This Week's Round-Up
Feb. 13th, 2009 08:16 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
alobearNot a great selection this week.
On Monday, we went to see Complicit at The Old Vic, starring Richard Drefyuss and David Suchet. It was about a journalist facing a grand jury investigation over a book he wrote revealing what really happens to prisoners in places like Guantanamo Bay. Despite fine acting from all three actors (Elizabeth McGovern made up the three-man cast), it was pretty terrible, mainly due to some appalling writing. To say the play was heavy-handed would be overly generous. The acted scenes were interspersed with clips on overhead screens from a TV interview the journalist character had done, with the "important" words and phrases repeated for emphasis by having the film skip back over them. This was even more annoying than the ubiquitous and wholly unnecessary bold type in comic book dialogue. Also, how Richard Dreyfuss managed to get through his excruciating monologue (many repetitions of "I did a bad thing", and much weeping and wailing) without either cringing or laughing is beyond me. On the plus side, the venue was gorgeous, and David Suchet is always worth watching - just a shame the writing didn't live up to the acting ability on display.
Yesterday, I finished Oscar and Lucinda by Peter Carey. When information revealed fairly early on gave away how the story would end, I should have quite while I was ahead. Despite knowing the fates of the characters, I still found the ending frustrating, depressing and really quite horrible. Essentially, the book was about two socially inept characters, who managed to find someone they can love and who will love them in return, but who then fail spectacularly at making their feelings known and so end up destroying each other's happiness. The conceit that the narrative was somehow written by Oscar's great-grandson made everything rather remote, which meant I wasn't really emotionally invested in the characters, but it was still rather dreary stuff.
Today, I read Dr Faustus, the first set text on my OU course. It was rather shorter and less edifying than I remembered from studying it at A Level (perhaps we did the longer B text then, which may have included more intellectual material, or perhaps 16th century text seemed more difficult to me 14 years ago). Still, it was quite an enjoyable read, and I'm looking foward to looking at it in more detail when I do the relevant chapter of the course book.
On Monday, we went to see Complicit at The Old Vic, starring Richard Drefyuss and David Suchet. It was about a journalist facing a grand jury investigation over a book he wrote revealing what really happens to prisoners in places like Guantanamo Bay. Despite fine acting from all three actors (Elizabeth McGovern made up the three-man cast), it was pretty terrible, mainly due to some appalling writing. To say the play was heavy-handed would be overly generous. The acted scenes were interspersed with clips on overhead screens from a TV interview the journalist character had done, with the "important" words and phrases repeated for emphasis by having the film skip back over them. This was even more annoying than the ubiquitous and wholly unnecessary bold type in comic book dialogue. Also, how Richard Dreyfuss managed to get through his excruciating monologue (many repetitions of "I did a bad thing", and much weeping and wailing) without either cringing or laughing is beyond me. On the plus side, the venue was gorgeous, and David Suchet is always worth watching - just a shame the writing didn't live up to the acting ability on display.
Yesterday, I finished Oscar and Lucinda by Peter Carey. When information revealed fairly early on gave away how the story would end, I should have quite while I was ahead. Despite knowing the fates of the characters, I still found the ending frustrating, depressing and really quite horrible. Essentially, the book was about two socially inept characters, who managed to find someone they can love and who will love them in return, but who then fail spectacularly at making their feelings known and so end up destroying each other's happiness. The conceit that the narrative was somehow written by Oscar's great-grandson made everything rather remote, which meant I wasn't really emotionally invested in the characters, but it was still rather dreary stuff.
Today, I read Dr Faustus, the first set text on my OU course. It was rather shorter and less edifying than I remembered from studying it at A Level (perhaps we did the longer B text then, which may have included more intellectual material, or perhaps 16th century text seemed more difficult to me 14 years ago). Still, it was quite an enjoyable read, and I'm looking foward to looking at it in more detail when I do the relevant chapter of the course book.
