Sunday, November 27, 2011

the bloody office of his timeless end

But first, John Simon reviews a new book on Verdi and Shakespeare. Could be good.

And speaking of the latter (or not, if you prefer), as foretold, grim visag'd war comes to Brooklyn in January, and is coming to stay for a couple of months. If one's exchequer weren't quite so...what it is, one could catch the beginning,* then the end, and skip all that business with France in the middle.


Meanwhile Collaborators is out and about in the coming weeks via NTLive. Simon Russell Beale: could have been the next Bond villain but Sam Mendes couldn't scope the Cute and Deadly. So have him as Stalin instead. That'll do.  Check your local, as dates and times tend to vary this side of the water.

*and behold the absence of moss gathered

7 comments:

  1. I don't know if I should go to see Collaborators tomorrow.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Oh, that is a quandary. What were they thinking when they picked that day? If you've got no other option, I'd pour a libation of apology and go anyway, as NTlive aren't big on encores (or DVDs, as yet).

    ReplyDelete
  3. I was thinking, I really don't want to be disappointed by the play. I don't think that the Soviet Union of the late 30s is THE most pressing issue for a living playwright writing in English... You get these plays that look everywhere but their own time, and are in essence apolitical plays about foreign totalitarianisms... Hmm... Still torn. I have a couple of hours to decide. The ticket is also not the cheapest: $22 and change. Hmmmmmmmmmmm.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Oh, my mistake, I was thinking because today is the Day Without Art.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Ha! product of the late 20th century that I am, only now do I realize they don't really do that anymore.

    Your actual reason for hesitance is a good point, though.

    ReplyDelete
  6. Oh we're funny. How long could we have kept it going, without my realizing that you were not joking? Only on the internet.

    I used to have a couple of German-speaking commenters on the blog, and they kept coming across as curt at best, rude at worst. There was the language barrier, AND the internet (killer of the tone) barrier. Really surprised I didn't get into more flame wars; in these waters, simply not using the conditional or leaving humour entirely out can be enough to inflame.

    ReplyDelete
  7. Endlessly, as long as I'm more sort of vaulting to conclusions than leaping to them.

    It could have been language barrier. Or they might just have been curt/rude people, who knows? I find both irony and literalism are what get me into trouble. As you say, killer of tone.

    ReplyDelete