Nature red in tooth and claw
Nov. 12th, 2009 03:26 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
pameladeanTuesday was a very instructive day in two different ways
Raphael and I went for a walk, since it was glorious late-fall day. As we were coming home, we saw a hawk in an ash tree at 37th and Blaisdell. It was eating some small bird, sending bits of down and the occasional feather floating away in the sunny air. It was a rangy hawk with a streaky breast and a rather long tail. We followed it into our alley, where it perched on the power line while house sparrows sat in the hedges making alarmed noises. Then it flew off over the decaying parking lot of the former mortuary, swooping very low over the ground, and vanished into some trees. We looked it up in Sibley, and, like the hawk we've seen a few times in our yard, it was a juvenile Cooper's hawk. I've never had such a good, long look at one before -- the branch it was on wasn't all that high, though it was well above our heads.
My friend Cindy knows all the cool things about theater in this town. She had kindly offered Eric and me her extra free tickets to see The Importance of Being Earnest, so we reciprocated by inviting her along with us to see Theater in the Round's Much Ado About Nothing. She couldn't go, because she was working, but our joint email lamentations about how we never saw shows together caused her to invite us to come to the free production of Othello being done by Ten Thousand Things in the basement of St. Stephen's Church.
We had a nice dinner beforehand at the Java, Cindy and her partner and Eric and I, talking about theater and, a little, about politics.
The venue was somewhat unsalubrious, but neither the glaring fluorescent lights, the overheating, or the hard metal chairs mattered in the slightest once the players began. They had been milling about beforehand, since there was no backstage, just an empty square of old vinyl tile floor surrounded by two or three rows of folding chairs on each side, and a little group of musicians. I amused myself by trying to pick out who was playing whom. There was an upright, sharp-faced, earnest-looking fellow that I decided must be Iago, but he wasn't. He was Rodrigo, Iago's gull. (Or, as Eric pointed out, he was really Sir Andrew Aguecheek to Iago's Sir Toby, but they were in a much nastier universe.) Iago was somebody I'd have cast as Falstaff or Sir Toby, with a broad Minnesota accent and a completely guileless face. He was stupendous. It's easy, with Othello, to become impatient with the stupidity of everyone other than Iago, but this one really did seem very trustworthy. (I still thought Cassio was pretty clueless.) Iago was very funny early on, but I couldn't actually laugh, because I knew what would happen.
Othello was excellent too. He started out very genial and smiling, good at reconciliation, not, it seemed, easily moved to anger; but Iago knew just how to manage it. Desdemona was really splendid, energetic and straightforward, not at all submissive or shy. Emilia was also a very strong character. In their big scene together, Desdemona helped her make the bed, which made a very different impression than the more usual ways the scene is staged. Desdemona had entered humming the song, and they sang it together in snatches rather than there being any kind of formal performance.
Instead of Desdemona's father, they had her mother, who was a fine ranting scary parent. This actor also played Bianca, and was the best Bianca I've seen. This did not improve my opinion of Cassio at all, I have to say. And because Emilia was so sympathetic and strong, her repudiation of Bianca was especially distressing. Emilia knows women have to hang together in the kind of world the play depicts, but she hasn't quite gotten all the way to including Bianca.
The death scene was awful. I mean, it was well done, and so it had to be awful. Desdemona was not a large woman, but she fought all the way. I don't think I want to see this play again for quite a while, but they all did a wonderful job. We gave them a standing ovation. The audience was much more mixed than what one sees at the Guthrie, for example, and they were all, even fairly young kids, quite involved with the show.
Pamela
Raphael and I went for a walk, since it was glorious late-fall day. As we were coming home, we saw a hawk in an ash tree at 37th and Blaisdell. It was eating some small bird, sending bits of down and the occasional feather floating away in the sunny air. It was a rangy hawk with a streaky breast and a rather long tail. We followed it into our alley, where it perched on the power line while house sparrows sat in the hedges making alarmed noises. Then it flew off over the decaying parking lot of the former mortuary, swooping very low over the ground, and vanished into some trees. We looked it up in Sibley, and, like the hawk we've seen a few times in our yard, it was a juvenile Cooper's hawk. I've never had such a good, long look at one before -- the branch it was on wasn't all that high, though it was well above our heads.
My friend Cindy knows all the cool things about theater in this town. She had kindly offered Eric and me her extra free tickets to see The Importance of Being Earnest, so we reciprocated by inviting her along with us to see Theater in the Round's Much Ado About Nothing. She couldn't go, because she was working, but our joint email lamentations about how we never saw shows together caused her to invite us to come to the free production of Othello being done by Ten Thousand Things in the basement of St. Stephen's Church.
We had a nice dinner beforehand at the Java, Cindy and her partner and Eric and I, talking about theater and, a little, about politics.
The venue was somewhat unsalubrious, but neither the glaring fluorescent lights, the overheating, or the hard metal chairs mattered in the slightest once the players began. They had been milling about beforehand, since there was no backstage, just an empty square of old vinyl tile floor surrounded by two or three rows of folding chairs on each side, and a little group of musicians. I amused myself by trying to pick out who was playing whom. There was an upright, sharp-faced, earnest-looking fellow that I decided must be Iago, but he wasn't. He was Rodrigo, Iago's gull. (Or, as Eric pointed out, he was really Sir Andrew Aguecheek to Iago's Sir Toby, but they were in a much nastier universe.) Iago was somebody I'd have cast as Falstaff or Sir Toby, with a broad Minnesota accent and a completely guileless face. He was stupendous. It's easy, with Othello, to become impatient with the stupidity of everyone other than Iago, but this one really did seem very trustworthy. (I still thought Cassio was pretty clueless.) Iago was very funny early on, but I couldn't actually laugh, because I knew what would happen.
Othello was excellent too. He started out very genial and smiling, good at reconciliation, not, it seemed, easily moved to anger; but Iago knew just how to manage it. Desdemona was really splendid, energetic and straightforward, not at all submissive or shy. Emilia was also a very strong character. In their big scene together, Desdemona helped her make the bed, which made a very different impression than the more usual ways the scene is staged. Desdemona had entered humming the song, and they sang it together in snatches rather than there being any kind of formal performance.
Instead of Desdemona's father, they had her mother, who was a fine ranting scary parent. This actor also played Bianca, and was the best Bianca I've seen. This did not improve my opinion of Cassio at all, I have to say. And because Emilia was so sympathetic and strong, her repudiation of Bianca was especially distressing. Emilia knows women have to hang together in the kind of world the play depicts, but she hasn't quite gotten all the way to including Bianca.
The death scene was awful. I mean, it was well done, and so it had to be awful. Desdemona was not a large woman, but she fought all the way. I don't think I want to see this play again for quite a while, but they all did a wonderful job. We gave them a standing ovation. The audience was much more mixed than what one sees at the Guthrie, for example, and they were all, even fairly young kids, quite involved with the show.
Pamela
