Moon and Muros
Apr. 12th, 2019 10:50 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
alobearThis week, I read The Moon Sister, the fifth in the Seven Sisters series by Lucinda Riley. It was 750 pages long and in hardback (I spotted it on the table in the library and just grabbed it) but I read it in five days as it was pretty quick.
I enjoyed it overall, but found it less satisfying than some of the others. The historical story was quite depressing and I wasn't keen on the main character from the past. The present-day story was more engaging and more enjoyable and I liked the characters a bit more. But the mysticism element (which has only been touched on very briefly in the other books) tipped over into total unbelievability in this one. Plus, I didn't feel as if the romance was given enough development to make it believable either. The protagonist, Tiggy, and her love interest barely spent any time together throughout the book, and in fact tried quite hard to avoid one another, so it felt very abrupt when they suddenly declared undying love.
Still, I'm going to carry on with the series, as there are only two left and I'm particularly interested in both of them.
Then, yesterday, I went to see a matinee of a play called Intra Muros at the Park Theatre near Finsbury Park. It was a short-notice, rather impulsive choice and I wondered in the first fifteen minutes if I'd made a horrible mistake, as the opening of the play made me uncomfortable in some ways. I was thinking about leaving in the interval, but then there wasn't one! And I have to say I'm rather enjoying the current trend of 1hr45min plays that just run straight through with no interval. Plus, the way this play came together was really interesting and clever. It was ostensibly about a theatre director trying to conduct a workshop in a prison, but it turned out to be much more complicated and layered than that. There were only five cast members, who took multiple roles each, and the scenes moved about in time and space very effectively, with only a few chairs and a table as props. The lighting was particularly effective and all the performances were good. So, I'm glad I went, I'm glad I stayed, and I'm impressed by the way the play was constructed.
I enjoyed it overall, but found it less satisfying than some of the others. The historical story was quite depressing and I wasn't keen on the main character from the past. The present-day story was more engaging and more enjoyable and I liked the characters a bit more. But the mysticism element (which has only been touched on very briefly in the other books) tipped over into total unbelievability in this one. Plus, I didn't feel as if the romance was given enough development to make it believable either. The protagonist, Tiggy, and her love interest barely spent any time together throughout the book, and in fact tried quite hard to avoid one another, so it felt very abrupt when they suddenly declared undying love.
Still, I'm going to carry on with the series, as there are only two left and I'm particularly interested in both of them.
Then, yesterday, I went to see a matinee of a play called Intra Muros at the Park Theatre near Finsbury Park. It was a short-notice, rather impulsive choice and I wondered in the first fifteen minutes if I'd made a horrible mistake, as the opening of the play made me uncomfortable in some ways. I was thinking about leaving in the interval, but then there wasn't one! And I have to say I'm rather enjoying the current trend of 1hr45min plays that just run straight through with no interval. Plus, the way this play came together was really interesting and clever. It was ostensibly about a theatre director trying to conduct a workshop in a prison, but it turned out to be much more complicated and layered than that. There were only five cast members, who took multiple roles each, and the scenes moved about in time and space very effectively, with only a few chairs and a table as props. The lighting was particularly effective and all the performances were good. So, I'm glad I went, I'm glad I stayed, and I'm impressed by the way the play was constructed.
