Over the weekend I went to see a Nevermore, the musical about the life of Edgar Allen Poe, at the Magnetic North Theatre Festival. I didn't bring my knitting, and even if I had, I wouldn't been able to knit, because I was too busy actively watching it!
It was absolutely beautiful, and the designer and choreographer deserve enourmous praise. I haven't seen anything on par visually in a very long time, and it really reminds me just how stale most things I see are.
I'm afraid I was bored to tears musically though. It was standard musical music, nothing to creative or inspiring, and mostly ... Read morevariations on the same bland tune. I would have been just as happy, if not happier, to watch the show with the mute button on. It's this level of repetetive, uninspired music that keeps me far far away from most musicals.
It's a shame too, because the writing was good, the actors were good and of course the visuals were stunning, but the music kept me from enjoying myself completely.
Tuesday, June 9, 2009
Friday, March 20, 2009
Peer Gynt, measured by sock
While waiting to get into the theatre to see Third Wall's latest production, Peer Gynt, I cast on for a sock. By curtain, this was the progress I'd made:
Bear in mind that I'm a slow knitter at the best of times, and I was knitting blind the entire time.
Aside from the length the show was better than I had expected. Although the show had some serious faults, as well as many minor ones, at least all the actors knew their lines, unlike the unfortunate Tartuffe last year, also directed by James Richardson and featuring the cast of Ottawa Theatre School graduating students.
Peer Gynt did not suffer from any actors so bad that you wanted to hang yourself right there and then just to end the agony, but it also failed to have the magic bright shining star in the cast, despite having a few very good actors. Andy Massingham's performance was very good, but I couldn't help feeling that he didn't fit the role quite right. David Hersh was as always a strong performance but the roles he had didn't seem to allow for anything more.
A few performances left something to be desired. Lucie Roy as the mother left me cold and irritated, even on her deathbed scene. Romuald Hivert's performance as the Troll King, and one of the madmen were nothing short of corny.
The remaining performances failed to leave much impact on me, whether because of their small parts, or because of their performances, I'm not sure. I had a hard time distinguishing between a couple of the young women with their generically pretty looks. One of them certainly felt more amateur than the others, but I don't want to pick a name, since I could so easily choose the wrong one.
I found the movement in the show to be on the whole quite wonderful, and I hope that Peter Ryan gets some recognition for his beautiful work. The set and costumes were fine, and worked quite well throughout, except towards the start where the curtain block nearly every seat's view of Peer and his mother (I changed my seat a couple of times before the show began, finally realizing that the bloody curtain was going to be a problem wherever I sat.)
I felt the pacing in the show was all too frenzied, and there was a distinct lack of emotional levels. Throughout the entire show everyone is frenzied and yelling. A little more calm and quiet would have been a great help to the show.
On the whole though, the show was more than decent, with some very good bits scattered here and there. If this is the least successful show of the season, as I suspect it will be, then it shows how much Third Wall has grown up, and gives me great hope for the future.
Bear in mind that I'm a slow knitter at the best of times, and I was knitting blind the entire time.
Aside from the length the show was better than I had expected. Although the show had some serious faults, as well as many minor ones, at least all the actors knew their lines, unlike the unfortunate Tartuffe last year, also directed by James Richardson and featuring the cast of Ottawa Theatre School graduating students.
Peer Gynt did not suffer from any actors so bad that you wanted to hang yourself right there and then just to end the agony, but it also failed to have the magic bright shining star in the cast, despite having a few very good actors. Andy Massingham's performance was very good, but I couldn't help feeling that he didn't fit the role quite right. David Hersh was as always a strong performance but the roles he had didn't seem to allow for anything more.
A few performances left something to be desired. Lucie Roy as the mother left me cold and irritated, even on her deathbed scene. Romuald Hivert's performance as the Troll King, and one of the madmen were nothing short of corny.
The remaining performances failed to leave much impact on me, whether because of their small parts, or because of their performances, I'm not sure. I had a hard time distinguishing between a couple of the young women with their generically pretty looks. One of them certainly felt more amateur than the others, but I don't want to pick a name, since I could so easily choose the wrong one.
I found the movement in the show to be on the whole quite wonderful, and I hope that Peter Ryan gets some recognition for his beautiful work. The set and costumes were fine, and worked quite well throughout, except towards the start where the curtain block nearly every seat's view of Peer and his mother (I changed my seat a couple of times before the show began, finally realizing that the bloody curtain was going to be a problem wherever I sat.)
I felt the pacing in the show was all too frenzied, and there was a distinct lack of emotional levels. Throughout the entire show everyone is frenzied and yelling. A little more calm and quiet would have been a great help to the show.
On the whole though, the show was more than decent, with some very good bits scattered here and there. If this is the least successful show of the season, as I suspect it will be, then it shows how much Third Wall has grown up, and gives me great hope for the future.
Tuesday, March 3, 2009
Doubt
Alright, so I was originally going to do a full and proper review of the play, but since it's now been many days, and I haven't gotten around to it, I thought I'd do a shorter review, skipping whatever I don't feel like writing about.
Doubt is to date my favourite production by John Kelly. I have seen several other shows, and have found them all to be way overrated, with serious problems with directing, the choice of plays, and often even acting. This time his choice of play was pretty good. An interesting, intelligent play, that goes out of its way not to draw conclusions, or tell you what's right or wrong, or who is right or wrong. A play intended to leave you with doubts in your mind.
The cast was solid, with its weakest link being Emmanuelle Zeesman, who left me feeling a little cold, though thankfully nothing worse than that. The highlight was surprisingly Natalie Fraser-Purdy, whom I'd never come across before, but she really brought life to her small part. Mary Ellis and Kris Joseph were very good, as expected, though Joseph didn't sparkle quite the same as he has in other productions I've seen him in.
Of course, this being a John Kelly production, the actors HAD to have accents, though luckily since this was set in the Bronx, no one was butchering the Irish accent. The accent, although better than often, still missed the mark, and took me out of the experience somewhat, though again, not quite as far out as the use of Irish, Scottish, and English accents do. There's no good reason for the use of the accent, this same story could have been set so many other places and it wouldn't have changed a thing, the accent does absolutely nothing to advance the story, and should have been dropped.
Finally we get to the set. Oh the set! There are not enough words to describe quite how dreadful the set was. From a pure design point of view, it was clumsy, with all 3 scene sets being towards the front, in a straight line next to each other. The principal's office going for extreme realism, with 2 proper walls, and a door, a clumsily place filing cabinet that I suppose is supposed to extend the wall in our imaginations. The garden's wall is much shorter than that of the office walls, and looks like it's part of an elementary school production. It's a piece of plywood which has been painted to attempt to be a stone wall, only it hasn't been skillfully done, with its 3 tiny strands of "ivy" with evenly spaced, disproportionately small leaves, looks so out of place and fake, especially compared to the very realistic walls of the office. A green carpeting pretending to be grass, a few fake shrubs, with real dirt spread around them, and a little fake flagstone or two to signify paths leaving the garden, which move as the actor steps across them. Finally we reach the rectory, which has only a pulpit. No wall whatsoever, no other props, no crucifix behind, only the cross "carved" onto the pulpit.
The lighting was crude as well. Just the most basic lights, with no obvious difference between sets (outside doesn't look any different than inside, rectory doesn't look different than office.)
I was sorry that this side of the show was so poorly done, because I found it to be highly distracting, and gave the show a whole cheap, amateur feel even though it really wasn't.
It's a shame that the basics of set building, painting, and props seem to be lost arts. If you can fake up a decent looking stone wall, get in touch with your local semi-professional theatre company today! They clearly need you, desperately!
Doubt is to date my favourite production by John Kelly. I have seen several other shows, and have found them all to be way overrated, with serious problems with directing, the choice of plays, and often even acting. This time his choice of play was pretty good. An interesting, intelligent play, that goes out of its way not to draw conclusions, or tell you what's right or wrong, or who is right or wrong. A play intended to leave you with doubts in your mind.
The cast was solid, with its weakest link being Emmanuelle Zeesman, who left me feeling a little cold, though thankfully nothing worse than that. The highlight was surprisingly Natalie Fraser-Purdy, whom I'd never come across before, but she really brought life to her small part. Mary Ellis and Kris Joseph were very good, as expected, though Joseph didn't sparkle quite the same as he has in other productions I've seen him in.
Of course, this being a John Kelly production, the actors HAD to have accents, though luckily since this was set in the Bronx, no one was butchering the Irish accent. The accent, although better than often, still missed the mark, and took me out of the experience somewhat, though again, not quite as far out as the use of Irish, Scottish, and English accents do. There's no good reason for the use of the accent, this same story could have been set so many other places and it wouldn't have changed a thing, the accent does absolutely nothing to advance the story, and should have been dropped.
Finally we get to the set. Oh the set! There are not enough words to describe quite how dreadful the set was. From a pure design point of view, it was clumsy, with all 3 scene sets being towards the front, in a straight line next to each other. The principal's office going for extreme realism, with 2 proper walls, and a door, a clumsily place filing cabinet that I suppose is supposed to extend the wall in our imaginations. The garden's wall is much shorter than that of the office walls, and looks like it's part of an elementary school production. It's a piece of plywood which has been painted to attempt to be a stone wall, only it hasn't been skillfully done, with its 3 tiny strands of "ivy" with evenly spaced, disproportionately small leaves, looks so out of place and fake, especially compared to the very realistic walls of the office. A green carpeting pretending to be grass, a few fake shrubs, with real dirt spread around them, and a little fake flagstone or two to signify paths leaving the garden, which move as the actor steps across them. Finally we reach the rectory, which has only a pulpit. No wall whatsoever, no other props, no crucifix behind, only the cross "carved" onto the pulpit.
The lighting was crude as well. Just the most basic lights, with no obvious difference between sets (outside doesn't look any different than inside, rectory doesn't look different than office.)
I was sorry that this side of the show was so poorly done, because I found it to be highly distracting, and gave the show a whole cheap, amateur feel even though it really wasn't.
It's a shame that the basics of set building, painting, and props seem to be lost arts. If you can fake up a decent looking stone wall, get in touch with your local semi-professional theatre company today! They clearly need you, desperately!
Friday, February 27, 2009
Gee, thanks a lot crudmonkey!
So an old friend of mine, whose blog I've been following whenever I remember, posted this wordle meme, and for the first time in a long time I actually wanted to join in on the meme. It's fun to play around with the settings.
Can you tell what I really like?
Can you tell what I really like?
The gods conspire against me
The gods of winter and of knitting have conspired against me. Just as I am days away from finishing my first hat for myself winter decides it's time to stop being freezing and evil, and instead it's time to start raining. I somehow knew this would happen, but still I had hopes that I'd get one week of bitter cold in with my new hat before spring came along. Alas, it looks like this is not the case.
Even though winter will have a few more mini-blasts, it's unlikely to get cold enough for me to wear a hat again. Afterall, I'm the girl who's gotten away without wearing a winter coat ONCE this winter. I mostly just wore my hoodie, or my jean jacket (single layer of denim, no insulation) through the entire time. There were a couple of days where I got too cold, but those were only the -30 and below with windchill days, and even then the main problems were my hands which even when in gloves were frozen solid.
Oh well, I suppose it's back to knitting this beautiful hat (captured below in extremely inaccurate colour! Hooray for dying cameras!)
Even though winter will have a few more mini-blasts, it's unlikely to get cold enough for me to wear a hat again. Afterall, I'm the girl who's gotten away without wearing a winter coat ONCE this winter. I mostly just wore my hoodie, or my jean jacket (single layer of denim, no insulation) through the entire time. There were a couple of days where I got too cold, but those were only the -30 and below with windchill days, and even then the main problems were my hands which even when in gloves were frozen solid.
Oh well, I suppose it's back to knitting this beautiful hat (captured below in extremely inaccurate colour! Hooray for dying cameras!)
Tuesday, December 30, 2008
New Year
So in my last post, I talked a lot about what I had done, but I'd like to talk now about what I hope to accomplish, in terms of knitting at least.
I have started several projects that I want to keep working on and finish. I don't have too many WiPs partly because I got ruthless and frogged several things that I just didn't like. The main WiP is my Pretty as a Peacock Shawl aka BB is a Moron! It's the most wonderful, modern, awesome lace I've ever seen, so I started it as my first lace project. (Like it says, moron!) I actually started another, much shorter, much easier lace project since and will likely be done really soon, probably within a couple of days!
I also have the Great American Aran Afghan on the go, for which I've finished one square to date. I enjoyed almost all the square, with the exception of the top and bottom borders, because of the fact that no matter what I did, I couldn't figure out how to repeat the placement of my increases to do the decreases, even though I was doing exactly what I'd written down, only in reverse. I still don't understand that!
At the very top of my queue for projects not yet on the needles, is a cabled sweater for myself. I ordered myself the yarn already, unfortunately it's back-ordered at the distributor (perhaps even the manufacturer), so I'm unsure as to when I'll get the yarn. I'm really looking forward to it though, because I love the pattern complex, without being overcrowded, and it changes enough for it not to become boring and repetitive. I believe the back is just pure stockinette, so that may end up being the death of me, but the front is too beautiful!
I have lots of smaller projects in mind, some of which I've already got the yarn for, such as Ysolda Teague's beautiful Gretel.
As far as more general things, such as skills, I'd like to knit tighter, since I end up using sock needles for everything up to aran weight, and 3.75 needles for super bulky weight! Yikes!
I'd like to learn how to graft, to steek, to more successfully increase, and to pick up stitches without making it look so ugly.
I'd like to finish a pair of socks. Hell, I'd love to finish a sock period! I've never gotten past knitting the heel flap, thanks to the fact that they were too damned tight, and I couldn't get them over my heel!
I'd like to knit more from the stash, and not buy so many useless amounts of yarn, that are only good for fingerless mitts, and such. I'm getting bored of them!
I'd like to knit up some random hats and such from my acrylic stash to give to charity.
In non-knitting terms, I'd like to get healthy. I'd like Mimi to stop peeing on the floor. I'd like to get a decent job. I'd like to become a size small, or even medium. Hell, I'd settle for a LARGE!!! Okay, so not a single one of these things is likely to happen this year, but a girl can hope, can't she?
I have started several projects that I want to keep working on and finish. I don't have too many WiPs partly because I got ruthless and frogged several things that I just didn't like. The main WiP is my Pretty as a Peacock Shawl aka BB is a Moron! It's the most wonderful, modern, awesome lace I've ever seen, so I started it as my first lace project. (Like it says, moron!) I actually started another, much shorter, much easier lace project since and will likely be done really soon, probably within a couple of days!
I also have the Great American Aran Afghan on the go, for which I've finished one square to date. I enjoyed almost all the square, with the exception of the top and bottom borders, because of the fact that no matter what I did, I couldn't figure out how to repeat the placement of my increases to do the decreases, even though I was doing exactly what I'd written down, only in reverse. I still don't understand that!
At the very top of my queue for projects not yet on the needles, is a cabled sweater for myself. I ordered myself the yarn already, unfortunately it's back-ordered at the distributor (perhaps even the manufacturer), so I'm unsure as to when I'll get the yarn. I'm really looking forward to it though, because I love the pattern complex, without being overcrowded, and it changes enough for it not to become boring and repetitive. I believe the back is just pure stockinette, so that may end up being the death of me, but the front is too beautiful!
I have lots of smaller projects in mind, some of which I've already got the yarn for, such as Ysolda Teague's beautiful Gretel.
As far as more general things, such as skills, I'd like to knit tighter, since I end up using sock needles for everything up to aran weight, and 3.75 needles for super bulky weight! Yikes!
I'd like to learn how to graft, to steek, to more successfully increase, and to pick up stitches without making it look so ugly.
I'd like to finish a pair of socks. Hell, I'd love to finish a sock period! I've never gotten past knitting the heel flap, thanks to the fact that they were too damned tight, and I couldn't get them over my heel!
I'd like to knit more from the stash, and not buy so many useless amounts of yarn, that are only good for fingerless mitts, and such. I'm getting bored of them!
I'd like to knit up some random hats and such from my acrylic stash to give to charity.
In non-knitting terms, I'd like to get healthy. I'd like Mimi to stop peeing on the floor. I'd like to get a decent job. I'd like to become a size small, or even medium. Hell, I'd settle for a LARGE!!! Okay, so not a single one of these things is likely to happen this year, but a girl can hope, can't she?
A year in Knitting
With just under 48 hours left in the year, and the last hour spent on ravelry, I've been thinking about my knitting throughout the year.'
Up until this year, knitting was definitely an on and off thing, and I had never produced anything more than a scarf. I could only knit stockinette, and, although I'd tried, I couldn't honestly knit in the round. I knew the theory, and could even do it in practice, but not well, and usually I'd end up accidentally working in the wrong direction, giving me unintentional short rows!
Then in late February I found this really cute pattern on Ravelry, that involve only knitting a little square, and then stitching it up into a bunny. I finished it really quickly, and was really pleased with how well it came out.
Buoyed by this success, and by my Ravelry surfing, I decided to try cabling, just like I'd been dreaming of doing since nearly the start of my knitting days!!! It was so remarkably easy, and it was even more fun! I worked on the Irish hiking scarf for 4 balls of yarn, but by then I was bored, and it was nowhere near long enough, so I put it away for a while (and eventually frogged it for the yarn).
I got super busy with work and such for a while, so my knitting came to a halt for much of the late spring, early summer. Then for my birthday I convinced my mother to take me yarn shopping, where we bought the most wonderful sock yarns, which restarted my knitting again.
I learned how to magic loop and restarted a sock, and kept tinkering on that for the summer, but never much, because I'd get bored and distracted and put it down again.
Then finally in September I started and finished in no time at all Fetching. Buoyed yet again by the success of that, I started another project, the Great American Aran Afghan.
I shortly after attended my first ever knit-nite, and have been going to nearly every one in town ever since.
Somewhere in the last few months, I have learned so many more skills, and made some more projects! I now know how to do lace, and am nearly finished my first project. I got good enough at having a feel for knitting to be able to make mittens completely without a pattern. I realize I can now "read" my knitting, although I've been able to do that all year, but I couldn't for the previous 9.
I am really proud of what I've managed to accomplish this year, at least in terms of my knitting, and am confident that this coming year will only make me more of a knitter!
Up until this year, knitting was definitely an on and off thing, and I had never produced anything more than a scarf. I could only knit stockinette, and, although I'd tried, I couldn't honestly knit in the round. I knew the theory, and could even do it in practice, but not well, and usually I'd end up accidentally working in the wrong direction, giving me unintentional short rows!
Then in late February I found this really cute pattern on Ravelry, that involve only knitting a little square, and then stitching it up into a bunny. I finished it really quickly, and was really pleased with how well it came out.
Buoyed by this success, and by my Ravelry surfing, I decided to try cabling, just like I'd been dreaming of doing since nearly the start of my knitting days!!! It was so remarkably easy, and it was even more fun! I worked on the Irish hiking scarf for 4 balls of yarn, but by then I was bored, and it was nowhere near long enough, so I put it away for a while (and eventually frogged it for the yarn).
I got super busy with work and such for a while, so my knitting came to a halt for much of the late spring, early summer. Then for my birthday I convinced my mother to take me yarn shopping, where we bought the most wonderful sock yarns, which restarted my knitting again.
I learned how to magic loop and restarted a sock, and kept tinkering on that for the summer, but never much, because I'd get bored and distracted and put it down again.
Then finally in September I started and finished in no time at all Fetching. Buoyed yet again by the success of that, I started another project, the Great American Aran Afghan.
I shortly after attended my first ever knit-nite, and have been going to nearly every one in town ever since.
Somewhere in the last few months, I have learned so many more skills, and made some more projects! I now know how to do lace, and am nearly finished my first project. I got good enough at having a feel for knitting to be able to make mittens completely without a pattern. I realize I can now "read" my knitting, although I've been able to do that all year, but I couldn't for the previous 9.
I am really proud of what I've managed to accomplish this year, at least in terms of my knitting, and am confident that this coming year will only make me more of a knitter!
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