Home
After a few days in Dublin with Grace- where I saw Rob Bell, got a hot towel shave, and visited the Book of Kells at Trinity University- we returned to Galway, where the girls and I took in the show Home at the Galway festival. I knew next to nothing about what we were there to see beyond what I'd read when I bought the tickets. The show's creator, which I later re-read, is an illusionist. This makes sense in hindsight as the opening several minutes of the show were a series of magic illusions in which the leading actor was replaced by other actors who would create the piece. A wooden frame with semi-transparent mylar stapled to it (shades of the Black Monk- aaaaarrgh) went up and when it was moved a bed and door frame appeared on stage. The actor laid down on the bed, covered himself with the sheet, and only to have a young girl uncover herself where he had been. Once this convention was established the main set-piece was built; a house... that would become a home. As it was put together various actors re-created the daily rhythms of a home from bedtime, to rising, showering, toileting, etc. Yes, there was full undress, in the unflinching way we undress in the privacy of our homes. This rhythm of movement built into a crescendo of life events- a dinner party, turned graduation/wedding celebration, turned into New Year's Eve with audience members (myself included) pulled onto stage and directed by the actors to continue the ongoing spectacle. I danced in the conga line, dealt cards, and did what they said. Then we witnessed a body laid out on the table like a funeral, and finally, as it wound down, watched the actors deal with moving out, or a fire, or whatever else lead to one leaving a home they have lived in. The cumulative effect of it all was moving. It did not have the same impact on my girls who have left home and have yet to truly create homes of their own. We emerged from the theater to rain and took a taxi home.
Juliet
Yared and my first night in London we took in the jukebox musical &Juliet. I entered that day's lottery for Cabaret but didn't win tickets for that. So we went to this instead. What a delight! The strength of this jukebox musical is its premise. On the opening night of Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet, the bard's wife Anne Hathaway travels from Stratford to see it. When Will reveals the double suicide of the star-crossed lovers, his wife suggests a happier ending- one in which, instead of taking her life, Juliet gets on with her life instead. This alternate ending becomes the source of a whole new play interspersed with pop hits from the past 25 years, from Backstreet Boys, Britney Spears, Katy Perry, and more. The show was pure joy, and a day later Yared talked about it as "brilliant." I don't know that I'd go quite that far, but it was REALLY entertaining. We both left with big smiles on our faces. The young woman in the lead was an understudy and she slayed. I only wonder how much better the main actress would have been.
Mockingbird
Last night we got the chance to see Aaron Sorkin's adaptation of the Harper Lee classic To Kill a Mockingbird. I tried very hard to temper my expectations. I have loved much of what Aaron Sorkin has created and was eager to see what he would do with this, especially after listening to him and Jeff Daniels talk about it on Marc Maron's podcast. The challenge is that I have a very emotional connection to the novel. I remember reading it in high school and have seen the movie a couple of times. But when Miranda was in middle school, we read it together. I understood it from a much different place and wept at the end. No, really. I can't ever remember sobbing while reading a book, but I did reading this one.
Some of the actors managed their Alabama accents better than others, but overall it worked to fine effect. The actor playing Atticus reminded me of Jason Sudekis, in a good way. His was a much different take on the energy of the character than Gregory Peck. Some portrayals are hard to get away from. That said, his courtroom scenes felt a little overplayed, but that may have been the Peck effect. He was clearly directed, or allowed to play it that large, so who can say.
What I knew from the Sorkin interview is that he shifted the focus of the story away from Scout's arc to Atticus' arc, how he was changed by the case of Tom Robinson and the attending fallout. It becomes a story less about how a child comes to see her father in a particular way, and more about how a man comes to see his neighbors in a different way and to see how treating everyone with respect can feel disrespectful to those who are harmed and threatened by those who are afforded respect. The subplot moment with Dill and Atticus was poignant, and overall I'm glad to have seen it, even if it's always hard to experience familiar stories with fresh eyes.
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