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[somuchwatersoclosetohome]

stage/fright: the last weekend pt. 1 (aka the haunted matinee)

so it has been a week since the last weekend (hur hur) of stage/fright at the wyndham's... and what better way to reminisce than joining me for my last 2 recaps!! i really need to dredge up the memories for these yeesh

sorry for the delay, i actually had to go and return to my real life this week and do some work... special thanks to @vagueeyes for being my viewing partner for this one; i actually have very little to add beyond her recaps (here, here, here)! this is only probably interesting if you're interested in how this matinee panned out a little differently... i will post the final_final_final.pdf show recap probably later today or tomorrow 😎

in general, if you are looking for actually intellectual insights or aesthetic imagery, i provide neither of these :))) i would describe myself as the saturday early evening slot - vaguely entertaining, reasonably low-brow, and more like a starter to the actual main event

i'll also take this chance to post my other recaps (❗all contain spoilers, obviously, so if you haven't seen stage/fright, go to bbc iplayer and... oh hang on, this is the wrong fucking script❗) - i didn't actually write up my first watch on 04/03 because i think i was in a state of complete shock where i, much like steve, only saw reece, but here's the rest if u are interested:

episode 2, 08/03 (and my thoughts beforehand)

episode 3, 22/03

episode 4, 28/03

episode 5, 04/04

spoilers for the FINAL STAGE/FRIGHT WYNDHAM'S MATINEE 05/04 below

le general observations

ok so i think most people know that this was the matinee where they had technical issues at the interval and so very excitingly they had to do a slightly different act 2 (more on that later)

anyway, the general vibe of this show was goooood and a good warm-up for the final evening 😊

act i

this was the first time that i noticed how steve looks at reece during their stage/fright intro, where he delivers the line about grief making you "see things that aren't there" and BAM i'm under. i had never noticed this before that they were laying the groundwork for the reece/toby story so early. nicely done pembo oppa i see u

the hostage was louis theroux!! given that i had the insane privilege of seeing sir ian mckellen as the hostage the night before, louis was...... a very different style let's say

louis did himself admit that he "is not a stage actor" and i can confirm that there was no banana eating or audience work a la sir ian. the man is beautifully awkward

he did however perform a snippet of his "viral rap" which was a THRILL (exhibit a, b, c) (@vagueeyes here is the core piece of louis theroux lore that you were missing 😂)

@vagueeyes already did a great job of recalling all louis' references during the sketch

later that weekend louis posted his top 9 of in9 on insta which made me laugh because i hope he's told reece the details of his ranking in minute detail

interval thoughts

ha, well in contrast to my previous interval thoughts, let me tell you there was A LOT more to think about

at first all was normal and then as @vagueeyes and i were seated waiting for act ii to start we were like... hmm... this feels like longer than 20 mins

then the theatre general manager (the man who in a previous episode had said to me "be careful, he'll kill you" when i had used one of the power sockets in the stalls to charge my phone hahah) came to the front with a handheld mic and apologised for the delay and that there were *~technical problems~*

looking at the company stage manager, he said that they didn't expect it to be any longer than 10 mins..... famous last words

ok so another like... 20? mins goes by so we're at like 40 mins now and various members of the crew and front of house look somewhat... perturbed

at this point i'm like oh DAYUM what if i don't get to see my second half! what if i don't get to see hugo!! what if they don't fix it before the evening show, their final show?!

i'm also lol'ing at the image presumably of reece absolutely losing it over (what we had all assumed but not had confirmed at this point) the screen having fucked up. i would have liked to have been a fly on the wall to experience this rage

the GM comes back but this time with david, the associate director for the show who then also comes on over the mic and apologises that they still haven't fixed the issue but they are going to continue with A DIFFERENT SECOND ACT that no one has ever seen before..... and the crowd goes wild

so there's another 10 mins or so before the curtains come up again and awaaaay weeee gooooo. obviously huge cheers ensue

act ii

the second act starts as usual... i wonder how the cast are feeling??

i was way more focused on seeing how hugo/reece absolutely trolls sherrie/miranda and trying to make her break when he first enters... the good morning x3 and the walk is honestly just too ridiculous, and they let that pause after he says good morning hang way longer than they used to

literally not since that ONE show i went to has hugo's song+dance got the applause it deserves??? sighs

SO the first clue of the technical issues is when goudron is describing what happened to his wife and usually there's the projection on the wall behind with a figure being whacked over the head with the shovel... none of that

and so it transpires that yes, the big projection screen that tbh plays a pretty pivotal role in act ii is nowhere to be seen 😱

it does mean that during the rehearsal section we get a lot of new funny content... marcus and vince's lines about it being 'live theatre' get hugeeeee cheers from the audience, so much so that again they do just kinda... stop and let the line hang

already covered in other recaps but then yes, we get to the line about 'bringing the screen down' to which vince is now like 'let's not!!1! they never fucking work anyway', to which again, big lols

reece i think fluffs whatever a new line was meant to be, because him and steve kinda look at each other laughing after that and reece is like, "oh is it my line?" lmao

iirc they still kept most of this script the same tho

when they clear the set to make way for the 'screen'/trepanning scene, steve is still stood on the platform as it starts moving and he stumbles and starts laughing as he nearly falls off the damn thing ahah

the entire section where the screen would be is done without - the warden still has the video cam but your eyes actually have to be on the cast rather than up at the screen now

they still have the section with abby and sherrie and the 'recording' with the camera, but again you don't 'see' what abby sees in the wings. they leant a lot more on using sound cues to make this bit scary

i also noticed that usually abby exits stage right when she goes to 'get frank at stage door', but this time she goes off stage left. i haven't worked out if that was on purpose or not yet

sherrie then still goes backstage w/ the camera, and they still do the dark figure with the bright light, but since we can't see anything it then just skips straight to the head falling. pOW

sooooo interesting how they made all of these changes in the space of the interval and just ran with it!!! kudos to the whole company it was such a fun experience as a viewer!!

i'd be v interested in a first-time viewer's take - i don't think it would have affected the experience too much if you had never seen it before, it was still spooky, but obv as a repeat viewer you realise just how much the screen and projections add to the second act

in some ways i guess it's a shame if that had been your only viewing bc you wouldn't have ever experienced the canon version, but in another way it is again the magic of live theatre that you really do never see the same show twice

in conclusion a bloody good bit of theATrE as vince might say

👻 tl;dr turns out spooky shit happens if you summon bloody belle 86 times!! don't think it's bollocks now do ya???

[woonwijken]

apparently if i dont see any of my friends for more than 4 days i start getting suicidal

[jrmilazzo]

<< Being told that the right job is out there in a field where every year the number of tenure-track positions shrinks dramatically is, I think, a little bit like being a woman character in a Jane Austen novel. Like an Austen heroine, I’ve trained hard to be the person I’m supposed to be. I couldn’t have comported myself better on the campus visit had I been holding court in a ball room. I spent countless hours planning what I would say, how I would act, what I would wear, the questions I would ask. In fact, I had been preparing for that interview for years; not only have I spent almost a decade in the pursuit of my PhD, but I’ve also spent my entire life learning how to be a woman whose intelligence doesn’t upset people. I have all the qualifications, and now someone just has to choose me. If someone at all appealing does, I’ll probably go with them, even if it means disrupting my family life or taking on further financial risks. I want, quite desperately, to leave the room I’m in for one of my own.

I seem to be grieving the job I lost like I would a person. There’s a sharpness to the grief, a tenderness, that makes me feel like I’ve lost something I might truly have loved. On the campus visit, I was bowled over by the vision of myself in that place. The romance was palpable. We all got caught up in it. They liked me as much as I liked them, and I could feel them imagining me as a colleague, mentally trying me on for size. Like Elizabeth Bennet looking out the windows of Mr. Darcy’s mansion, I could see an appealing vision of my future from the vantage point of that place. It looked like the me I wanted to become, the one I’ve been planning to be all this time.

All those years that I read and reread Pride and Prejudice, I identified, like most readers, with Elizabeth Bennett. Now, in my desperation to do the thing I’ve been single-mindedly training for, I find myself relating more to Charlotte Lucas. When you try really hard to be one thing for a very long time, you start to lose your sense of yourself as anything else. That process of winnowing yourself down into one very specific thing can leave you incredibly insecure; I somehow left graduate school less convinced of the breadth of my abilities than I was before, when I’d worked a slew of jobs successfully. I find myself eagerly applying for jobs that are far from ideal—in places where my partner will be unlikely to find work and at institutions which can’t provide job security, where I’m likely to be overworked and undervalued—because they are the best of my very limited options. Clear-eyed about the reality of her situation, understanding that the price of even conditional self-determination is either money she doesn’t have or marriage, Charlotte Lucas chooses marriage. The only true realist in the book, Charlotte knows that the chance of an unmitigated happy ending for her, or even for her prettier friends, is vanishingly small. Mr. Collins doesn’t look so bad when he really is your only option. Like so many recent commentators on the academic job market have put it, achieving any measure of security in this world would be like winning the lottery. I’ve been waiting for the neat resolution of my career romance for years now, only to recently discover, like so many other fools in love, that neatness and resolution are features of narrative that rarely make appearances in real life. As readers we all want to be Elizabeth; in life, most of us would be lucky to be Charlotte. >>

[woolhouse]

“Librarians can’t be missionaries or saviors; we’re workers under capitalism. Our need, I think, is to better recognize ourselves as such and recognize that even if we’re lucky enough to have fulfilling jobs, we’re not exempt from sustaining or passing on capitalism’s harms. To this end, librarians need to look, as de jesus incites us to do, at the ways Enlightenment values have instilled inequities in and through libraries.”

[additivebloodcurse]

When I was a little boy, I can’t remember ever consciously thinking that I wanted to be a girl. And when, as an adult, I was finally beginning to grow into a girl, I became even less certain what in my childhood had prepared me for this.

[woonwijken]

nadia looking up peter falk for no reason and saying "yum-yum" she's sooo meee

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columbo coded

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my one and only

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this picture fucks

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thinking about john waters in jackass

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sorry for doctor who posting, you see I watched it when I was 12 & thus it is part of me

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god bless oranges🍊🍊🍊🍊🍊🍊

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i found this dvd and because i was so flabbergasted, i forgot to buy it💔 I even went back but they didn't have it anymore

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I will think im so responsible and grown up and then BOOM there's a bug in my room and im scared to death so now I can't go in my room

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new layout tumblrinas