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Showing posts from June, 2015

The Trail

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4/5 rating The Trail | Young Vic I didn't know anything about the play before I walked in. I had an amazing experience. The stage is one largish conveyor belt and the sets keep changing as the belt moves. The seating is on either side of the conveyor belt. We got lucky. We sat in the front row. While this undoubtedly gave us a great experience, even without it would have still been good. The play is based on a book by Kafka. It is about a society ruled by law where the law is ultimate and as the dialogue goes, everything belongs to the court. From stealing his clothes to stealing his life, K sees the power of the court that wouldn't even tell him what he is guilty of but hold him on trial. In a sense the conveyor belt shows that K is caught in a process that he can't fight. Rory Kinnear plays K and bears it all till he crumbles down. And when he does you see that while his fingers are shaking visibly for the benefit of the audience, his character is shaking

Kafka on the Shore

4.5/5 rating Kafka on the Shore | Barbican My first response as soon as the play started? Oh Damn! It's nothing to do with the play. I just realised that the play is in Japanese. There were subtitles, or serftitles as they are called in theatre, in English on two large screens placed at the top corners of the stage. Given the expensive nature of theatre and the number of times we tend to go, we mostly buy cheap tickets (theatre monkey is your friend). So while we still had a great view of the stage, the serftitles were not exactly in line with our view and we had to keep switching the eyes from the board to the stage. I should have researched the play a bit more. Ignore all the above. No question that it was authentic. Kafka on the Shore is a book by Haruki Murakami. I haven't read it. I wanted to watch it without any prior impressions. The Ninagawa theatre company had adapted it into a Japanese play and is currently touring in London.  I must say it was beau

Everyman

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2/5 rating Everyman | National Theatre I believe it is an old 15 th century play adapted to modern times.  The opening scene with the cleaning lady and the first scene with Everyman partying with his friends on this 40th birthday was done ravishingly well and very much in today's times indeed. But that's where the modernity stops. Much of the play about Everyman's reckoning is mostly old school. May be the god fearing among us would agree with it. But it's a dialogue from my grandmother's life, if not from the middle ages. The dialogues were rhyming a bit too much for the modern era. It was the Olivier theatre and the use of sets was minimal. There was so much more that could have been done with the sets - with the party that is turning dark and his fear, with the streets when he sleeps with the homeless, with the execution of everyone but not Everyman. The execution of the execution was so juvenile that it was almost like a school play. At

Election plays from the first week of May

I've watched NewsRevue before and I loved it. It's a series of comedy sketches on current affairs and they make minor changes to their content almost every week so within a couple of months it's nearly entirely new and sometimes even the cast is new. They are always playing at Canal Cafe Theatre which is a small theatre space above a pub. So we went to watch them again the weekend before the UK general elections for all the election mockery.  It was truly hilarious. I cracked up so much, I don't think there can be one favourite.  Most of the sketches were about how Dave Cam owns the world or how Nicola is slowly conquering it. The others are just interacting each with their own typical characters. They didn't leave the Americans out either. Hil-ary was strikingly awesome that I could actually picture Hillary Clinton being on stage herself.  They had a few other sketches involving Katie Holmes, the birth of the princess, etc. Even though I watched many other comedy s

Lake District

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It was definitely beautiful but certainly not as laid back as I thought it would be, may be it was just timing. Firstly, on a normal day there is a direct train from London to Windermere that's roughly 3 hours and a bit. For us it took more than 6 hours due to engineering works. Secondly, it was the Easter weekend, the first big holiday after winter. Thirdly, it was supposed to be raining but in the last minute the weather turned and it was brilliant sunny weekend bringing in a lot of unplanned holiday makers from an hour away.  Any case, we thought the same and woke up at 11 thinking if it rains too much we won't make the effort. But it was looking al right so we left at 2. A tube ride and three train rides later we reached Windermere. It was already dark and it took us a while to get to our B&B so that was that. Our B&B was a small cute family run place like most B&Bs are. Ross, who runs it, was extremely helpful and he is as local as anyone can get