#the admirable crichton

[chiefdirector]

It’s opening night of our touring theatre show! 🎭 tonight we’re in Milford Haven, Wales!

(p.s I designed this poster)

[picturessnatcher]

Male and Female (Cecil B. DeMille, 1919)

[do-you-know-this-play]

[hannahpaynedesigns]

I had a blast designing the official poster for ‘The Admirable Crichton’ touring theatre show!

Official university press release statement:

We’re excited to announce our 2024 studio performance of The Admirable Crichton by J.M Barrie

Directed by Chelsey Gillard and William Kingshott and produced and performed by third year BA Acting and BA Set Design and Production students.

Venue information and show dates and times listed on poster

[carolinanadeau]

[satanic-fruitcake]

Stark’s season 3 arc - an analysis by me :)

This is intended neither as a defence or scrutiny. just the observation of a guy who is - admittedly - very unwell about that freaky little man.

spoilers for season 3 of Farscape throughout‼️‼️

Ok so. his weird little crush on Aeryn. (“sensual fascination” to use the words of the writers themselves) Yeah i don’t think it’s that at all. sure he’s attracted to her, but who wouldn’t be? have you SEEN her?

No, i think it’s a lot more complicated than that. obviously it’s partly because of Zhaan’s sacrifice and him getting fixated on her because it’s all of Zhaan that’s left, but i also think it has alot to do with Zhaan’s dying wish. take care of them. i’m counting on it. and by god does he try, he tries so fucking hard but they won’t let him because they just. don’t. trust him. and the more this dawns on him this more desperate he gets in trying to prove himself. He saves them from the budong, (green eyed monster) he brings rygel back from the dead (relativity) and he saves crais. (infinite possibilities) all that’s left is Crichton and Aeryn. He can’t save Crichton. and when he passes john over, there’s… a little blink-and-you’ll-miss-it moment when he’s staring intently into the middle distance (purposefully avoiding johns face) where he gives a little nod, a meaningful glance toward Aeryn and then walks away, like he and John just came to a non-verbal understanding. Why do i get the feeling it was something along the lines of “take care of her?”

So now he’s got a little bit of Johns soul, not to mention his MEMORIES living in his head. what does John care about? Earth. Wormholes. Aeryn.

With all that in mind, i mean… is his behaviour any wonder?

Now i’m not saying this to argue that it isn’t a little creepy. it is. but i LIKE it. thats the part that comes from the darkness that resides in him. the twisted, jealous, selfish part that makes him so interesting to me. the part that resents Zhaan’s sacrifice. the part that thinks she did it for the love of Crichton. “oh poor John, he just can’t live without Aeryn. well what about me? what about what i can’t live without?”

so. he has a little adventure in voyeurism. listens in on them. watches them. as a little “fuck you” to their happiness. Zhaan died for it. isn’t he entitled to some of it? even if just from the sidelines?

his thoughts, not mine. mine are all over the place. yours?

[karasbroken]

Sometimes I think about how Larraq almost immediately recognized that Aeryn was more competent than would be expected for the lieutenant (command staff) of a new-tech regiment she was pretending to be. Ten hours in her company and this extremely experienced, extremely competent, best-of-the-best Marauder captain wanted her on his ship. And it wasn't just him thinking about how she'd hold his pulse cannon! He's into this woman, but his life depends on who he has on his five man crew, and he's ready to put his life in her hands. Based on highly honed instinct, and little more.

Strangers do it to the very end of the series, and D'Argo and Rigel both continuously dismiss Aeryn in the first season as just "infantry" as if she was low-level grunt, uneducated and limited in intellect and experience. Someone who doesn't question and without independent thought prior to her exile. Even John constantly devalues her and makes fun of her plans for being too simple and violent. Yet maybe it just seems that way because she's used to being able to mow down the enemy with a combination of small squad tactics and insane combat skills?

Maybe some of this "Aeryn as just a random soldier" framing is left over from the original casting plans for Aeryn, which was to pair Ben with an even younger, almost ingenue actress. Playing a PK who was inexperienced and naive, ready to have her universe rocked by dashing Earth astronaut John Crichton. (Enter Gilina.) Obviously cinematic magic happened by instead casting a more mature (though still younger) actress able to match Ben's force of personality. But it took a while for the scripts to fully embrace Aeryn as genuinely a commanding force, though by A Bug's Life we've clearly got there.

If you look close, we are given a lot of reasons to think that Aeryn was actually extraordinary, starting with her rank, special commando. As in, not just a normal commando, which if the word meant anything like Earth commandos, is already someone with far more skills, talent, and experience than regular infantry. It's used for elite strike forces operating in small squads behind enemy lines, just like Larraq and his unit.

Even calling her Infantry is a little weird, because she's also very clearly a pilot and a good one. There's no reason to think that all Peacekeeper infantry also have advanced pilot training or that all pilots are also taught how to fight with small and large arms as well as hand to hand. It makes sense for space commandos to be able to fly, and it probably makes sense for command staff to be cross trained on flying ships, especially a command officer assigned to fly a Leviathan with just a two man crew* which was the ruse they were trying to sell. So their plot already marked Aeryn as special, yet Larraq still thought she was being wasted there

(*That alone had to be setting off alarm bells for Larraq, but let's say he was too used to not asking questions and too eager to get the intellent virus into someone else's hands.)

Aeryn has a deep discomfort with the idea of being thought of as special, that shows up later in the flashbacks with Velorek. She's very ready to claim superiority as a matter of her race or her affiliation. But that is a pride outside herself. Aeryn rarely exhibits personal arrogance or self-admiration. It's an interesting twist that I keep coming back to in my writing that she is ambitious, deeply intelligent, very passionate, immensely physically attractive, and yet she doesn't want to admit to or claim any of it She continually dismisses her own obvious technical ability because it doesn't match her expectation of what a commando does. That's some foundational trauma there, convincing her that she had to fit in rather than stand out in her awful dystopian military hierarchy.

Yet over and over and over men in and out of the Peacekeepers find themselves drawn to her, admiring her, desiring her, fearing her, devoted to her, sometimes on the briefest of acquaintances. The radiant Aeryn Sun indeed.

[vintagestagehotties]

Hot Vintage Stage Actress Round 1

Anna Pavlova: Nikiya in La Bayadère (1901 St Petersburg); The Swan in The Dying Swan (1905 St Petersburg); Giselle in Giselle (1906 St Petersburg)

Dame Irene Vanbrugh: Lady Mary Lasenby in The Admirable Crichton (1902 West End); Grace Insole in Grace (1911 West End); Lady Gay Spanker in London Assurance (1913 West End)

Propaganda under the cut

Anna Pavlova:

with her pet swan, Jack

Irene Vanbrugh:

[doyouknowthisactor]

By "roles" I mean playing a different character, and in a different piece of media; someone playing one character across a franchise only counts as one thing for the purposes of this poll, as does playing multiple characters in one franchise/piece of media

Below are some of this actor's roles. Please only check after voting!

Farscape as John Crichton

Stargate franchise as Cameron Mitchell

Guards of the Galaxy Vol. 2 as Sovereign Admiral

Party of Five as Sam Brody

Browder is married to actor Francesca Buller

More roles

[edwardian-girl-next-door]

Hugh Thomson, illustration for The Admirable Crichton by J. M. Barrie (1902)

via gettyimages.co.uk

[scotianostra]

On 19th August 1560 the Scottish scholar and poet, James Crichton, was born.

Soldier, scholar, poet and athlete, he was a graduate of St Andrews University and a tutor of King James VI. James Crichton, known as the Admirable Crichton, was a Scottish polymath, a latin term that translates to “universal man”, basically he was good at everything!

Crichton wasnoted for his extraordinary accomplishments in languages, the arts, and sciences. One of the most gifted individuals of the 16th century, James Crichton of Clunie Perthshire, was the son of Robert Crichton of Eliok, Lord Advocate of Scotland, and Elizabeth Stewart, from whose line James could claim Royal descent.

At the age of eight Crichton’s eloquence in his native vernacular was compared with that of Demosthenes and Cicero. By fifteen he knew “perfectly” Latin, Greek, Hebrew, Arabic, and Syriac; and commanded native conversational fluency in Spanish, French, Italian, “Dutch”, Flemish, and, oh, “Sclavonian”, don’t worry I looked it up for us, it’s basically Slovenian.

That was the mere beginning of Crichton’s admirableness. He was also a champion athlete, a horseman, a fencer, a dancer, a singer of rare voice, and the master of most known wind and string instruments. His St. Andrews professor, Rutherford, a noted commentator, judged him to be one of the leading philosophers of the era.

After sucking all the available education to him in Scotland, it was only natural he should start on mainland Europe, he studied in France at the College of Navarre at the University of Paris. Here the young Scotsman cut a broad swath, though according to his jealous fellows his arenas of greatest activity were the tavernia’s and the whorehouses, rather than the lecture hall. Young Crichton did like the ladies, who in turn found him most–admirable.

He may have been liked by the ladies, but nobody likes a big heid, and that is how Crichton must have come across to many, nowadays he would have been one of the Chasers, or an Egghead on our TV screens, but back in the 16th century there were no such outlets for Crichton to show his big heid off, so he had posters printed up declaring that on a day six weeks hence, at nine in the morning, in the main hall of the College of Navarre, he intended to present himself to dispute with all comers all questions put to him regarding any subject. He had these put up on all the appropriate notice boards and church doors, before disappearing into the red light district to prepare himself for the contest. His adversaries had to quit laughing when on the appointed day Crichton appeared as advertised and bested the greatest local experts in grammar, mathematics, geometry, music, astronomy, logic, and theology.

The Crichton Show, having conquered Paris, moved next to the Italian peninsula. The young Scot performed memorable feats of academic disputation first in Rome and then in Venice. There he became fast friends with the famous scholar-printer Aldus Munitius, who is a credible witness to some of his more amazing intellectual performances. One of his ways of showing off was giving off the cuff instances of Comedic verse, a sort of Stand Up routine, but with that Crichton twist, the odes he told were in Latin!

Tradition has it on the street in Mantua one night he was accosted by four swordsmen, with superb sword play Crichton disarmed them all and forced them to show their faces. One of them, their leader indeed, turned out to be one of his pupils and prodigy, Vincenzo Gonzaga who was the son of The Duke of Mantua. Crichton was in the Duke’s employ and the youngster was jealous of the Scot, Crichton was also romantically linked to Vicenzo’s ex mistress. On seeing Vincenzo, Crichton instantly dropped to one knee and presented his sword, hilt first, to the prince, his master’s son. Vincenzo took the blade and with it stabbed Crichton cruelly through the heart, killing him instantly. James Crichton of Cluny was then in his twenty-second year.

There have been many accounts of Crichton in literature through the years since, mostly fictional but with hints of the story, the most famous is arguably the J M Barrie play, but the title of the play is the only semblance to the story of the Scottish Polymath.

[chiefdirector]

So I’m currently ASMing (Assistant Stage Manager) for a theatre show! One week of shows. We’re teaching today and tomorrow. Wish me luck!!!

[brigitttt]

📚 for the book asks, how about 27 & 47? (bon voyage!)

ahh thank you lttrs! from this ask game:

27. What was the first book you remember reading as a kid?

Okay so I only remembered vibes (sprouts? dogs?) but thankfully my mum let me know the actual book series name: Henry and Mudge by Cynthia Rylant. I thought it might have been one of my brother's books that he took home from school that I stole to read because I was 3 and a maniac, but apparently it was a gift from my grandmother. Young boy and his dog, admiring flowers in the yard, but the dog eats them instead, "causing great consternation". The lessons I learned from this book as a child is that if you pretend you are a dog illegally eating flowers then it's much more satisfying to eat your alfalfa and bean sprouts etc.

The other answer is probably something that started out being read to me until I grabbed the book and read aloud (instead of falling asleep): Swallows and Amazons by Arthur Ransome, a series from the 1930s about children's sailing adventures in the Lake District.

47. What are the last three books you read?

First is Thud! by Terry Pratchett; a re-read of a beloved story, so excellent as are all of his books. Particularly good for thinking about history, and who is telling it, and board games that connect us.

Second is Jurassic Park by Michael Crichton; of course I've seen the movie but I've never actually read the book before! And I really liked it! It has much more detail into the science and technology, such as it was at the time, than the movie ever goes into. And also a lot more people become dinosaur food.

Third is Died in the Wool by Ngaio Marsh; a classic murder mystery from 1945 Aotearoa/New Zealand about small-town personalities and also maybe wartime weapons secrets. This was an author (one of many) that my mum recommended, and I enjoyed it so much that I got another one of her books for my to-read pile. Apparently Marsh is very into the theatre, and it really comes out in some of her other books.

[sissymaidcolette]

The Admirable Crichton

[carolinanadeau]

Sally Ann Howes in costume for the The Admirable Crichton (1957).