Saturday night saw me at the Nottingham Arts Theatre, attending the closing night of the self-same theatre company's production of the schools' edition of Rent.
I think I've seen this before. I remember the poster more than I remember the production.
I'd forgotten what a misery it is. All thwarted dreams and relentless death.
I'd also been completely unaware at my last viewing of how similar the plot is to Mark Ravenhill's Some Explicit Polaroids.
(For those of you that missed the spectacle of Ross the shrouded corpse being "entertained" by a 'Russian' go go dancer - well - these are the moments on which theatre will long thrive.)
Anyway, these things are neither here nor there.
Director Maggie Andrew did a cracking job with a big cast on a not enormous stage.
My father did a cracking job with the set. Personal bias not withstanding.
The costumes were beautifully colour co-ordinated. The kind of effect I was after with CCC and hmmm, let's be frank, we didn't really achieve.
There was some incredibly admirable singing. You'd hope for this in a musical but - oh my lord - it's soooo not a given.
And some great acting.
The cross-dressing Angel and the bossy slutty lesbian, Maureen, were particularly impressive.
It's a condition of the performing rights that none of the actors are older than 19.
So we had 33 very young people lined up to take the curtain call at the end.
Final night, hands clasped, bouncing through their final number, the very youngest (carelessly clustered mostly right in front of me) clearly overwhelmed by the horror of the end burst into sobbing tears as the audience whooped.
Sentimental Fool burst into tears of sympathetic camaraderie.
(And O The Tempest!)
And then I got to help with half of the move out. Which given my general incompetence (and father's full awareness of my general incompetence) consisted mostly of carrying around a bucket to collect spare screws. (Yes! It's true!)
Aside from the shameful moment when surrounded by a pack of the Cool Young, I imagined a small piece of scenery was about to fall on my head and cringing, ran (Yes! Ran!) away. As the Cool Young, the picture of immobile disdain, looked on.
Shameful Sentimental Fool.
I think I've seen this before. I remember the poster more than I remember the production.
I'd forgotten what a misery it is. All thwarted dreams and relentless death.
I'd also been completely unaware at my last viewing of how similar the plot is to Mark Ravenhill's Some Explicit Polaroids.
(For those of you that missed the spectacle of Ross the shrouded corpse being "entertained" by a 'Russian' go go dancer - well - these are the moments on which theatre will long thrive.)
Anyway, these things are neither here nor there.
Director Maggie Andrew did a cracking job with a big cast on a not enormous stage.
My father did a cracking job with the set. Personal bias not withstanding.
The costumes were beautifully colour co-ordinated. The kind of effect I was after with CCC and hmmm, let's be frank, we didn't really achieve.
There was some incredibly admirable singing. You'd hope for this in a musical but - oh my lord - it's soooo not a given.
And some great acting.
The cross-dressing Angel and the bossy slutty lesbian, Maureen, were particularly impressive.
It's a condition of the performing rights that none of the actors are older than 19.
So we had 33 very young people lined up to take the curtain call at the end.
Final night, hands clasped, bouncing through their final number, the very youngest (carelessly clustered mostly right in front of me) clearly overwhelmed by the horror of the end burst into sobbing tears as the audience whooped.
Sentimental Fool burst into tears of sympathetic camaraderie.
(And O The Tempest!)
And then I got to help with half of the move out. Which given my general incompetence (and father's full awareness of my general incompetence) consisted mostly of carrying around a bucket to collect spare screws. (Yes! It's true!)
Aside from the shameful moment when surrounded by a pack of the Cool Young, I imagined a small piece of scenery was about to fall on my head and cringing, ran (Yes! Ran!) away. As the Cool Young, the picture of immobile disdain, looked on.
Shameful Sentimental Fool.
posted by Claire at 11:31 pm
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home