ashamel

I see Arnold Schwarzenegger is taking a bash at Lewis Carroll's title of acrostic champion: a memo.

Just saw the 1966 Alice in Wonderland, done for the BBC. What a trip. More literally than usual, it is a childlike view of all the absurdities of adults, with some excellent (and some interesting) set pieces strung together in a suitably jarring fashion.

The actual casting may be of more interest to those with a better knowledge of British film and TV, not to mention the performances of Shakespeare. I got Leo McKern as the Duchess at least — and managed to mistake Michael Gough for John Hurt.

I also think I spotted the butler from The Prisoner in the jury. It must be said this managed to be somewhat more coherent than the last ep of that particular show, which I watched recently. This is not saying a great deal, of course, but the shared themes of identity and dislocation put me in mind of it — with some Picnic at Hanging Rock mixed in.

Da hell? I had posted that previous entry without noticing my name was on one on the pages I linked to... Boojum! to be precise. It's faint praise as quoted, because it is an excellent piece of work, and much to be recommended.

And as I discovered the last time I talked about it here, alinta_thornton was in the original performance of it, which is very cool.

It seems there will be no Clarion South for me this time round. Though I got a nice letter from them addressing my diet, it turns out I won't be able to get the time off from work. And I do suspect it is for the best.

Otherwise I've been listening to Boojum! again. It is quite remarkable, not only being a giddy mix of Carroll jokes and references, but a meditation on the search for meaning and love, as it all falls away into nothingness. Good stuff.

forgot to mention the plays.

On friday we went to see Snark: The Way of the Bravest as part of the Sydney Festival. It is a one-man puppet show about the hunt for that most elusive creature. There's not much Lewis Carroll therein, but they use the poem as a skeleton around which to build a chaotic and funny series of absurdities. Greed, murder, sea-sickness, equine carnage and psychedelia combine in carefully choreographed mayhem -- it's all good stuff.

It is also the first play I've seen in ages where a significant percentage of the audience seemed younger than me.

Apart from Boojum! and a previous stage production of Alice, I guess what it reminded me most of was Svankmajer's animation, with ordinary objects coming alive in strange and disturbing ways.

(The Alice in Wonderland play was great -- though since it's been twenty years, my memories are somewhat faded. I seem to recall it was constructed on a 3D stage, with the actors climbing up and down a series of gantries to represent the different levels of reality. I don't suppose anyone would know how to track down details of that. It would have played in Canberra in the 1980s.)

Two weeks ago we saw a rather different production, Stephen Sewell's The United States of Nothing. Sewell is a renowned playwright and also the writer of Lost Things and The Boys. You certainly can't accuse him of complacency -- this was a brave and topical play, following the fortunes of a family trapped in a superdome during a hurricane. However, despite covering interesting ground, including lots of nifty moments and an ambitious finale, I don't think the characters quite came alive, leaving it somewhat strident and directionless.

I also forgot to mention comics, though that basically comes down to the fact that latter issues of Platinum Grit are still very good, and I fully expect Tango 6: Love and Sex to be great.

Sydney-siders who are into Lewis Carroll may be interested in Snark: The Way of the Bravest, which is playing at Parramatta in January, as part of the Sydney Festival. I know nothing about it, but it looks fun.

This is also an excuse (somewhat unfairly to Snark, perhaps) to plug Boojum! again, Martin and Peter Wesley-Smith's musical adaptation of the poem. It's not playing anywhere that I'm aware of, but you can get it on CD and it's greatly recommended. Not exactly easy listening, perhaps, it's intricate, dense and exuberant.

23 meme from patchworkkid:

( random stuffCollapse )

It seems my previous attempt at snowflakedom has failed, so how about this:

Name a CD you own that no-one else on your friends list does:

Boojum!, Martin and Peter Wesley-Smith's free-wheeling adaptation of 'The Hunting of the Snark'. Fabulous (I've seen it on stage too)

Name a book you own that no-one else on your friends list does:

This is probably not necessary, but I've decided to screw up my courage and venture something a bit more relevant: Crypt Orchids, by David J. Schow. Yet another great collection of stories. His third(ish) novel Bullets of Rain is also sitting around here, near the top of the ever-growing list of things to read right now.

Meanwhile, I am awake and sniffing. The second we blame on the guy we were sitting next to on the plane (the cough syrup should have been a gife-away. Strangely, I watched an ep of CSI involving cough syrup on the same flight, but we didn't get dead babies to go with it). The first might be jetlag, but since I seem to have spent a significant proportion of my life lying awake at 3:00 AM, it's probably just status quo.

Home again, home again.

Well, no actually. But we're back in my brother's flat for one night only, which is good enough for the moment.

Saw King Lear last night at S-u-A (the Globe was doing romances and the Royal Shakespeare Co was doing tragedies, so that was an easy choice), and had a nice wander around Oxford today. In a half-hearted literary tour we admired Christ Church and Merton Colleges, visited the Alice Shop were Alice Liddell used to buy sweets (you'll never guess what they sell now), and had lunch in the Eagle and Child, a 350 year old pub which happens to have hosted the most famous writing circle ever, the Inklings. Was tempted to buy Lyra's Oxford but have realised we're carrying too much stuff (and that's easily got at Galaxy regardless). In fact, we might mail some books and excess clothing home.

Considering we mailed emergency food here, 4 months ago, which still hasn't arrived, this could be considered dangerous. Also, the muesli situation is grim. But overall, things are fine.