knee deep in static

So as part of my Mum’s ongoing birthday presents (started with a netbook before her birthday and shoes ON her birthday)…and because I wanted to see it anyway, we went to see Much Ado About Nothing. I don’t think I’ve laughed at a play so much in my life before. David Tennant and Catherine Tate, as Benedick and Beatrice, have the best comic timing ever and Don Pedro… Don Pedro was aces. And Claudio! And Don John! And Dogberry.

It was aces all round.

Anyway. So. We’re sitting there. Watching. Laughing. About 20-25 minutes in I feel my Mum look at me and think (yeah, it’s a thing. It’s like when I know she’s giggling like a madwoman during Mass). A moment goes past, where she decides, yeah, she’s going to ask me.

“Is that Doctor Who?”

Today I went to the matinee performance of Oedipus at the National Theatre starring Ralph Fiennes. Obviously, being entirely about the whole Oedipus Greek myth, it’s fairly grim and very heavy going.

On the other hand, it’s also really enjoyable watching the whole unfolding of the reason that Thebes is cursed and Oedipus’ journey towards discovering the truth about his origins and what all of that subsequently means. And of course, wrapping your head around the idea that his children’s mother is also their grandmother and that he is his own children’s brother…

Well. It makes for imagining an interesting looking family tree.

Ralph Fiennes was really good – the character of Oedipus seems to be a very… hard-going role to play and he really carried it off, especially the more horrified and disgusted with himself Oedipus became. Clare Higgins as Jocasta was actually made of awesome. Her distress at the memory of having her baby son taken away from her was incredible to watch and then later, her desire to deny what she didn’t want to believe was true was very believable. The chorus were really good too – their diction was spot on and I could hear every word that was being sung – nothing was lost and the effect of the discord later on really reflected the whole downturn of events well.

So yeah. It was good.