Photo of the day

Memorial at Jindabyne. Photo by me.

The text says: This memorial is dedicated to the Irish men and women who worked on the construction of the Snowy Mountains Scheme.

Am I alone and unobserved

I saw Patience by Gilbert and Sullivan performed by an amateur company on Saturday. The stench of urea starts the performance with 'Twenty love-sick maidens wee'.
SFX: Phone rings. "What's that ... only one 'e' you say ... you sure ... if you insist ... well I guess it does make more sense... thank you."
That is, I mean, 'Twenty love-sick maidens we'.

There were good things in the performance and there were bad things in the performance. I particularly liked the colonel, the major and the duke.
SFX: Phone rings. "No I'm not being biased ... I know that I've met the colonel ... yes I have done shows with the major ... look they did a good job, ok?"
Ladies Angela, Saphir, Ella and Jane were also good.

But I don't understand having chorus members who don't sing. Give me feeling. Give me sound. And why aren't some of those lines sang fortissimo? I am sure the score calls for it. It is also very noticeable when on the first exit the last choir-member exits holding the tune beautifully, letting the final words and emotions cascade into the audience, when the next time the same choir-member is the fifth last to exit and the last four are not singing at all, so all you get is a muffled line of song off stage which does not convey the emotion or the story.

Costumes were nice. It is amazing how much good costumes can help, or perhaps it is amazing how distracting bad costumes can be. Saw a performance of something with horrible uniforms, it was really really distracting, especially when they were singing about pride in the uniform. And while I'm whingeing: Why do audiences in G&S shows, clap after each song? I can understand if it was a brilliant solo - but is it really needed after every song? And why are G&S lighting plots always white wash?
SFX: Phone rings. "No I don't want to buy any white king"

I feel that G&S needs military precision.
SFX: Phone rings again. "What's that ... yes I know that the saying is surgical precision ... military works better with my argument ... the male choruses are always policemen, in the navy, or dragoons ... look, can you please stop interrupting."
G&S needs military precision. Military precision with feeling. Tell the story. Let the audience hear the words, otherwise its just mush.

I like Patience, it might be one of my favorite G&S collaborations, and there were good moments in it, but unfortunately some horrid ones as well. Or perhaps I've just been spoilt, grown up with grandparents who would play an immaculate version on video when ever they could. Want to see the Mikado now.


The meaning doesn’t matter if it’s only idle chatter of a transcendental kind.
And ev’ry one will say,
As you walk your mystic way,
“If this young man expresses himself in terms too deep for me,
Why, what a very singularly deep young man this deep young man must be!”

Keating the Musical

This is not a political post. You can like Keating the Musical no matter what side of the fence you sit on, but I get a bit idealistic at the best of times…

Thanks to JR, I’ve just been exposed to ‘Keating the Musical’ which is a great story and picture of the Australian federal political scene in the ‘90s. There was great comedy with Kernot and Evan’s duet, great satire with Howard’s songs, but the part that touched me the most was Paul Keating singing ‘The Light on the Hill.’

They're counting up the votes across Australia
This time it seems the verdict is severe
Swan, McEwen, Fadden, Dickson,
Bass and Paterson and Kingston
But it's Oxley with the message, loud and clear

The Light on the Hill – From Keating the Musical

I remember watching the ’96 election, seeing 29 seats change hands from the red to blue, and hearing those words be put into Keating’s mouth, makes it so very poignant.

Also knowing where the eight electorates mentioned are and knowing the history of McEwen and Oxley, I think probably makes the song more moving for me than possibly others.

There are 150 seats in the lower house, I could name a fair few, and tell you where others are if you tell me the names, but I think that most Australians just do not know what their electorate is, yet alone the others around it.

But still I dream

That the stars will be aligning

As our fates are intertwining

Until every heart is shining with goodwill

Shining like the light on the hill,

Shining like the light on the hill.

I’ll dream of the day that 150 members can work together and not fight like spoilt children. I’ll dream of a day, when the political map of Australia is full of many colours, especially greens, reds, yellows, blues and greys. Until every heart is shining with goodwill.

You can sing a rainbow, sing a rainbow, sing a rainbow too.

I've been to the theatre

The Melbourne Fringe Festival, is a time of acting, seeing, dancing, singing. A happy time, but a bittersweet time as well, as you can never see every performance that you want to.


Testimony

The testimony of the minotaur, feels like a court case, with Matt Crosby as the minotaur pleading his case to us, the audience, as the jury. It is a story that waxes and wanes with sanity, passion, thought, feeling, hunger and pain. Matt was excellent, the ultimate story teller, swaying between these poles beautifully. Keeping us gripped the entire time. I loved the performance, would have liked to see it again, and want to see the next edition of Matt’s 101 stories.


Under Milk Wood

I had to see Under Milk Wood, as I fell in love with it when I acted in it a couple of years ago. Under Milk Wood is a play for voices, over sixty characters come alive through Dylan Thomas’s picturesque, exquisite words.

Hush, the babies are sleeping, the farmers, the fishers, the tradesmen and pensioners, cobbler, schoolteacher, postman and publican, the undertaker and the fancy woman, drunkard, dressmaker, preacher, policeman, the webfoot cocklewomen and the tidy wives.

It is a beautifully challenging piece with a cast of 17. But with a cast of one I would have thought impossible. But that is what Zoe Lodge has mastered at the Melbourne Fringe Festival. In a tiny room in the North Melbourne Town Hall we were transferred to Llareggub. It was amazing how all the characters were given their voice, easily distinguishable from each other, with conversations between multiple characters delivered superbly. It was hilarious, clever, thought provoking – I would love to see anything acted by Zoe.

And the suddenly wind-shaken wood springs awake for the second dark time this one Spring day.
- Dylan Thomas 'Under Milk Wood'

Photo of the Day

Iron statute of bird on cow, at the Daylesford Convent - Artist unknown.

If any one knows the sculptor please let me know.

Photo taken by me.

I Would Like a Fish

If I had a fish, I would call it Nero. And people would say, "Don't you mean Nemo, after the Pixar movie?" and I would reply, "No, Nero. The Roman Emperor."

Or two fish. A red fish and a blue fish.

I'm serious! I'm not trying to be funny. I would like some fish. A nice red fish like fire and another as blue as something that is very blue.

An old tumbled down castle and a laurel wreath on the floor of the tank.

A plaque that says, "So Long and Thanks for all the Fish". Some one must make plaques with that phrase... If not I think I have just started a new business... Or could I sell the idea to ThinkGeek...

Fish is one of the words in the English Language that if you write it down too many times it looks as if it is spelt incorrectly.

English Language

"English doesn't borrow from other languages. English follows other languages down dark alleys, knocks them over, and goes through their pockets for loose grammar."

Having stumbled on the above quote, and appreciating it's sentiments, I spent a couple of minutes trying to track down the original author. I found a couples of possibilities but no one who was a clear candidate. But in Wikipeadia, the fount of all knowledge, I did find a simular statement which is could have been derived from:

“The problem with defending the purity of the English language is that English is about as pure as a cribhouse whore. We don't just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary.”
- James Nicoll (1990)

I've always pictured the English language like a pirate... Stealing words from other languages... Making obsolete words walk the plank... We have such a wealth of words from all manner of locations, Ancient German, Ancient French, Latin, Hindi... And I like how we use ancient foreign words in the manner that they were used hundreds of years ago, whilst the original language no longer uses that word, and the English words used at the same time have suffered from meaning changes...

In my search I also found:

If the English language made any sense, a catastrophe would be an apostrophe with fur.
- Doug Larson

Everybody walks past a thousand story ideas every day. The good writers are the ones who see five or six of them. Most people don't see any.
- Orson Scott Card