Othello review

Thanks to RSC membership from vampadvocate and f1shbang at Christmas, I finally got to share my favourite Shakespeare play with Dave last night -wonderfully innappropriate for Valentine's Day!

The production was excellent, with interesting staging, good performances and a few familiar faces dotted throughout the cast.

I studied Othello at A Level, and I found myself saying the lines I'd memorised for my exams along with the actors as they came up throughout the play.  The first half was even better than I remembered - a taut, psychological thriller, showing one man's expert manipulation of all around him, presenting himself as everyone's best friend, while really conspiring to bring them all to destruction.  The writing is superb, and Iago is fabulous.

The second half devolves into the inevitable Shakespearean melodrama - lots of running around, shouting, falling down, weeping and wailing, and interminable death scenes, but it was still good.  I love the fact that Iago doesn't slip into the temptation of monologuing at the end, and finishing on his evil laughter as he surveys the devastation all around him was very effective.

He's Just Not That Into You review

This is the kind of film that makes me feel grateful that my relationship is uncomplicated, and that my friends aren't idiots.  It was mostly about annoying people who think the wrong things are important, and who are incapable of having rational conversations with each other.  However, it did have a couple of moments that I really liked.

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When Ben told Janine that he had slept with someone else, she was willing to forgive him and work things out to make their marriage work.  I really liked the fact that it was the discovery that he was smoking and lying to her about it that made her instantly kick him out.  Her father died of lung cancer, and I thought it was great that a character had different priorities in a relationship to the standard portrayal, and that she made decisions about her marriage based on what she personally thought was important.

Beth kicked Neil out of the house at the seven-year mark of their relationship when he made it obvious that he was never going to ask her to marry him.  I loved the fact that, by the end of the film, she had realised that he really loved her and that being with him was more important than a piece of paper formally registering their commitment.  I just really wish he hadn't then proposed - the end of their story would have been so much better if they hadn't got married.