-than-white costumes (as was the set), vinyl mini-skirts, stocking-tops, kinky boots, a very camp Algy, cocaine snorting and Jimmy Hendrix for God’s sake, and you get a sense of something more wild than Wilde. Don’t get me wrong; the acting was (for the main part) pretty good, the mood of the play – always essential – was captured well and the whole thing was generally good fun. But here’s the thing – with this play, you’re just not meant to see Gwendoline and Cecile’s knickers every five minutes, pretty as they may be. Even poor old Oscar may have blanched at that. But then, what do I know; I’m just an old traditionalist.
This morning I tried to post on Facebook a review of a play I saw last night. I wrote about 1300 characters apparently; not really a lot. Then I discovered I couldn’t write more than about 400 characters. So, clearly I needed a bigger forum – here we are.
I’ve always thought that bloggers are very sad people. Who wants to know your every thought and opinion? However, we’re here now and I’m going to post this review come what may!