One god awful night
My parents have always brought me up to be 'cultured' and so have taken me to the theatre from when I was little. One week my mum finds there is a greek tragedy that she studied at school on at the local theatre starring Zoe Wanamaker (The mother in My Family and the flying teacher in Harry Potter). The tickets are bought but then the day of the show my mum falls ill. Nothing serious, just a cold so my dad and I go off to watch it on our own.
The show was the most painful thing I have ever seen. Three people on stage wailing about how some guy is bad so they should kill him and the morality and the beauty of life and the...you get the idea. But the story wasnt the worst part. The second to worst part was the fact that at the end of the play one of the actors was meant to put on a white mask and have (fake) blood drip onto it. The only way they could know exactly where to be to get dripped on, apparently, was to have a constant drip of water for the entire length of the play. Drip. Lots of wailing and running about. Drip. More wailing and talk of love and beauty. Drip. Gets a bit irritating.
There was something worse though. The over-the-top acting could be forgiven. The wailing (there was a huge amount of it) was survivable. You could just about get used to the dripping. The worst part was that there was no interval so there was no way to get out before the end. No escape. No half time drink to try and ease the second half. No forgetting the second half and getting a DVD instead. Instead, an hour and a half of mind numbing bordom.
( Cocodaye Miasere likes chips and peas, Tue 4 Oct 2005, 9:24, Reply)