The theatre. It's been a fair while since I've been. I think the last thing I saw was a performance of James and the Giant Peach (minus Joanna Lumley, plus a cockney centipede with a boot fetish), which was performed at the Sundial Theatre, which just so happens to be in my college. Now I've always loved the theatre, but I've generally orientated towards either comedies or I've been taken to pantomimes as a child, but last night changed everything.
I went to see Oedipus, a Greek tragedy which most people will know the story of (boy is abandoned, unwittingly kills father, unknowingly marries mother, bears weird mutant tomato children*, discovers the truth, gouges eyes out to prove a point), but even so, this sort of performance is THE reason why film and television will never reach the level of meaning and depth as the stage, even with all this new-fangled 3D technology.
In a bid to promote my friends' certain future careers, I strongly urge you if you can to go and see the show tonight (Wednesday 26th Jan 2011) or tomorrow (you work the date out). Hell, if you're a full-time student, it'll only cost you four hundred of your new English pence, and let me tell you that it is easily worth that, and then some.
To Alice and Alex, you've restored my faith in the performing arts, which certain people (McCallum, Calder, my office, now) had all but destroyed. Sod your ridiculous horror films made by hapless retards who don't know what an 18k light is (yeah) and get your arse down to see some proper performing. Be moved to tears by fleeting actions such as suicide or self-blinding and watch Oedipus at the Sundial Theatre tonight or tomorrow. It's in Cirencester College, performed by students who express more skill in a wobbly bottom lip than most of the filth people call 'actors' on these snazzy, new, modern programmes have in their entire repertoire of shouting "g'day, mate, I'm in Neeeeeighbours" in high pitched voices. It's not often you see a show where the chorus who have seen the show ninety-nine times before are blubbing as Oedipus holds his beloved daughters/cursed sisters for the final time now, is it?
*I wasn't joking
