A Night at the Opera!

I've been fiddling with this post for a while but think there's no more I can say in it, so...
                                                                                                                                    
Last month I went to the Opera... I wish I could say I "saw an Aida, whose bust was so big it would often impede her" but I can't because I didn't. That'll have to wait until I actually do see a production of Aida, and if her bust doesn't impede her I'll be greatly disappointed. (If you don't know what I'm on about, have a watch of the film 'Beaches')

Incidentally I didn't realise how far the actual stage is from the seats, much further than a normal play, I sat down and I was in the front row even though I thought I was going to be a few rows back but I could, in fact, lean forward and see the orchestra.

Look, there they are. They were the pits(!) :D

Aaaaanyway, it was my first opera so I went to see the Welsh National Opera's production of La Traviata, one of the 'best first-time operas' (an actual opera star told me that, Joyce Didonato in fact... on twitter anyway). I've actually seen Porgy and Bess but I'm not entirely sure that that is classed as a proper opera? Okay, this was my first opera in another language. Since becoming a fan of Anna Netrebko a few years ago (admittedly, initially on a superficial level) I have tried to get into opera, and the La Traviata arias on her CD quickly became favorites. Everyone knows Sempre Libera, it's in loads of films (Priscilla Queen of the Desert for one) and brindisi - the drinking song, any song about drinking, in Italian, is going to be good.
So the orchestra started up and it actually made the hair on the back of my neck stand up, this was also my first experience of live classical music as well, honestly I could've just listened to the orchestra on their own! This being my first opera and not really having that much knowledge of the medium I can't really say anything about the musical side, although the singing sounded great to me. The three main singers - Joyce El–Khoury, Jason Howard (he's Welsh you know) and Leonardo Capalbo (apparently unrehearsed replacement) - were all, as far as I could tell, excellent! Although the two arias that I knew well (Brindisi, Sempre Libera) are in the first act I must admit that I did expect to enjoy the other acts less, to be honest I was worried I was going to be bored but the combination of comedy (gypsy & matadors scene), drama and eventual tragedy kept away boredom and secured my attention. The only other production I've had any experience of is watching a filmed production of Anna Netrebko and Ronaldo Vilazzon in a modern and sparse staging. After seeing the opera live and with full period costume and sets it is clear that that is the only way to see it! Before seeing it I was worried that I would be bored or my attention would get distracted but I definitely wasn't. I did find the surtitles a bit odd though, even though I had read the story beforehand I still relied on them for more specific views of what was going on at times.
After seeing my first opera I've now got my first opera recording on CD, admittedly my classical music collection is never going to outnumber my indie/alt/rock/jazz/pop/country CDs but at least nobody is going to say my tastes aren't eclectic! I was actually excited about my first opera CD, which annoyingly got lost in the post and took ages to arrive. I opted for a recording with Montserrat Lombard, she is the first opera singer I ever encountered even though I probably hadn't even heard of the word 'opera', I've always liked how she comes across in interviews, especially when she talks about her friendship with Freddie Mercury. I hope I do go to an opera again, even if it's just another production of La Traviata!

Bobble hats and ticket stubs!

So, who won the Grand Slam on Saturday?!... Oh yeah, we did!

So yeah, Wales won the Six Nations! (Amazeballs!) And the Daily Mail was up in arms about the drunkards, and general state of Cardiff on Saturday night... obviously they haven't seen Cardiff on a regular Saturday when there hasn't even been any rugby on! One of my mates on fbook said that all the pictures did was make him wish he had been there to watch the match, and I know just what he means. I was in Cardiff when we won in 2005, the first time since- (well I don't know when), and that was awesome!... I can't remember where I watched the 2008 win. My father never took me to the rugby when I was a kid, like you see kids with their parents at the stadium on TV. The first time I remember rugby being really big was when we hosted the World Cup in the (then) new Millennium Stadium... we even got to finish school early to watch the opening ceremony - we watched some of it in our Media Studies class, quite out of character for our headmistress because she stopped our non-uniform days for charity, because it would distract us. PAH! I got my first Welsh jersey, back then they were actually still rugby jerseys rather than the stretchy nonsense they are now, I bought it in a Tesco in Twickenham - oh, the irony! Talking about fans' jerseys, why do you never see those red and white bobble-hats that everyone seems to wear when you see footage of matches from the 70s/80s?!... I want one! You just see huge groups of people in daffodil heads, inflatable hats, or fans generally looking, well, stupid... am I getting old?! Although I thought those ridiculous head adornments were stupid ten years ago!

Anyway, my grandad used to love rugby and he also never threw out stuff like programmes and even clippings from newspapers. I think that must be where I get it from, my growing collection of programmes shows no sign of stopping. I can't throw anything away either. Then I saw this - Ticket Stub Diary, this looks awesome! I've got tickets in drawers, coat pockets, inside books and an envelope full of them; cinema tickets, theatre tickets, exhibit tickets, etc! This definitely appeals to the massive geek in me... who am I kidding, my geek side isn't hidden. Though, it may just be too geeky even for me.

...I'm off to search the internet for stripey bobble-hats and ticket stub diaries.

I bloody love 'Scrubs'

I'm sure I wrote on here that, although it's gonna be mainly theatre/arts/ents based, I'll write about whatever. It's my prerogative, it is my blog after all.

So I've been watching Scrubs again, it is possibly my favourite TV show ever! It's definitely my favourite sitcom (with Frasier coming 2nd). Even though the 2nd half of it's run it started to go slightly down hill, and I even refuse to acknowledge the 10th season where they introduced almost all new characters, it will always remind me of my 20s (even though I'm still in them!).
(Incidentally,  imagine my excitement when I heard Zach Braff's new play was doing a small tour before it was going to the West End, and imagine my disappointment, albeit inevitable, when it turned out that the "tour" of the "UK" was Edinburgh and Manchester)  :(

As well as being a hilarious comedy it has also introduced me to some awesome music and bands and also reminded of some others.

So here's a list of my 15 favourite songs featured in Scrubs (my fave TV show):

 

1. Cheap Trick - I Want You to Want Me
2. Colin Hay - Overkill
3. Leroy - Good Time
4. Billy Joel - Sometimes a Fantasy
5. The Shins - New Slang The Shins is the band that I discovered because of the show.
   
6. Cast & Jill Tracy - Waiting for My Real Life To Begin I love this song, and this version sung by the cast, it's also in my favourite overall episode.
7. Journey - Don't Stop Believing Everyone thinks Glee made Journey 'popular' again, but it didn't, Scrubs did!
8. Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers - American Girl
9. Josh Joplin Group - Camera One
10. Tammany Hall NYC - Cindy
11. Old 97s - Question
12. The Fray - How To Save A Life
13. Barenaked Ladies - If I Had A $1,000,000
14. Guided By Voices - Hold On Hope 
15. Nina Simone - Sinnerman 

Lazlo Bane - Superman No list of Scrubs songs is complete without the song used as its' theme song.

And, as well as bringing some great music to my attention, Scrubs also confirmed that Alanis Morissette is awesome!

Why I don't do comedy reviews!

Last week and the week before I went to see two famous Welsh comedians... well, one famous one and one rising comedian, Rhod Gilbert and Elis James. Rhod is famous everywhere because he is hilarious and Elis is rising in popularity due to his appearances on TV and filling in on Rhod's radio show on Radio Wales (and online) as well as his own shows.

At his Last show. I got told off when I took this even though I was taking a picture of a sign and it hadn't started... nothing had even happened! 

Anyway someone asked me on Facebook if I would write a review for their blog and I did. I also found out that comedy reviews are hard, not like plays and stuff. Hence what I wrote being a bit rubbish, here it is -

Rhod Gilbert: The Man With the Flaming Batternberg Tattoo, work in progress show

Last week was Rhod Gilbert’s charity gig at the Parc & Dare Treorchy. Firstly well done for raising over £6,000 for the Valleys Kids charity.
He was late but we didn’t really mind, even his reason for being late was funny, he apparently “just left late” and he literally went on stage straight from his car, hadn’t had anything to eat and needed a pee. He spent a few minutes on the venue and telling us why he likes playing the valleys, and the audiences (we “just take the piss” apparently), including an incident with a parking space and man in his dressing gown (and nothing else).
The material seemed familiar, as it would to anyone who watches and listens to Rhod on TV and radio - I mean who could forget that particular ‘Work Experience’ episode that this tour’s name comes from? But it wasn’t too familiar, I personally forgot about the show he was on at Christmas so the bit about his girlfriend’s present to him was fairly new. As it was a preview show he said some of it worked and some didn’t but personally couldn’t find fault with any of it, saying that though the “Toasty Jeff/travelling chef” possibly went on a tiny bit too long but was still hilarious. The whole thing was a hilarious anger-rant filled two hours leading up to the video punch-line we’ve come to expect; this one was funnier than the last. If this was just a work-in-progress the polished show should be awesome!
At the end of the gig he auctioned off a pair of tickets (£200 to the same charity) to see him in London, the audience managed to get him to pay for the travel but couldn’t get him to pay for an hotel too.

(Here's the blog it was on - http://ofthefunandthefunny.blogspot.com/)

Anyway, the Parc & Dare, my local theatre, has been properly tarted up! Which is a good thing, just wish they would start showing films there again, but they apparently make all their money from live things so that's good I suppose.

The week after I saw Elis James, he has a funny voices and he does funny accents. His support bloke was ok, though I think he stole a joke from Bill Bailey, and he looked like an "inflated Martin Clunes" (his words), I did not notice this until he said it, and he did too. Anyway Elis was good again buuuuuut he was only on for an hour and half of that was old stuff, still funny though!, and I suppose the small gigs are where comedians tune up their currant shows for the full tour, and Edinburgh festival. But what I was more disappointed about was that he didn't tell us, what I like to call, his "Grandmaster Flash is teasing me" story, which is hilarious!

HAMLET!

I actually forgot that I went to the theatre event of the year - Michael Sheen in Hamlet at the Young Vic. The last Shakespeare play I saw was Antony and Cleopatra (starring Vanessa Redgrave... I know, right!?) in 1995 when I was 10 or 11. I can't remember the last time a well know Shakespeare play with well known actors came to the New Theatre Cardiff.
They announced the big new that Sheen was to play Hamlet almost a year in advance and I bought a ticket immediately, having somewhat of a man-crush on Michael Sheen I just had to go!

So having the whole day in London ahead of  me I decided to go places, I was going to go to the building where Poirot's flat is on TV but I couldn't be bothered when it came to it, I saw the new(ish) memorial to the WWII Special Operations Executives.

I've passed The National Theatre a few times but have completely missed Laurence Olivier, how fitting that, on a trip to see a production of Hamlet, I purposely went to see this statue of Lord Larry as Hamlet. Look at him with his big sword. Anyway I went on from there to the Tintin Shop, in there I saw a famous actor who nobody else seems to have heard of, Stephen Campbell Moore. I told him he was in one of my favorite films 'Bright Young Things' and he was lovely about it, I have a bit of a man-crush on him too (maybe my subconscious is telling me something). I will reiterate - he was lovely! Also that day I had seen Dave Lamb (Come Dine with Me), Andrew Buchan and Tony the pedo from Eastenders.

Anyway, Hamlet! At the Yong Vic theatre. First off, I wasn't too sure about the setting, which seemed to be a 1970s mental home. Before the play you could go on a 'journey' (no Don't Stop Believing involved), a different way in to the theatre, where the staff stood around pretending to be hospital porters, this added to the 'mental hospital' atmosphere. Slightly creepy. I was also slightly disappointed that we didn't get to see The King's ghost, instead Hamlet becomes possessed by him, I must admit this left me feeling slightly cheated. If you weren't familiar with the play some of it wouldn't make sense, I'm not sure the ending would be clear if you were a Shakespeare expert. I think I might have preferred a more classical interpretation for my first experience of Shakespeare in 16 years! It was still brilliant, and in my opinion Shakespeare is more about the acting than anything else! Michael Sheen was excellent, as were the whole cast particularly Sally Dexter as Gertrude, but it was clearly Sheen's 'show' (possibly a bit biased as Sheen's hometown is not far from where I live!). Due to walking around all day (celeb spotting!) my eyes did get slightly tired but the use of Roy Orbison's 'Crying' for the first act climax woke me up. Although, it wasn't all so well received, there were more empty seats than I expected and the group of people next to me didn't come back after the interval - I could swear I could feel them bristling at Sheen's delivery of the "country matters" line.
I'm gutted I didn't hang around afterwards to meet the man himself but due to some inconsiderate burk trying to chuck himself under a train I might've missed my train if I'd stayed.  :-(

Filler!

Last year I also went see Verdict - Agatha Christie play, Elize du Toit can not act! Why am I surprised, she was in Hollyoaks(!)

The History Boys - Brilliant! Almost the same as the film but completely different.

The End of the Rainbow - Tracie Bennett's almost one-woman-show as Judy Garland, amazeballs! A bit too over the top with some of the comedy bits.

One of the round pretend pictures fell off in the middle of it, I found that slightly funny!

I also saw Kylie Minogue! Flippin' Kylie. Frickin awesome!