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[alobear]

The Canterbury Tales, in two parts at the Gielgud Theatre, was great fun. They'd closed the gallery so we got upgraded to circle seats for both performance, which was great. I wasn't sure how they were going to do it, but the structure worked really well - they had most of the pilgrims interacting as a frame to the individual stories. They then took turns to tell their tale, with the other actors taking parts in the story to act it out. Chaucer himself was an excellent commentator, describing his thoughts on the pilgrims directly to the audience. They presented a good variety of tales from the selection:

The Knight's Tale - two youths fighting over the same girl
The Miller's Tale - a carpenter tricked into thinking another Flood is coming, so that his lodger can sleep with his wife while he is out of the way
The Reeve's Tale - farcical bed-swapping as two students try to outwit a miller by sleeping with his wife and daughter
The Shipman's Tale - where a merchant is tricked by a monk, who sleeps with his money-loving wife
The Prioress' Tale - Jews kill a young Christian boy, who is granted the ability to sing after death so his mother can find his body
The Priest's Tale - the one with the comedy chickens! Chanticleer the rooster is flattered by a fox and nearly killed but managed to escape
The Pardoner's Tale - three friends go on a quest to vanquish death, but end up killing each other over a pile of gold
The Friat's Tale - in which a summoner is tricked by the devil into giving up his soul after he tries to swindle a poor widow
The Wife of Bath's Tale - a knight who commits rape is given the quest of finding out what all women desire. An old crone helps him in exchange for marriage, but makes herself young and promises to be faithful after the knight gives her mastery over him
The Manciple's Tale - Apollo's wife cheats on him, his crow reports her and the god kills the crow in rage
The Clerk's Tale - Griselda's obedience is tested to the limits by her husband, who pretends to kill her children
The Merchant's Tale - in which a fast-talking young girl claims she was having sex with a servant in a tree in order to restore her old husband's sight
The Doctor's Tale - an evil judge tries to trick a noble knight into giving up his daughter but the knight kills her to spare her from shame
The Franklin's Tale - where a young man resorts to illusion and sorcery in order to trick a married woman into deserting her husband for him, but releases her from her obligation when he sees how honourable she and her husband are

In between times, the Cook started his tale but proved incomprehensible and was silenced, the Summoner gave a rebuttle to the Friar's Tale which was short and very crude and not acted out, the Squire attempted to tell a tale but couldn't remember it and got heckled into giving up, and Chaucer did a rather disturbing impression of Eminem.

By far the funniest was the Monk, who kept on trying to start his tale, even though it wasn't his turn. He said the first line several times and kept getting interrupted. Eventually, his turn arrived, he said the first line again, and the lights came up for the interval. When the play started again, he was just concluding his tale, so we missed it entirely!

All in all, it was a very eclectic show - adultery, rape, trickery, very crude humour, tragedy, epic - all different types of stories, nearly all of which were very entertaining. I was very impressed.



The Blue Man Group was very weird. In some places, I thought it was rather slow, a lot of the time the music was too loud, but overall it was very interesting and a lot of fun. The Blue Men themselves were very appealing in their painted, expressive silence, and the variety of sketches they did was largely entertaining and oftentimes very funny. They interacted brilliantly with each other and the audience.

By far the best bit was when loads of toilet rolls were unravelled from the back of the auditorium and we passed them over our heads down to the front, while music played and we were intermittently illuminated by strobe lighting. I know it sounds really weird, but it was brilliant fun!



Dave and I went to a show by Mark Thomas, which was excellent - brilliantly done and very, very funny. I then read his book - As Used On The Famous Nelson Mandella - which is also very good. Unfortunately, the show was much better than the book, and contained all the best bits from the book, so I didn't enjoy the book as much as I might have without having seen the show. It's still definitely worth a read, though - very interesting.

Comments

[lareinemisere.livejournal.com]

Mark Thomas is indeed a man much to be admired. BTW, did you guys manage to sign up for the mass lone protest? I failed dismally to get myself together in time...

[alobear.livejournal.com]

Dave mentioned it a while ago, but didn't seem clear on the details. I think it highly unlikely that he's sorted it out - and I wasn't awake enough this week to pester him about it. So, probably no.