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Showing posts with label Sherman Theatre Cardiff. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Sherman Theatre Cardiff. Show all posts

Wednesday, May 20, 2020

LOCKDOWN CASTELLDEFELS - DAY 66 – Wednesday, 20th May



On the Port Ginesta side of the Paseo I noticed a police car awkwardly stopped in the middle of the road.  As I approached I saw that the police were speaking to a grandfather who had his small Viral Assassin with him, clearly out of the allotted time slot for such things.  Unfortunately, I did not see any movement on the part of the police to leave their car and give a multa to the offending adult.  Still, it was encouraging to see that they were not letting flagrant ignoring of restrictions pass.
     In fact on my bike ride this morning I saw more police cars than usual.  There were four or five on the Marine road, but none at the Gavà part of my ride, so I took advantage of the absence and added the Gavà loop to my cycle.  I felt very virtuous at the end of my ride, which is more than I can say for my bum.  I have not idea how the more dedicated cycle riders manage 50k or more.  They must either have buttocks like hardened steel or they are dyed in the wool masochists.

On a rather more elevated note, the Lyric Hammersmith is going to screen a version of A Doll’s House by Ibsen for today only.
     I was tricked into first reading Ibsen by the enticing title of his play Ghosts that I rather expected to live up to its Gothic promise.  I enjoyed reading the play, in spite of their being no ghosts of a variety that I could shiver to and I also entirely failed to pick up on the unstated, but essential component of the narrative of the play, syphilis.  Given the fact that the main plot of the play passed me by, I now wonder what it was that kept my interest!
     Ghosts is one of those plays that I have seen where different productions have given me entirely different views.  The first live production of Ghosts that I saw was played as a serious tragedy, while another that I went to see with my mother in the Sherman Theatre in Cardiff, was played as a comedy.  And both worked.
   The same thing happened with two productions of Death of a Salesman that I saw in relatively quick succession.  The first, again in The Sherman, left me feeling depressed and border suicidal, while the second in the West End left me with a happy smile on my face.  All four of the productions I should add were well produced and exceptionally well acted and I knew both plays well through academic study.
     The Lyric’s production of A Doll’s House is set in late C19th Calcutta (is it still ok to write the city like that?) and is listed as an adaptation of the text so it will be interesting to see how far the writer and director depart from the original.  But it got good reviews and this is an opportunity not to be missed.  It is only available from 2.30pm to midnight.
     I don’t know if this is true, but I was told that all West End productions lodge a ‘reference’ video of their productions with the National Theatre Museum and the videos or films are available for academic study.  Given that copies of play no longer have to be registered by law with the Lord Chamberlain’s office so that the Recorder of Plays can authorize them for public showings, it would be a criminal lack of intelligence to let the unparalleled collection of plays in Britain be wasted by not continuing some sort of archive.
     Perhaps in the future, theatres will make a video of their productions to augment their takings from on-line views.  Some Opera Houses and theatres have productions live streamed to cinemas around the world, but on-line could be (perhaps given the virus ‘must be’) one of the financial ways forward to keep, oddly, live theatre alive!
     I know that plays do not translate directly to film and a play in a theatre is altogether different from a film but, as my father was fond of saying, “anything is better than nothing” and a theatre audience, even given a long run, is in total tiny compared with a single showing on line.  Perhaps this virus will prompt a whole new generation of ‘theatre goers’ who take their pleasure on line!

The confusion, disinformation, misdirection and outright lying continue to confuse the ‘back to school’ impetus of governments in Spain and in the UK.  It does seem to me that without adequate testing and contact tracing there can be no safe way of returning to school.
     Blair did make the point that the children of the rich and privileged will have been ‘educated’ during the lockdown and the missed school for the underprivileged not only in terms of education but also in nutrition cannot and should not be ignored.  However, the solution to the problem of inequality is not to put teachers in the firing line and allow them to die.  I do realize that the ancestors of the public school boys who run the country probably had no qualms as they drew up their plans for the battles of The First World War, but one rather hoped that we had progressed somewhat during the last century!
     I do not trust the government in England to have due care and attention when it comes to restarting schools.  The politicians who run the government are in place because they subscribed to the self-harm of Brexit in spite of the overwhelming evidence that such an action would be disastrous.  We should always remember Cummings “Let them die!” as the modus operandi of the Conservatives.  “Money above lives” always has, and always will be their mantra.
     I am sure that there are ways in which schools can be opened with a liberal application of the fruits of the money tree that the Conservatives found to combat the virus – vegetation that was signally absent during the years of austerity and which made the present situation so much worse than it needed to be.  Smaller classes; more teachers; more school building; better facilities – all the things that teacher unions have been asking for, pleading for, for years!
     Let us never forget that this government has deaths on its ‘conscience’ and they must be held accountable.  I do not want to see the mortality total swollen with avoidable deaths of colleagues.

More and more people seem to be taking advantage of exercise time, especially more and more cyclists, but you get the sense that the people who are out are getting progressively freer in the way that they are treating the virus.  On the beach the construction of various kiosks has begun, though I think these are for the renting of sunbeds rather than the beach cafes that we have each summer – but they are a sign that Castelldefels is gearing up for the influx of visitors on which the town depends.
      I do not think that there is convincing evidence that the warmer weather will kill off the virus, so I really fear about what is going to happen in the future and the way that things are going and the general attitude of people a second spike in numbers of people infected buy the virus is almost unavoidable.

The free performance of A Doll’s House in the Lyric Hammersmith was very much an archive performance and lacked the polish of the NT Thursday performances, but the artistic director made the type of filmed performance clear in her introduction.  It is still very much worth watching and, at the time of writing, you have three and a half hours left to watch it for free.  You should!
     Tomorrow A Streetcar Named Desire.