The Braineater Gazette & Clarion

Starting with notes from the two-man Macbeth since I know someone who's actually interested; more shows under the cut. These are slightly-tidied "notes to self".

Macbeth: Tim Fitzhigham and Thom Tuck, with a different guest director every day. Ahh it was so fun! I wish I’d gone a couple of times to see different directors.

In the basement of a cafe, so Fitzhigham’s kid firmly shut the door on the audience until they’d finished converting the room from cafe to venue (someone in the queue behind me said appreciatively “He has a great future in front-of-house”.)

“Two actors and one hour is arguably not enough to do Macbeth”. Tech problems at the start- no sound or light- "we did have a tech, but he refused to work with us"; (I got leaned on as T. looked for a number on the lights).
Directed by Canadian Chris Betts, as a family sitcom. Most characters got a round of applause for coming on, audience provided canned laughter. Messenger was comic postman.
Fitzhigham as Macbeth-as-Fonzie (stealing Banquo's normal leather jacket and looking quite sexy). Ross as, well, Ross from Friends. Banquo (Tuck) as idiot.
Witches distinguished mainly by height, leading to F having to pick T up for quite a long speech. Also quick burst of "I look down on her... "
(One witch was suddenly turned to Texan partway through; F started singing Duelling Banjos. T: isn't that Louisiana? F: they're pretty close together. T: No they aren't! F: I'm a fellow of the Royal Geographical Society!) Lady M falsetto. Got as far as killing the king with only minimal skipping, then went pretty much straight to "my mum had a cesarean", stab.
(They did pause for Macbeth to kill Banquo, which F was very happy to do. T played both Banquo's ghost and Lady M's ghost largely by opening his mouth and bobbing a bit.) The "is this a dagger" speech was done as the leading man's bid to be a film actor, way too intense.
“It's your line” “- it's definitely your line.”
One small character of Tuck’s was given the note of "it's the producer's kid, he can't act". F: "Typecasting"
T hadn't learnt the letter from M to Lady M, making it a bit of a problem when he was plunged into darkness. (F: "Should have learnt it" T: *flips bird*)

https://www.comedy.co.uk/fringe/2019/features/thom_tuck_macbeth_interview/

Copstick review (which Thom disparaged) https://www.scotsman.com/arts-and-culture/edinburgh-festivals/comedy-review-tim-fitzhigham-and-thom-tuck-in-macbeth-heroes-black-medicine-edinburgh-1-4977829

( ACMS, Questing Time, World of Sport, etc )

I think going to see Mark Thomas's Bravo Figaro was a much better use of my time last night than staying up and worrying about the US election; the show is amazing, (it's about Thomas's relationship with his father, and opera) and also I got to scroll through all the "Equal marriage in four states!" and "Obama takes Pennsylvania!" tweets today, instead of being stressed about the result.

Busy weekend in the Peak District. Personally I'm not sure if self-actualisation is that great an idea, but most of the people there seemed to enjoy the workshops. (I knew several of the people, they all were a good bunch to go to the pub with.)

Then zoomed off on Sunday night to see Milton Jones- ( good as ever; )

ISIHAC! Live! Eee!

( Burbling )

Pre-show audience chatter mixed with random kazooing noises is odd.

I can't afford Sky. And if I could I wouldn't get it because of the whole Murdoch Evil Empire thing, and their portfolio of channels isn't enough to my tastes to make it worth the money. But sometimes it is awfully tempting, like, say, when they do Hogfather or get Adam Long to condense the Star Wars films.
I-III
IV-VI
(As with the original, I think Empire Strikes Back is the best.)

Friday, Bradford's monthly comedy gig, Bag Of Quips (ugh), first time I'd managed to get there. ( Read more... ) Not really worth ploughing through the pissheads in the city centre at half eleven on a Friday night, though, unless it was someone amazing on. Leeds it is.

Managed to get up in time for a farmers' market on Sunday, just, and it was fun; surprised that there were no veg at all, but lots of interesting local meats (guinea fowl, rare breed beef, goat...), jams/chutneys, bread, some cheeses- well worth going. Intended to nip in to Harvey Nicks for a weeny jar of blackcurrant jam (60p), got ambushed by the sushi bar (£15), oops. (Incidentally, they've got some interesting chocolates in there).
Saturday-Sunday was the first 24 hours it hadn't rained for about a fortnight, so I sighed, and mowed the lawn and weeded and pruned, being clawed by several vicious roses- I wouldn't mind quite so much if they showed any inclination to flower at all, but they're straggly items with no decorative value who just lurk behind other things and wait their opportunity to lash out at you. *sucks scratches*.

I actually managed to finish Saturday's paper by the end of Sunday, which never happens!

Now I have my books on shelves (yay) I can do the books-read-in-a-month thing and have it make sense- I was going to leave this till tomorrow, but actually there's no way I'm gonna get through the last 150 pages of Life: an unauthorised biography tonight- I'm going to make popcorn and watch The Goblet of Fire. So this is ( What I read in April )

I'm finding there are a few odd things missing from my shelves, like, I've got all the Sayerses except Gaudy Night. Birthday list opportunity! (Not that there's usually any great problem in finding shiny stuff for people to get me. The problem is that some of them have feeble excuses like "but I can't afford that!" and "how would I get it to you, anyway?" and "does it even exist?" and "plus, I'm not convinced you would use it for good" and "I'm worried about the look in your eye now." Psssh. So anyway, books are always a useful fallback present. Gaudy Night, for example, has quite a good description of how to strangle someone and... hey, come back!)

I've managed to give myself a sore arm from pulling up $#*!! dandelions. Next weekend the Weedkiller of Doom will be employed. Also I could do with some gardening gloves that are not extremely cheap and useless- oh, the endless traumas that go to make up life.

( Comedy )

( The Goodies )

Bought a two-metre length of dowel today. (It's bound to come in handy sometime.) It was fairly amusing wandering round other shops with it, like a tour guide.
Spring! Sun! Flowers! Lovely, it is, and what better way can there be to celebrate the coming of new life than by boiling eggs? And then decorating them in a hurried, the-dye-in-the-water-didn't-take sort of way? Have also been doing much washing-up and making chocolate eggs- these two activites may be slightly connected- and burning porridge and helping shift a cupboard and talking about steam trains and buying mousetraps and engaging in many other interesting aspects of life in a country town.