tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-52952963367569103082024-03-14T08:37:35.889+00:00Not so wunderbarInconsequential thoughts literally as I think them, in <i>real time</i>jondrytayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07014577384156823525noreply@blogger.comBlogger110125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5295296336756910308.post-33938312528431060092020-03-18T12:30:00.000+00:002020-03-18T12:31:30.174+00:00Blind Man's Buff<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
In 2006, I was a member of the company for the Summer Festival Season at Pitlochry Festival Theatre. Later in the season, once there was no more rehearsing, a group of us got together in the studio of the local radio station, Heartland FM, and recorded a couple of radio plays I'd written.<br />
<br />
This is not high-tech stuff- it was an interview studio, not a drama one, and our attempts at sound effects and atmos are rudimentary and non-existent, respectively. And I didn't understand the editing software very well so we had to do every scene in one take!<br />
<br />
But the quality of the acting was so high, and they're sweet stories- cheerful romcoms which might make people smile in this weird time- that I thought I'd put them online. I hope they'll fill a little time in a self-isolated or quarantined day.<br />
<br />
This is the first of them- BLIND MAN'S BUFF. Written in 1999, recorded with a few rewrites in 2006. (If I had been able to see the future I probably wouldn't have called a character Alexa...) If people enjoy it I'll put up the other play, a comedy about dating and maths called BYPASSING JENNY.<br />
<br />
Here it is!<br />
<br />
<a href="https://soundcloud.com/jondrytay/blind-mans-buff?fbclid=IwAR2DniOQF4oe4lhjd7fuwsuuGMMMvOP6EF8Dsmg7hEAvYcBEh2YlWk4IlBE" target="_blank">https://soundcloud.com/jondrytay/blind-mans-buff?fbclid=IwAR2DniOQF4oe4lhjd7fuwsuuGMMMvOP6EF8Dsmg7hEAvYcBEh2YlWk4IlBE</a><br />
<br />
Cast in order of appearance:<br />
<br />
Rachel: Helen Logan<br />
Alexa: Amy Ewbank<br />
Alan: Ronnie Simon<br />
Tom: Anthony Glennon<br />
Jill: Michele Gallagher<br />
Tony: Darrell Brockis<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br /></div>
jondrytayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07014577384156823525noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5295296336756910308.post-45076226352143808682019-12-26T03:04:00.002+00:002019-12-26T03:33:34.820+00:00So Could Anyone<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-US">Let’s be clear: the last thing I want to be doing in the wee small hours as Christmas Day turns to Boxing
Day is to be writing something about a song we’re all sick of discussing. But
the alternative would be lying in bed unable to sleep as the same old thoughts rotated
through my brain with the insistence of the NYPD choir singing Galway Bay. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-US">So the upshot is, I’m sat in my sister’s
lounge, where the only light is this laptop, trying to explain yet again how
this time of year is harder than it needs to be if you happen to be a cheap
lousy faggot.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-US">Last week I was in the glassware department
of John Lewis at Brent Cross, trying to find one last Christmas present for my faggot
of a husband. I was listening to a podcast but, faggotishly enough, I don’t
have noise-cancelling headphones so I became aware of a song that was playing in store.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-US">It’s a fucking brilliant song: rackety and
festive and sad and funny and ding dong merrily on high. But it’s gradually
become a song that has made me flinch. There’s a word in it that faggots like
me- not all of us, but a good number of us- have found harder and harder to
hear, over the years.</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-US">There was a time when the word, in context, didn’t
bother me at all. I bellowed it, eight pints down, along with everyone else,
and then we all talked about how the song it’s in is the best Christmas song,
because it is. But the thing is, there have been a lot of changes in the last
thirty years or so. The thing about being a frightened minority (and we faggots
all know how that feels, even though there are other minorities worse off than
us) is that you don’t even know how oppressed you’ve been until you start being
a little less frightened, and that can take generations.</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-US">As a cheap teenage faggot in the 1980s, I
internalized the idea that being different made me worth less. I was so, so ashamed
of what I loved. As a lousy twentysomething faggot in the 90s, I welcomed the
changes to the law that made me a little less lesser. I didn’t believe in equal
marriage then, by the way: marriage was for the people who were real. I hadn’t
yet met my husband, but I sure as hell believed I wasn’t allowed him. As a scumbag thirtysomething
faggot in the 2000s, I started realizing that language had been a huge, huge
part of the narrative of shame I’d grown up with: that the fear of being called
a word, or words, had diminished me in what should have been the shiniest years
of my life. </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-US">This was round about the time the vocalist
who sang the word in the Christmas song started singing an altered lyric, by
the way, because she was a brilliant human being who saw what it meant before
most of the rest of us did. You'd think that would have been the end of it, but she died in horrible circumstances so her opinion on how words change over time became irrelevant for some reason.</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-US">And then, just the other day, I was in John
Lewis buying a Christmas present for my husband when I heard the song and I
couldn’t bear, couldn’t BEAR, that I was about to hear the word in a nice cosy
shop surrounded by hundreds of other people. I wanted to turn up my headphones and drown it out,
but a part of me thought that would be cowardly, so I came to the good old
faggoty compromise, and accepted that I have to hear a vicious slur about myself a
hundred times every Christmas, and that the little stab it gives me every
single time is something I have to deal with, because to be upset by it is
snowflakey and PC and woke and it’s just a word in a song for god’s sake and
they’re singing in character and what’s your problem with hearing that word
while you’re doing Christmas shopping, faggot?</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-US">(That ‘it’s a character’ defence, by the
way: what a doozy. I’ve been in quite a lot of plays and played quite a lot of
characters. They say all kinds of stuff. I’m going to write a Christmas
classic where a ‘character’ sings ‘<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">I have
cancer/ It’s terminal/ I will probably die in agony/ During the Nine Lessons
And Carols’</i> and if anyone finds it less than festive I will say
‘Unfortunately that is what the *character* in my lovely Christmas song is
thinking and of course you should put it in your TV ad/department store/sitcom because DUUUH CHARACTER
DUUUH’.)</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-US">So tonight- Christmas night, ffs- some of
my family (which includes two faggots) watched the ‘Gavin and Stacey’ Christmas
special. The Christmas special of the beloved sitcom, on BBC1, on Christmas
Day, that decided to include the song, and the word, in a way that dared anyone
to have a problem with it. ‘It’s a song! It’s a word!’ they winked as the
character whose probable gay past has been a running joke for nearly a decade
sang ‘faggot’ to families everywhere. It’s funny because he hates himself!</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-US">They definitely knew. All of them. When
they decided to put it in a scene, they knew. When the producers received the
script. When they shot it and edited it. When they trailed it and broadcast it
and tweeted about how proud they were of their show. They all knew that they
had decided to address the fact that some faggots feel their shoulders tense up
when that song starts to play: that we instantly start the internal debate over
whether we’re allowed to be upset, that our hearts beat a little faster and we
get a stab of anxiety. That every year, the season of peace and love and goodwill
to all men yells a word at us that is formed entirely of hate, and we have to
be good sports and claim not to be bothered. They knew that, and the message
they decided to send to us was ‘suck it up, faggots’. To put it mildly, that
doesn’t feel like punching up.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-US">Of course it didn’t make things instantly,
materially worse for queer people. It was just a moment in a sitcom. But I can
promise you that a lot of queer people had a moment of sadness. Of otherness. A
lot of us were reminded that we exist in your world for as long as you permit
us, and if you ever changed your mind there wouldn’t be enough of us to make it
a fair fight. History kind of bears us faggots out on that one. That's a sad thing to be reminded of on Christmas Day.</span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-US">(In fairness, some queer people
instantly took to their social media to say how unbothered they are, and that they
wanted to distance themselves from anyone who has a problem with the song or
with the sitcom. To those people I would like to say that nobody would EVER know
and it is TOTALLY fine to LIKE being MASCULINE because god knows you wouldn’t
want to be one of THEM. Btw and fyi boys: the people who hate the queens hate you just as
much. Unfair, right? Soz).</span></span>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-US">The rest of us, though: we’re tired. And
sad. And increasingly scared. And if- like Shane McGowan, or Rob Brydon, or
James Corden, or Ruth Jones- you’ve never been called a faggot (or any of the
other words for difference) by someone who knew it to be true and wanted to do
you harm, then you don’t get to tell us that our sadness and our fear aren’t
valid.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-US">Happy Christmas, that word in that song. I
pray god it’s your last.</span></span></div>
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jondrytayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07014577384156823525noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5295296336756910308.post-51103660156088000292016-10-07T01:59:00.001+01:002016-10-07T02:15:19.114+01:00National Poetry Day 2016<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">At first you don't notice.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">With a toddler's confidence </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">You are the world.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">And even when it creeps in,</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">When you're six or seven</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">And you say or do something</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Which is right and normal</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">But which makes other people</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Do a face</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">You still don't fully get it.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">When you clock it</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">When it hits you</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">You're in or near adolescence</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Which is not ideal.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">You have all the other stuff,</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">The clusterfuck of hormones</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">To deal with.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">So when you're eighteen,</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Twenty, twenty five,</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">That's when you rationalise.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">You try out words </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">To see how they sound in your mouth.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">You say 'I am this'</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">And hope you're not.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Past forty</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">You get bullish</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">And proud, and angry</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">And you look at the child you were</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">And honour his fear</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">And his pain and his bravery</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">And you say to him</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Don't worry.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">And you thank him</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">For doing everything you needed to do</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">For being scared</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">But not scared enough</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">And letting you</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">In your middle age</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Say with pride and scars</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">'I am different.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">I am just as different as anyone else.' </span></div>
jondrytayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07014577384156823525noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5295296336756910308.post-15812269693714827312015-08-23T12:08:00.001+01:002015-08-23T12:08:04.442+01:00"Day 106..."<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Celebrity Big Brother is about to start on Channel 5, and the ads for
it have made me suddenly realize what it is the Labour Party leadership
elections are reminding me of. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"> They’re housemates.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"> Liz
Kendall is the one whose VT makes you want to hate her. The things she
says have you so riled up that you’re ready to pick apart every word
she says. But as it turns out, she’s not in the edit much, and when she
does show up she seems more likeable than you expected. You still don’t
warm to her, but you grudgingly accept she’s probably not as bad as you
thought.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"> Jeremy Corbyn is the one who is nominated by the other
housemates every week. They notice that the public keeps voting for him,
but can’t process why. Every eviction night they expect him to go then
wonder why he hasn’t. His popularity makes them angry with the public
but they have to stop themselves saying so. Occasionally he'll say
something that makes you think 'wait, what?' which will be used as the
basis of a whole episode if nothing much else happened that day.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">
Andy Burnham is the one who sees himself as the alpha male of the house.
He’ll say what seems reasonable to whoever is in front of him, and
will bank on people not noticing the inconsistency. His schtick is the
'hey, I'm just a normal guy' thing, but he gets worryingly furious if
someone implies he isn't best human. The Andy Burnham housemate in your
average series of BB gets to the final, but comes sixth.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"> Yvette
Cooper is the one who relies on keeping quiet and hoping the other
housemates are unpopular enough for her to sneak a win. She’s the one
who stands up for herself over an argument about washing up in week 7,
then constantly refers back to that conversation when people accuse her
of fence-sitting. She’s never up for eviction, and leaves the house to
neither boos nor cheers. </span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"> Who wins? You decide. Unless you’ve ever tweeted something positive about the Greens.</span></div>
jondrytayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07014577384156823525noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5295296336756910308.post-54961218094616509262015-06-24T20:28:00.001+01:002015-06-25T01:04:25.214+01:002015 BC<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"> <a href="https://www.pinknews.co.uk/2015/06/24/londons-iconic-gay-pub-the-black-cap-to-be-converted-into-a-cafe/" target="_blank">https://www.pinknews.co.uk/2015/06/24/londons-iconic-gay-pub-the-black-cap-to-be-converted-into-a-cafe/</a></span><br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">It seems oddly appropriate that the Black Cap is to become a
branch of the Breakfast Club. To take somewhere which has been
badly-behaved for fifty years, while at the same time providing a haven
for society's rejected, and to turn it into somewhere where you can get
French Toast for nine quid on the way to work strikes me as a perfect
symbol for what is happening to London. </span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">I've nothing against the Breakfast Club, in particular- I've had some nice food in various of their branches. Actually, I do have one thing in particular against them, which is the disingenuous, poor-little-us-are-we-the-baddies? narrative they're trying to pass off onto us, but that's just a symptom of something larger, and tidier, and more cosily antiseptic. </span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"> One day everything will be rag-rubbed, and we will all sit on upcycled pine, and read menus that <span class="text_exposed_show">pretend
to be your friend and chalkboards with quirky little aphorisms on them,
and nobody will remember that London used to be a place where the
genteel could be genteel if they wanted, but where there was also space
to be dirty or edgy or dangerous or unconventional or- in the most
inclusive sense of the word- just a bit queer. Where you could go to
places whose primary function wasn't just to chummily relieve you of as much
cash as possible.</span></span><br />
<br />
<div class="text_exposed_show">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"> And
we'll sit there, and wonder what happened to the chaotic, exciting city we used to live in where not everyone was a millionaire, and how everything got so boring and so
identically soulless, and how they managed to make that dinky little
sprig of parsley sit so perfectly on top of our goat's curd and chorizo
scrambled egg.</span></div>
</div>
jondrytayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07014577384156823525noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5295296336756910308.post-6458604312507384112014-09-24T00:28:00.000+01:002014-09-24T03:19:02.357+01:00Word Association.<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
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</style><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: large;"><span lang="EN-US">Let’s play a game. I’ll say a word, you say
the first one that comes into your head. Ok?</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: large;">
</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: large;">
</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: large;"><span lang="EN-US">Here goes.</span></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: large;">
</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: large;">
</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: large;"><span lang="EN-US">‘Immigration’.</span></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: large;">
</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: large;">
</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: large;"><span lang="EN-US">If you’re the journalist Allison Pearson,
more than one word comes into your head. When Allison Pearson hears the word ‘Immigration’,
she thinks ‘the abuse of children in Rotherham’.</span></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: large;">
</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: large;">
</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: large;"><span lang="EN-US">Presumably, when someone says ‘Gloucestershire’,
she thinks ‘Fred West’. If someone says ‘Happiness’ around AP, she hears ‘That
Todd Solondz film about paedos’. If you say ‘Love’, she probably gets an image
of Kurt Cobain shooting himself.</span></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: large;">
</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: large;">
</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: large;"><span lang="EN-US">I say this, because Pearson has tweeted her
anger that Ed Milliband didn’t mention immigration in today’s speech. And the
reason she's angry he didn't mention immigration is Rotherham. </span></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: large;">
</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: large;">
</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: large;"><span lang="EN-US">How does a brain do that? How does somebody
move seamlessly from the vexed, complex, vital issues of nationhood, borders, asylum,
diversity and culture into a crime perpetrated by a group of sick men? How does someone hear ‘foreigner’ and go straight to ‘rapist’?</span></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: large;">
</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: large;">
</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: large;"><span lang="EN-US">What happened in Rotherham is disgusting,
troubling and upsetting. Evil men did evil things and chances to stop them were
missed time and time again. Questions must be asked and blame must be
apportioned- particularly, in this case, to the Labour council which screwed
up. </span></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: large;">
</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: large;">
</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: large;"><span lang="EN-US">I am sad to say that I am no massive
supporter of the Labour Party. I’d like to be, but they make it so
bloody difficult. I will vote for them, but
holding my nose and thinking 'least worst'. I condemn the failures of Rotherham Council in
the strongest possible terms.</span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: large;"><span lang="EN-US">Rotherham means that questions have to be answered about criminal justice. About policing. About social work. About local authorities. All of those things spring to mind when one reads about what happened because even though to cite some of them may be a little broad-brush and generalised, they all have a major part to play in the case. </span></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: large;">
</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: large;">
</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: large;"><span lang="EN-US">But, you know what? W</span></span><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: large;"><span lang="EN-US">hen
I hear about something a few hundred people did, I don't assume that
they're identical to another few hundred thousand. When I hear that some
people who committed a crime shared a cultural identity, I don't assume
that everyone of that cultural identity behaves the same way. </span></span><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: large;"><span lang="EN-US"> </span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: large;"><span lang="EN-US">And as a result, Rotherham isn't the first thing I think of when I hear the word ‘immigration’,
or even- especially- the first thing I think of when I hear a speech in which immigration isn't
mentioned. </span></span><br />
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: large;"><span lang="EN-US"> </span></span></div>
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: large;">
</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: large;"><span lang="EN-US">To do that, you’d have to be a massive…
well, you know the word. And anyone who really cared about the awful things
that happened to those poor young women would hate the idea of using them to
make a cheap party political point.</span></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: large;">
</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: large;">
</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: large;"><span lang="EN-US">I expect Allison Pearson isn’t a… well, you
know the word. But she is undoubtedly a cynical opportunist who is happy to
appeal to people who are.</span></span></div>
</div>
jondrytayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07014577384156823525noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5295296336756910308.post-45011348019268134002014-09-12T03:34:00.000+01:002014-09-12T04:03:21.691+01:00Tinfoil hat. But then he would say that, wouldn't he?<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">(Note: this blog post has been tested by an independent adjudicator- well, me- and found to be totally neutral. By me. Suck it.)</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">So. The whole indyref thing. Isn't it awful how the BBC is totally pro-union and constantly pushing a pro-union message?</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Also, isn't it awful that the BBC is totally pushing the Yes agenda and giving far too much time to that awful Salmond fella?</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">We've been here before, of course. Gaza is the most obvious, recent, painful example. Anyone who spends any time with any social media will know that the BBC led with a hideously pro-Israel, anti-semitic, Palestine-friendly, Zionist agenda.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">There's no more telling example of confirmation bias than a nicely divisive issue. It's very, very easy to see someone one doesn't like on the news and fall into the trap of thinking 'LOOK! LOOK! THEY'RE PUSHING THE THING I HATE!' And once you've seen it, it's pretty easy to believe it.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Here are some things I know about the way the BBC works. I've been involved with providing drama and LE content to the BBC, so I have a take on the organisation as a whole, but from an outside (and generally a frustrated) perspective. On the other hand, someone who has been one of my best friends for twenty years is a Producer for BBC News. And I know a wee bit about Ofcom, owing to a combination of the above.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Firstly: Compliance is king, emperor, deity. You try putting out some content of any kind, it's going to be vetted on a lot of different levels. This is where any kind of agenda gets flagged, flayed, and put down with a lethal injection.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Secondly: In stark paradox to the above, people who DO have an agenda are nonetheless given the chance loudly to express it. This is why the Farages, the Hopkinses, the Phillipses get a platform on the BBC to shout about how they don't get a platform on the BBC. When did you last hear ITN or Sky run a report about something shitty that had happened on ITN or Sky? Clue: you didn't, ever. </span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Thirdly: The neutrality which the BBC must maintain causes a kind of sibling syndrome: tougher on the 'loved ones' than on the 'enemy'. The Telegraphy, Colonelly people who bang on about the left-wing bias of the Beeb are largely right, in a way, because- surprise!- the people who choose to live in big diverse cities and work for a publicly-funded broadcaster tend to be of the left. That's WHY we keep getting, for example, the lunatic fringe of Christian Voice invited to talk about, say, abortion, or homosexuality. It's why we have to have someone like Toby Young on every time an actual scientist talks about climate change. For balance. Or, if you will, 'balance'.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Fourthly: There's regulations. Let's use, as an example, the nasty little fuckers at UKIP. Thing is, at the last-but-one EU elections, they came fourth in the public vote. What that meant, under regulations we'd all largely be in favour of in principle, is that they HAD to have a percentage of the airtime for the most recent EU elections. In which they did significantly better, so they have to have MORE airtime at the next EU elections and so... but you get the idea. Vicious circle. Question: did that initial rise in their votes, the rise that triggered the Ofcom regs, come from the BBC or the tabs? You decide. (PS: it was the tabs)</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Look, I'm not a wild-eyed, naive, Beeb-lover. God knows, anyone who tries to work for them as a freelance, or as a representative of an independent provider, is unlikely ever to say 'bbc' without saying 'the pissing sodding fucking...' first. There are mistakes made all the time in the reporting of sensitive issues. That has happened with the kippers, and with Gaza, and with issues of race and gender and pretty much anything that people care about enough to invest with a news story. </span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Barely a day goes by without a march or protest that people think should have been reported, and they're probably right. Because, of course, the people who decide what goes on the news- being fallible- make mistakes. One of the triggers for this post was a news report about the referendum to which my friend Kate drew my attention; a horrible, patronising report of a shortbready, tartanny, white Scotland where people sit in pubs reciting Burns to haggises. That kind of thing is, unquestionably, a fuckup.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">But a fuckup is all it is. One of the great things about being British is that we have no need to hold on to conspiracy theories, because those who seek to subjugate us are so sodding incompetent that we inevitably find out about it. Our national broadcasting corporation has its incompetent moments too, but if you think it's pushing an agenda- for left or right, union or independence, Israel or Palestine, Beyonce or Jay-Z, or whatever- you should probably try projecting a little less. </span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">No. I'll go further. If you think the BBC pushes an agenda, you're a dick. You can go ahead and cry foul, but you *will* be being a dick as you do so. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Unless, of course, you'd rather our only broadcasters and news sources were paid-for, commercial ones. Good luck with that.</span><br />
<br /></div>
jondrytayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07014577384156823525noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5295296336756910308.post-4407010546635097712014-06-24T02:50:00.000+01:002014-06-24T16:31:35.718+01:00Inevitably...<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-US">I put finger to keyboard reluctantly. I
never wanted to be a predictable person, and given that my blog has ended up
being mainly about opera or The Gayz, the fact that I find myself tapping away
on a subject that links the two makes me feel terribly boring. But there’s
important stuff going on here, and it’s getting harder and harder to work out
who are the goodies and who are the baddies, so I’m going to go ahead and big
fat do it anyway.</span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-US">And also: sometimes I write about football,
too, so actually I’m rounded and actually YOU are the boring one. In your
face.</span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">
</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-US">So. Tamar Iveri. A year ago, a post
appeared on her facebook page in which she criticized the President of Georgia
for condemning violence against a gay rights march. So far, so </span></span><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-US"><span class="_5yl5" data-reactid=".2t.$mid=11403598190633=2fe9f92c71d9c238091.2:0.0.0.0.0"><span class="null">labyrinthine</span></span>, I
know. To simplify: march happened, violence was done on marchers, president
condemned violence, Iveri’s FB criticized President for condemning violence.
She talked of ‘Pure Georgian blood’, and said that ‘sometimes it’s good to
break some jaws’ and went on to talk about homosexuality in terms that were
worryingly obsessed with excrement.</span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-US">(Sidebar in the neutral, facty bit of this
post: I think this is being lost in all the discussion. The president said
‘Hey, let’s not beat up the gays’ and Iveri's post, at length, said ‘No. NO. We SHOULD
beat up the gays’. Let’s bear that in mind.)</span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-US">Anyway, that all happened in 2013, and as
we all know in 2013 we were all still wearing flares and talking about Ceylon.
I mean, it’s an unimaginably long time ago.</span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-US">So, way back when, some people objected to
Iveri’s FB post and it was deleted. She sort of apologised, a bit, and then
didn’t do a concert in Paris she had been scheduled for, and it all went away.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-US">Until now. Iveri was cast at Opera
Australia as Desdemona, in Verdi’s opera OTELLO, based on Shakespeare’s play in
which, as you will remember, neither hate nor words are remotely dangerous.
Somehow, her FB post was dredged up, and what is now being called a ‘social
media campaign’ was launched to suggest to OA that she might not be everyone’s
favourite colleague, or the darling of every audience member.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-US">It gets murky from here on in. People don’t
look very nice.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-US">Iveri doesn’t look very nice, because on top of everything else it
would appear she lied. Once it became apparent that this wasn’t all going to go
away, she came up with another FB post claiming that the butler did it. Her
husband, she claimed, had written the offending post, because he is a fervent
Christian and the gay march had been scheduled on the same day as a march
commemorating Georgia’s war dead and a friend of theirs had died and he was
angry and we were never at war with Eastasia.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-US">(For information, again: the gay rights
march and the memorial march were not on the same day, and it took a year for
her to say that her husband had written the post, and he has his own facebook
page, and why is any of this relevant to incitement to violence, which is a
crime, anyway?)</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-US">What happened next was that Opera Australia
equivocated, and got people angrier and angrier by their refusal to condemn what,
in most any other profession, would be counted as gross misconduct.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>You don’t, in any job, go on record saying
that some of your colleagues are faeces and cancer and need their jaws broken
without expecting at the very least a slap on the wrist from HR. If OA had acted immediately, I suspect this shitstorm would have been less shitty (simile: courtesy the Tamar Iveri School Of Scatology).</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-US">Inevitably, finally, Iveri was fired. She made one
final FB post where she- and this is where the word ‘disingenuous’ is stretched
to its utmost limit- claimed that she had only opposed the march because she
was worried that people might get hurt. Ho ha hum.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-US">But, if you can believe it, that’s where it
got nastier. That’s where people, on all sides of the political spectrum, took
a horrible story and made it worse. I can’t really bear to spell it all out, so
I’ll opt for bullet points from now on.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-US"><b> 1: People started worrying that she was the victim of a 'witch hunt'</b></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-US">I can deal with this quite quickly, can’t
I? No she wasn’t. This isn’t an issue of freedom of expression. This is someone
who condoned- encouraged- violence against fellow humans just because they weren’t wired the
way she was.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We don’t even need to do
the racism test, where you replace ‘gay’ with ‘black’. If she worked for a PR
firm or a bank or a shop or anywhere other than the nervously liberal arts, she
would have been out of the door so fast her head would’ve spun. And you don’t
need me to tell you that freedom of speech doesn’t mean freedom from
consequences, right?</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-US"><b> 2: People started going on
Iveri’s and OA’s Facebook pages and having misogynist rants</b></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-US">This is where the double-nasty comes in.
Iveri is certainly a bigot, and maybe a fascist. What she isn’t, or not
acceptably at any rate, is a bitch or a cunt or a whore. I can understand why
people wanted to vent against her, but so many of them got it dead wrong. The
correct response to OA’s decision to fire her was silence. Job done, bigot sent
home to have a think. I can’t remember a better example of moral defeat
snatched from the jaws of victory. Anyone who posted anything abusive about
Iveri which was based on anything other than her opinions- here’s a slow
handclap. You have given useful, quotable ammo to the very people who ought to
have none. And yes, I think she should go to a teacher to work on her higher notes, which have a tendency to go flat, but that is NOT RELEVANT HERE.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-US">Which leads to:</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-US"><b> 3: People started using the abuse
Iveri received as a kind of defence for her actions</b></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-US">This is where I sort of want to give up and
blast humanity into space (or, to coin a phrase, to break its jaw). The fact
that some idiot misogynists called Iveri a bitch DOES NOT retroactively make
her a martyr. The fact that she lost her job should be treated on its own, as a
closed book. The fact that some woman-hating trolls did their woman-hating
troll thing is a MUCH bigger problem. Prominent women are called the names
Tamar Iveri was called every day, time and time again, on the internet. Most of
them haven’t angrily defended the physical injury of other humans. If you want to get angry about what was said to her, be my guest. You should. Just don't make her your poster girl.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-US"><b>4: But - AAARGH- those people above are sort
of right.</b></span></span></div>
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</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-US">That’s where it’s all ultimately
depressing. There’s that old, self hating thing that members of minorities
can’t help but think: ‘Oh dear, if we get angry about this bigot saying his
bigot thing then he’ll hate us all the more’. And there’s no point in that. For
all her ‘gay friends’- and I suspect she’ll have met a few of us, apparently we
crop up here and there in opera-<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Tamar
Iveri isn’t going to have her mind changed if we shut up nicely and let her
express her desire to see us in casualty without repercussions. I have no interest in keeping schtumm
so as not to confirm haters in their hatery.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>It was absolutely worth speaking up and standing up for ourselves.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-US">But, at the same time. You people who
jumped in to call her every name under the sun. You people who allowed her to
look like a victim. You people who used the hate speech men have used against
women for centuries and thought you were striking a blow against bigotry: you
silly fucking cunts (so to speak). All you have done is taken someone who was unequivocally
in the wrong, and given her the chance to look as if she was a little bit in the
right.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-US"><b>Conclusion</b></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-US">I couldn’t do bullet points without a
conclusion: it would be a sin against GCSE Science. So let’s try this one.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-US">Online misogyny is a massive problem, and
one which is much bigger than the Iveri affair. Let’s not mix up the two: let’s robustly condemn the people who spaffed their anger all over the internet,
and let’s treat that as a problem which has nothing, in the end, to do with a
woman who quite rightly lost a gig.</span></span></div>
</div>
jondrytayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07014577384156823525noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5295296336756910308.post-71721122847385855952014-05-17T03:55:00.001+01:002014-05-17T11:15:25.756+01:00Open Letter<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhic1D1_KIVZ6-VTpHC1X128_y5r5kLJPD3IixHOIfT9CiLsFAEG3Mr8NdHoBmEvANK9Wt2-kUCr3B5pLFvKSD-2ORZcvrCiAaidI7gLDHWoik1BzDM8vB1biYWYnpcSM94MitTgeKwMz_j/s1600/Screen+Shot+2014-05-17+at+03.48.03.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhic1D1_KIVZ6-VTpHC1X128_y5r5kLJPD3IixHOIfT9CiLsFAEG3Mr8NdHoBmEvANK9Wt2-kUCr3B5pLFvKSD-2ORZcvrCiAaidI7gLDHWoik1BzDM8vB1biYWYnpcSM94MitTgeKwMz_j/s1600/Screen+Shot+2014-05-17+at+03.48.03.png" height="107" width="320" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-US">Dear John Lyndon Sullivan,</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-US">Hello! I’m one of those whatevers you’ve
read about. I hope it’s not presumptuous of me to assume that you don’t really
know any of us- I just get the feeling you might not. If you’re still
determined to be a politician you may end up pretending that some of your best
friends are etc etc etc, of course, and without doubt you’ll have met some of
us. Maybe you had an unmarried uncle who was quite gentle and fond of baking.
Think back.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-US">Anyway, I’m writing to take you up on your
kind offer to shoot one of us, so that the other 99 (you may need to re-check
your statistics) change their minds over whether the whole gay thing is a
matter of genetics or education. I’m happy to be your guinea pig in this
fascinating social experiment.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-US">I’m guessing you’d be shooting me in the
shoulder or the leg, rather than somewhere actually fatal; for elected
(or even non-elected) representatives actually to murder fellow citizens who are innocent of any
crime is frowned upon in our namby-pamby liberal society. But even so, it’ll
send out a powerful message. If we can get a date, time and location fixed,
I’ll try and get as many ‘poofters’ as I can to come and watch you prove your
point.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-US">A couple of things you need to know:
firstly, I won’t back down. You may have run away with the idea that we’re a
sissy, physically cowardly lot. You might assume that I’d turn up, pretend to
be ready to take a shot, and then run off and write a musical or press flowers
or something. But just think- if I did that, your hypothesis wouldn’t be
properly tested! I am committed to this project, and although being shot will
doubtless sting a bit, I can’t wait to find if it actually works the way you
suggest. The idea of standing there, bleeding from a flesh wound, while so many
of my friends instantly demarry, fall out of love with their partners, or just
plain stop fancying each other is too fascinating to pass up. And besides, you
might be surprised. We’re quite hardy, as a bunch. Some of the things we do to
each other <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">for pleasure</i> can be really bloody painful.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-US">Another thing to bear in mind is that you’d
be pretty well disposed towards me, if the rest of your party is anything to go
by. I’m white, I speak nicely, I pay my taxes, and I’ve never been caught being
Romanian. Admittedly, your party also doesn’t want me to get married to a man
(and if I saw the error of my ways and got married to a woman, it wouldn’t want
her to get any maternity pay should she try and bring forth some more white,
nicely-spoken non-Romanians). But once I’m shot, your party will have no
worries about me getting free medical treatment. That’s why I’m perfect for
your experiment- if you found yourself shooting, say, a Frenchman, <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>on English soil you’d object to your tax money
going towards stopping him from dying. But you can shoot me without any such
worries. At least for now; if you shot me in a world where your party were in
government and had privatized the NHS, you might have a few worries about
whether I could afford to have someone pop a plaster on it.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-US">You should also remember that you will get
arrested and probably imprisoned. Your party is a big fan of the rule of law,
after all, and we can’t have people shooting each other on the street and
getting away with it, even in the name of science. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The law seems to
be less important when it comes to corporations, admittedly, but I’ve yet to
hear any of your colleagues argue for the total deregulation of, say, theft, or
mugging. Well, it’s different, isn’t it?</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-US">The last thing I’d like gently to
mention is the 1980s. It was in that decade that the whatevers faced up to
something a little more dangerous than a wannabe councillor with a shotgun.
Millions of us, worldwide, died, and hundreds of thousands of others continue both to
die from and to live with a disease which threatened our community more than
any law ever had. You may have heard about it- it’s not unique to us, it can
happen to anyone, even straight white men. It’s laying waste to the third world
even now, with no distinctions of sexual orientation, belief or lifestyle
(although you may not be hugely informed about the third world because, you
know, kipper and all). Anyway, even when that terrible, desperate nightmare
stalked us, even when it briefly looked like it was stalking ONLY us, we didn’t
change our minds or our orientations. Quite the opposite. We wrote and we sang
and we fought and we protested and above all we loved. We loved, and we carry
on loving, and we always will.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-US">So I look forward to the results of your
fascinating experiment. My shoulder, your gun, your call.</span></span></div>
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</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-US">And once you pull the trigger, you wait and
see how the ‘next 99’ react. You might just get a surprise.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-US">Yours, in your sights,</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-US">Jon </span></span></div>
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jondrytayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07014577384156823525noreply@blogger.com107tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5295296336756910308.post-82476706192339291512014-04-17T10:32:00.000+01:002014-04-17T11:03:41.094+01:00Fever Bitching.<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-US">To get to Clockhouse Way, home of Braintree
Town Football Club, from London involves eighty minutes on a commuter train
followed by a brisk fifteen-minute walk through Anytown, UK. You pass a pub
called ‘The Pub’ which will sell you a Bellybuster Breakfast from 7am, and
whose attached nightclub ‘Jardins’ is both available for private hire and the
venue for Aeropump classes. Further along is another pub, called THE SPORT MAN (I
think an ‘S’ has been liberated from the sign somewhere along the way) which
proudly boasts that it is ‘Open from 10am-12pm', a brave two-hour window to be
trading in. The ground itself is pleasingly non-league. There are rusty turnstiles,
and dusty terraces, and a timewarp of a bar/social club with That Carpet. In the way of non-league
football, there’s no home or away end- you just stand behind the goal your team
is attacking. It was at Braintree Town that I realised that we’ve been lied to
all these years. Never mind Shankly and his ‘more important than life and
death’ schtick. The thing about football is that it’s much, much more enjoyable
when you don’t care.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-US">I mean, I cared a bit. The reason I
happened to be in mid-Essex was that my friend Ross is a fan of Gateshead FC.
This was a proper six pointer- Gateshead, at start of play, sat three points
ahead of Braintree in a playoff place, but with an inferior goal difference.
That’s where they sit now, too, since neither team could conjure a goal- or, if
we’re honest, anything much in the way of football- over the 94 minutes. But
although I wanted Gateshead to win, for Ross’ sake, and because my late
granddad was from Gateshead, and although I managed a sort of strangled
happybark when Braintree’s late penalty was saved, it didn’t really matter. I
wasn’t invested, you see. My heart was gently pumping blood rather than
imitating a Prodigy bassline (the Prodigy, by the way, are from Braintree,
which explains them).</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-US">Things are very different where Fulham are
concerned. Like Hugh Grant, Lily Allen, and Mohamed Al-Fayed (I’ve long
considered myself a perfect combination of the three) I support Martin Jol’s I
mean Rene Meulensteen’s I mean Felix Magath’s Lilywhite Army. I’ve watched us
lose at home to Torquay and beat Juventus 4-1. I’ve seen a 0-0 draw with
Carlisle and a 3-0 win over Manchester United (and Manchester United, like
A-Levels, were harder in those days) but I’ve never watched us with the simple,
uncomplicated pleasure that I got from watching Braintree hoof it one way and
then Gateshead hoof it the other.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-US">This season, in particular, ‘pleasure’ has
not been the word to apply to any but the most cringingly masochistic of Fulham
fans. We have lost about ten matches more than we’ve played. We’ve conceded
more goals than have been scored in the entire history of football.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Going 1-0 up has generally meant losing 3-1.
And yet, due to either tactical genius or a cruelly delusional Dead Cat Bounce,
we’re not out of it yet. Having scraped a win on Saturday while being
comprehensively outplayed by Norwich- I’ll say that again, by <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Norwich-</i> we’re in a position where a
couple of wins from our last four games might just see us lining up alongside
Hull and Stoke and Burnley in one of Europe’s elite leagues next season. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-US">And all I’m getting from it is the
potential for a stomach ulcer. During that Norwich game I was working, keeping
one eye on Soccer Saturday and the other on my job. For most of the last twenty
minutes of the game, as the might of Norwich bombarded Stockade Stockdale, I
felt genuinely physically sick. When the whistle blew for full time, seemingly
some seventeen hours after all the other games had finished, I didn’t feel any
euphoria, just a knackered, spent kind of relief. And I have to do that four
more times before the end of the season, and STILL we might go down at the end
of it. I don’t mind the despair, as John Cleese says in the best line ever to
grace a bad film, it’s the hope I can’t stand.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-US">Yes, there’s an orgasmic buzz when it
goes well (‘Dempsey- FOUR-ONE!') but in general football makes me uneasy, and
breathless, and dyspeptic, and aggressive (‘Why won’t you just blooming lie
down and die, you Welsh fools’ I yelled at my laptop when Cardiff went ahead at
Southampton, except I didn’t say ‘blooming’ or ‘fools’). It gives me a good two
hours of unremitting nervous tension a week. Remind me, which bit of that is
supposed to be fun? Why have I, a grown adult, allowed myself to become
emotionally- and, dammit, physiologically- invested in the (under)achievements of a bunch of twentysomething
millionaires? Give me a 0-0 draw between Braintree and Gateshead any day. Enough of being THE SPORT MAN; I’ll
see you down The Pub.</span></span></div>
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jondrytayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07014577384156823525noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5295296336756910308.post-49484201551644948222013-11-15T00:29:00.001+00:002013-11-15T00:45:19.581+00:00Three Short Stories About Innocence<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><b>1: 1976. Somewhere in the air.</b></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">My first trip in an aeroplane, aged 2. I was flying to Poland with my mother and sister to join my father, who was directing one of his plays in Krakow. My first memory is of looking out of the window and Mum saying 'That's Holland'. I didn't know what a Holland was.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><b> </b></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">I have subsequently learned that Van Gogh and Ruud Gullit and Gré Brouwenstijn were Dutch. Friends of mine recommend Amsterdam as a holiday destination (I'd definitely go to the Anne Frank House). There was that film maker who got shot. They used to own Surinam. I could go on.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">What a lot I've learned about Holland, since 1976.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><b>2: 2013. Keswick.</b></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">We were on holiday for my mum's birthday- me, sis, mum, bro-in-law and niece. My niece is a bright, sparky seven year old, and because she's got a brain on her it's sometimes problematic to keep her occupied while the grown-ups do grown-up things like drinking. Fortunately, she's a big fan of 'Strictly Come Dancing' and will happily watch it, making notes of the scores in her little book until she decides to do something more interesting.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Anyway, there we were in the Lakes. I had mistimed dinner so the rest of the family was watching TV while I pottered hurriedly around the kitchen. Deborah Meaden and her partner, Robin Windsor, took to the floor. My niece looked up from her colouring book.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">'Mum, is Deborah married?' she asked. 'Yes' said sis.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">'Is Robin married?' she asked. 'Yes' said sis.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><b> </b><b> </b></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">As The Only Gay In The Room I gave my sister the Hard Look. Because my sister recognised it and is brilliant, she added 'Robin is married to a man'.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">'Oh' said my niece, mildly, and went back to her colouring book.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><b>3: 1985, London/ 2013, London</b></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">So here's the thing. On the tube tonight, I discovered that the campaign to put PG stickers on music to protect children dates from when I was one of the children worth protecting. I was 11 and then 12 in 1985, when Prince released the song 'Darlin' Nikki', whose lyrics were deemed so filthy that Tipper Gore decided children should be protected from them. My sister, five years older, listened to the album containing that song a LOT.<b> </b> </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">I remember the lines '<i>I guess you could say she was a sex fiend/ I met her in a hotel lobby/ Masturbating with a magazine</i>'. Here's how, aged 11 or 12, I parsed those lines. Firstly, I couldn't really imagine what a 'sex fiend' was. I knew there was something called sex. I knew I wasn't interested in it. Therefore a 'sex fiend' was right up there with the Dungeons and Dragons fans, another interest I didn't share.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">She was in a 'hotel lobby'. I had been in very few: I connected them with waiting for my parents to pay some kind of incomprehensible bill.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Now, here we go. She was 'masturbating with a magazine'. I can't remember if I knew the word 'masturbation' when I was 11/12 but I certainly had a vague idea of the concept (Note: I didn't link my fiddling about with the 'sex' that Darlin' Nikki was a 'fiend' for. Tiddling with my dinky was one thing- 'sex' was something boring adults did). Anyway, at some later point I clocked that Nikki was 'masturbating' and had an idea what that meant. But with a MAGAZINE? I had been told how the female body was constituted. I knew about 'mating' and what was supposed to go in where. That's where my knowledge ended. I'm not going to spell out what I innocently assumed Nikki was doing with that magazine, although I bet you can guess.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Later on in the song, Nikki did a lot of 'grinding'. No idea. Coffee? </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">What's the moral of this story? I can't help but think that my discovery that there was a thing called Holland was no more harrowing or ground-breaking than my niece's discovery that Robin Windsor has a husband; just another fact to store in the fact list. As for Prince's groundbreakingly filthy song, I'm kind of glad that my parents didn't sit me down and explain to an eleven year old the mechanics of female masturbation- they, and I, would have been embarrassed. If they had, I would have spent less time assuming that the song referred to someone sitting in a Holiday Inn, rolling up a Marie Claire, and risking all kinds of intimate paper cuts. But, you know, I realised that eventually.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">I'm not a parent. But I remember being a child. There are things you get told, and things you find out for yourself. And it strikes me that when you're told stuff, the attitude with which you're told it is the important thing. It strikes me that when you find out stuff, it's stuff you'll understand one day, even if you don't at first.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">It's not what we tell them, or when. It's how.</span><br />
<br /></div>
jondrytayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07014577384156823525noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5295296336756910308.post-29020890626310551372013-09-30T01:01:00.002+01:002013-09-30T01:02:53.787+01:00Manifesto.<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"> <span lang="EN-US">I’ve had a brilliant idea. It’s the perfect
solution to something that’s been bothering and upsetting me for a while.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-US">In just under a year, the people of
Scotland will be voting on whether they should become independent. I have
worked in Scotland a lot, and have many beloved Scottish friends on both sides
of the border. I was also born into a country called Britain: it had been like
that for a couple of hundred years. I’ve never seen myself as anything other
than British. If that country is pulled apart, it will pull me apart with it. I’ll
become stateless. I’ll become something called English, which I never signed up
for, and I'm not that keen on, and without anyone even asking me.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-US">So I hope Scotland votes No. But most- not all, but most- of my beloved
Scottish friends are going to vote Yes. I don’t think they’re going to do that
because they dislike the English. Some Scots will vote Yes for that reason, but
I don’t think the majority of Yes-voters will. No, I think those Scottish
friends of mine who are going to vote Yes will do so (and break my heart in the
process) because they’re sick of being governed by Westminster.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-US">That’s when it struck me. I’m sick of being
governed by Westminster too. I am a grudging member of a party I haven’t
believed in since I was 20, merely because I have decided they’re least worst.
That party is out of government: instead, we’re being governed by a savage and
moronic bunch comprised of the other two parties, a government which is tearing
apart our most treasured national ideals like a bunch of gatecrashers who know
the police have been called. A government which is only in power because three quarters of it is unwillingly/willingly propped up by the other.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-US">If I were Scottish, I’d be so annoyed about
that, because they didn’t vote for those people. Then it struck me: nor did I.
And nor did my city.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-US">So that’s the idea. If Scotland votes for
Independence, I am going to start the LNP like a shot: the London National
Party. We, like most UK cities, tend to go red on Election nights and end up
with a Blue government. If my 5 million brothers and sisters North of Hadrian’s
Wall can escape from that, then so can my 8 million London compadres. (Well,
not quite 8 million, acksh: I’m going have to trim things off after zone 3
because it’s all those Beckenhams and Bromleys and Richmonds whose votes stuck
us with that floppy-haired psychopath. Don’t worry, they won’t mind- they’ll
happily live in Tory England while those of us over the border in Leftie London
celebrate).</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-US">Don’t think, by the way, that when I
rejoice in the idea of an independent Left-wing London that I’m necessarily talking about
the Labour Party. They’d have to behave- they learned that in 2000 when they
tried to foist the well-meaning apparatchik Frank Dobson on us and he ended up
losing to a leftier alternative.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-US">And seriously, who would be upset about this? Wales
would soon follow suit and have a nice Plaid (in both senses) government.
Manchester and Liverpool and Leeds and Newcastle would all opt for
independence, I’m sure, if the alternative were to be part of an England made
up only of the True Blue shires. Birmingham's always wavered between L and R, but I'm sure finally becoming capital would sweeten that pill. ‘England’ could have its monarchy and its
tradition and its pound notes and the rest of us would happily make do with
President Izzard, renationalisation of TFL, and nice tax and spend cities with
decent schools and hospitals. And of course Independent Scotland and the People's Republic of London could form a New Auld Alliance that would make Gloucestershire shake in its boots.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-US">So I desperately hope my country doesn’t
get torn apart next year. But if it does, I have a GREAT alternative to being
part of a Forever Tory England. Who’s with me? </span></span></div>
</div>
jondrytayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07014577384156823525noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5295296336756910308.post-25556865609136420242013-08-23T02:40:00.002+01:002013-08-23T02:44:54.625+01:00Late night depression.<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
There was a sort of semi-party after tonight's show: we have a fortnight off while EDWARD II techs and dresses and previews and opens.<br />
<br />
It was joyful: we're not-too-far from the end of a smashing job, so everyone was in a good mood and we had a little drinkup at the Pit Bar.<br />
<br />
Then I got a cab home.<br />
<br />
Yeah, you'll be waiting for the old 'I got a cab and the cab driver wasn't a spotless liberal' story. We've all had one of those. But this one was scarier, and more upsetting, and felt worryingly as if it were illustrative of a wider problem.<br />
<br />
I was sharing the cab with one of the cast, and we had the usual 'and then this happened' show-type conversation. When my castmate got out of the cab, the driver said 'so, you're an actor, are you?' At this point I would usually make something up, but he'd picked us up from a theatre and had heard us talking about the show, so I answered in the affirmative.<br />
<br />
'My missus is a make-up artist' he said 'she used to work in the West End but now she works in films'.<br />
<br />
This led to some pleasant chatter about the difference between theatre and film, and how his missus worked with different people, and yadayada. Until I mentioned the name of a particular film actor. Then things got very dark.<br />
<br />
'Oh, that bitch?' he said. 'That whore?' Trying to keep things unhorrid, I asked if his wife had worked with the actor in question and found her unpleasant. 'No' he said 'I don't think the missus has worked with her. But everyone knows she's a dirty little whore. Dirty little bitch. Haven't you seen the pictures? I could give you the link to the pictures."<br />
<br />
We'd had a pleasant, chatty journey. I'd assumed that he was a nice fella. But he'd assumed that I would be happy to hear him say that. That we would be on the same page. That a half-arsedly pleasant conversation could be capped by... by THAT. <br />
<br />
I overtipped him, and walked into my flat, a little less of a person than I had been before.</div>
jondrytayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07014577384156823525noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5295296336756910308.post-48842496763586919932013-07-11T03:08:00.001+01:002013-07-11T13:14:06.391+01:00Game, Set, Bitch.<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-US">So, it turns out it’s Misogyny July. We’ve
had InverdaleGate, where a complacent and corpulent male journalist chose to
focus on the looks of a superb athlete right at the moment she reached the
pinnacle of her profession. We’ve been shown the sickening outpourings of idiot
tweeters about the same woman. We’ve had MurrayWadeGate, where much virtual ink
was spilled on 1977 and 1936 and 77 years and Marray and Haydon-Jones and all
that. But the really disturbing indicator of how our society looks at women didn’t
happen anywhere near the All-England Club. It’s happening in and around a TV
programme that the media doesn’t really take any notice of any more, and it
stinks.</span>
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-US">Hazel O’Sullivan is an Irish model, and is
single. Daley Ojuederie is an English boxer, and doesn’t seem too sure whether
he’s single or not. In the last couple of weeks, they’ve been flirting up a
storm. She’s been grinding her behind against his crotch. They’ve been tapping
out Morse Code messages on each others’ hands. There has been draping. All this
is something, I’m informed, that Young People Do. But unusually for such
couples, we who have never met them can be certain that they have never kissed
each other, or had sex. We can be certain of this because they have chosen to
spend their summer in the Big Brother house.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-US">Ok, yes, this is about Big Brother. They’re
Big Brother contestants. But don’t stop reading just yet, because I promise you
that what is about to happen to Hazel O’Sullivan is an example of a scarier,
more insidious, more prevalent kind of misogyny than anything Inverdale could
have dreamt of in his wildest Wimbledon fantasies.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-US">So, Hazel and Daley are in the Big Brother
house together. They’ve been there for just shy of a month and have started
doing the ritual sexdance of reality show contestants. Canoodling and
whispering and everything I mentioned above. You may remember that I also
mentioned Daley’s uncertain relationship status: he claimed when he went into
the house that he had a girlfriend, but in the last few weeks he has, what with
all the canoodling and that, recanted. He has said that his relationship is ‘in
a pickle’. He ‘doesn’t know’ whether he has a girlfriend or not. He ‘wishes he
could find out’. O’Sullivan, in the meantime, just so you know, knows she’s
single. And her knowledge of Ojuederie’s relationship status is what he’s told
her: all the vague ‘pickle’ stuff.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-US">Now, let’s guess who Britain- or that part
of Britain which watches<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>and
writes about BB, at any rate- has decided to hate, shall we? That’s right.
Cherchez la femme.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-US">Hazel is odds-on favourite to be evicted
this week. She will exit the house on Friday to a storm of boos. She will be
labelled a ‘homewrecker’, and a ‘slag’, and a ‘slut’, all because she did some
dirty dancing and some flirting and some cuddling with a man who told her he
was more or less a free agent. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-US">Just to rub it in even further, Big
Brother’s spin-off, public show invited Daley’s is-she-or-isn’t-she girlfriend
Katie on for a tearful interview last night. She insisted that Daley was lying
when he said that their relationship was, to coin a Friends, on a break. She
insisted that, and she cried. It was upsetting, and she came across as sincere
and devastated. At the same time, her take was treated as gospel, when as far
as any of us can know, Daley, trapped in the house without an interviewer, is
telling- confusedly-<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>the truth
about their status. Immediately after the interview with Katie, presenter Emma
Willis asked the studio audience what they thought… of Hazel. She didn’t ask what
they thought of the putative cheater; she encouraged them to boo the
co-respondent.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-US">Now look. I’m not under any illusions that
Hazel O’Sullivan is a sister.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Her
behaviour on the show has been at best ill-advised. She may be a thoroughly
unpleasant individual; only people who know her can say what she’s like. And
it’s only Big Brother, after all. Who cares? It’s a trashy reality show.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-US">But in this case, I think this particular
trashy reality show is tapping into something which is bigger than the show, an
attitude whereby any sexual interaction between a man and a woman has to be
driven by her. After all, if we’re going to blame anyone for Daley’s
girlfriend’s tears- are they really Hazel’s fault? Are they not, you know, his? Let’s
assume, as the programme-makers did, that Daley and Katie were rock-solid
before he entered the house. If we then say ‘Ah, but Hazel went after him
with her wiles and he was powerless to resist’ are we not backing up every
anti-woman story from Eve to ‘she shouldn’t have been walking through the park
in that skirt’?</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-US">I remember all those storifys from the
weird individuals on Twitter who were insulted that Bartoli had the temerity to
win Wimbledon: Bitch, they said. And Cunt. And Slag. And Whore. And it’s easy
to get angry about them, because they’re so obviously undeserved.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-US">But another woman is about to get a
beasting, on the same social media we deplore for the Bartoli stuff. She’ll be
called bitch and whore and cunt and slag and nobody will mind all that much.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-US">And I know you don’t watch Big Brother, but
I think we probably should mind about that. Because people who win Wimbledon
are basically going to be ok. Whereas Hazel O’Sullivan is about to be publicly
labelled as a bitch-whore-cunt because she didn’t quite kiss someone who wasn’t
sure whether he had a girlfriend or not. And I think that’s much more worrying
than Inverdale being crass about an athlete’s looks. </span></span></div>
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jondrytayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07014577384156823525noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5295296336756910308.post-49622987473518262952013-06-24T14:06:00.003+01:002013-06-24T14:06:35.660+01:00Placeholder<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">So, work got in the way. A four-show weekend for OTHELLO means that I'm two shows behind when it comes to events in Cardiff.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">By now, you know who won, I know who won, and we both know it was who we knew was going to win when the competition was announced. But I'm sure there will be a few exciting things I've missed along the way.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">It would be an impertinence, though, to blog 'as live' several days after the event, wouldn't you say? Information is so up-to-the-minute that I have just received an email reply timestamped before the original was sent (truefact: I'll screengrab it if you don't believe me...) and I have no desire to be the digital equivalent of a poor knackered carrier pigeon arriving just as the newspaper is thrown away.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">So when I eventually get to see the two missed concerts, I'll opt for the impressionistic rather than the thorough. I expect my first impression will be 'THOSE are the finalists? Srsly?"</span></div>
jondrytayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07014577384156823525noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5295296336756910308.post-66554401554503681742013-06-20T21:42:00.004+01:002013-06-20T21:44:04.476+01:00Gassing Mit Ein Gast<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-US">I am suffering for you tonight, dear
readers. The flatmate’s home and in order to buy myself 90 minutes of primetime
opera-watching, I promised him he could watch what he liked between 6pm and
7.30.</span></span>
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-US">I don’t know if you’re familiar with
‘Storage Wars’ at all. It’s an American show wherein people buy storage units
whose owners have lapsed with their payments. Once they’ve bought them, they
get to see what’s inside.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-US">Waiting for the payoff? There isn’t one.
That’s the whole show. The flatmate loves programmes where people buy things.
Me, not so much. In fact I’d rather hear Gabriele Fontana’s Zdenka on a
permanent loop than watch another episode. But I’m doing it for you. For YOU.
And I’m missing Spain v Tahiti in the football, too, which should be as hilarious
a mismatch as Fontana v Zdenka.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-US">(Apologies to Ms. Fontana, by the way: she
was the first example that sprang to mind when I tried to think of a really bad
recorded performance. Feel free to substitute your own)</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-US">Not only am I watching- even as I type- someone
unwrap a secondhand mattress in the name of entertainment, but I’ve done
something else for you. I have persuaded our beloved friend-of-the-blog to
repeat 2011’s livechat experiment. He knows even more about singing than I know
about premium lager, so you’re in for some added expertise.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-US">In order to preserve his anonymity, he will
again be appearing under his nom de guerre, the rather splendid
‘damegwynethjones’. It’s not her though. He’s far less squally.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-US">NOTSOWUNDERBAR: So, we get Wales tonight. And Gerald Finley.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-US">DAMEGWYNETHJONES: I saw a FB comment yesterday from somebody who was
in the hall, and they said it was a very exciting round. Mary agrees.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-US">NOTSOWUNDERBAR: But she has promised us an
exciting night! Last night, that meant that they had been DOING REHEARSING,
though. Josie has rechristened backstage 'The Holding Area' to make it more
dramatic. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-US">DAMEGWYNETHJONES: Dame Felicity seems kind of serious and tough.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-US">NOTSOWUNDERBAR: You wouldn't mess, would you?</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-US">DAMEGWYNETHJONES: I'm not sure we've discussed Petroc's beard. I'm
rather liking it. Maybe he discovered the look in that Zimbabwean prison.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-US">NOTSOWUNDERBAR: So: Susana Gaspar Gary Griffiths Olena Tokar Yuri
Gorodetski Egle Sidlauskaite. That was FAST typing. Egle first, off of
Lithuania. She sounds proper deep and mezzoey. I like Petroc's beard too. He is
heading towards silver daddy status.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-US">DAMEGWYNETHJONES: He is rather nice these days. My money is on
Lithuania already. You're so good at making an effort with their names! I just
keep saying 'the Egyptian girl' like some old buffer who was in the war.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-US">NOTSOWUNDERBAR: Cool! Princess of Stock Cube first (I've made that
joke before)</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-US">DAMEGWYNETHJONES: Everybody has. Shame we missed the totally
barnstorming opening. This editing is just ridiculous this year.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-US">NOTSOWUNDERBAR: The editing has been weird this year. Ha! Jinx.This
isn't as abandoned as I'd like.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-US">DAMEGWYNETHJONES: Maybe it was at the beginning. But she's not
really carrying the momentum through the rests.And that top wasn't too secure
really, was it.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-US">NOTSOWUNDERBAR: No. Pulls off the end though. Remember that Russian
mezzo who was ace but they kept showing her cock up that bit?</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-US">DAMEGWYNETHJONES: Yes. On the tiny bit we've heard, the lady from 2
years ago was more exciting.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-US">NOTSOWUNDERBAR: Bit of an anodyne response from Finley, who I don't
think was that impressed.This Dalila is already better.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-US">DAMEGWYNETHJONES: And maybe we're going to get the whole aria -
unusually, they started at the beginning.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-US">NOTSOWUNDERBAR: She looks a bit like Garanca, doesn't she? Or am I
being Balticist?</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-US">DAMEGWYNETHJONES: No, I think she sort of might. This is a bit
plummy and manufactured, to my mind. I suspect the voice is HUGE and she's
controlling it a tiny bit from the jaw because she's scared of how much noise
she can really make. Yes, this is pop psychology/projection hour.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-US">NOTSOWUNDERBAR: Wow, that's slow. Will she have asked for that, to
show off her (impressive) breath control?</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-US">DAMEGWYNETHJONES: My impression is that these conductors do
everything they're told, whether they agree with it or not, so yes. She kind of
looks like something off a Greek vase. Very beautiful lady.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-US">NOTSOWUNDERBAR: Oh, she didn't make ANYTHING of the big tune on 'Ah,
verse moi'.Only one verse, so there must have been a big edit in the middle.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-US">DAMEGWYNETHJONES: Has Dame Kiri cut up a curtain or something?</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-US">NOTSOWUNDERBAR: She is not the snappiest of dressers, our Dame K.
Now then: direct comparison with Barton, although this is a Favorita not a
Favorite.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-US">DAMEGWYNETHJONES: Just nothing like as anchored. Although I hate
that word.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-US">NOTSOWUNDERBAR: I think my big obsession this year might be Generic
Frown Singing.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-US">DAMEGWYNETHJONES: She's tentative in what should be a comfortable
low passage.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-US">NOTSOWUNDERBAR: I think you're right. When she opens up, she loses
control, so she's kind of reining everything in. She's pitchy ('PITCHY' KLAXON)
too.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-US">DAMEGWYNETHJONES: This is just nothing like as accomplished as
Barton. Beautiful warm timbre in itself though. Mangled Italian vowels, vague
consonants.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-US">NOTSOWUNDERBAR: <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There's
something about her vib which tends towards flatness.*very carefully doesn't
mention Rad*</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-US">DAMEGWYNETHJONES: I think maybe in a different way? I think this
lady is just a bit low energy. Rad has an excess of it!</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-US">NOTSOWUNDERBAR: Flatmate, from the sink: “Doesn't have much
personality”. And he's right.The bottom of her voice sounds like a lyric
struggling through Vitellia.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-US">DAMEGWYNETHJONES: I thought with a programme like this she'd be
awesome. Mary will probably have something to say about repertoire.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-US">NOTSOWUNDERBAR: Oooh, can we all say register break? Not equalised
at all.</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-US">DAMEGWYNETHJONES: Thing is, she'd probably have sounded quite nice
as Dorabella. There is a lovely warmth to the sound. But basically, not ready
for this.</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-US">NOTSOWUNDERBAR: Half-hearted opera arms at the end! 'Shall I? Shall
I? Oh, go on then'</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-US">DAMEGWYNETHJONES: You've got to get those arms in the air Grace,
like a princess would!</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-US">NOTSOWUNDERBAR: Disappointing. Petroc seems to have liked her
though. And sorry, 'phenomenal strength at the top and bottom'? Was Finley
listening?</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-US">DAMEGWYNETHJONES: I bet it was loud. But no, not assured at the top or
the bottom.</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-US">NOTSOWUNDERBAR: They all seem so SWEET in the offstage interviews.
Now that I'm past 40 I get all avuncular and protective about them. Susana
Gaspar now, Portuguese soprano. Pretty. Good expressive face.</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-US">DAMEGWYNETHJONES: Very nice in this rehearsal. And totally
unflustered by that long high note at the end of stridono lassu.</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-US">NOTSOWUNDERBAR: Depressing that the Lisbon opera theatre might
close. Was that the end of 'Stridono lassu' I heard? Ha, I guess it was. But
she’s starting with Bellini’s Juliet.</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-US">DAMEGWYNETHJONES: Hard to start with long bel canto lines. But this
isn't as good as I want it to be.</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-US">NOTSOWUNDERBAR: <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>She is
wearing a frock of two halves, ladies and gentlemen. A lovely deep green skirt,
with a kind of washing-day bra top.</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-US">DAMEGWYNETHJONES: Hahaha! Yes.</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-US">NOTSOWUNDERBAR: I like her voice a lot, but she needs to not be
slightly sharp on every nore.</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-US">DAMEGWYNETHJONES: She's reminding me every so slightly of Zeani/Soviero
- slightly stressed sounding. Which I kind of like in a lyric</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-US">NOTSOWUNDERBAR: <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>(a nore
is like a note, but mistyped) Zeani I can hear. She hasn't got that Leontyne
smokiness that makes Soviero so special though.</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-US">DAMEGWYNETHJONES: <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>(every is similar to ever, but mistyped)</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-US">NOTSOWUNDERBAR: Bloody hard, this. And she didn't quite get there.
Promising, though. Mary finds her classy and dignified, which are things you
say about The Queen, not about an opera singer.</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-US">DAMEGWYNETHJONES: One thing I'll say for Dame Kiri - she smiles
warmly at every single one of them when they finish a number. It's really
lovely.</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-US">NOTSOWUNDERBAR: Yes, I'd noticed that. Janowitz did that too, the
year she judged.</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-US">DAMEGWYNETHJONES: Dame Gwyneth didn't. She just looked non-plussed.</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-US">NOTSOWUNDERBAR: Ah, the Enfant Prodigue aria. Or, as I call it, 'If
it ain't Cotrubas, I ain't listening'. This is very pretty singing but it's
such dull music.</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-US">DAMEGWYNETHJONES: I thought we weren't even going to mention it
because it's Debussy. The one time I saw Kate Royal in recital, she did this as
an encore, which was a kicking way to liven things up and send us all out on a
high.</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-US">NOTSOWUNDERBAR: Hahaha! 'I will now sing Kindertotenlieder'</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-US">DAMEGWYNETHJONES: She is doing a good job of this though. She is a
lovely lyric with a decent bit of individuality.</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-US">NOTSOWUNDERBAR: If we're right about the Leoncavallo, though, she's
chosen well. Three different styles. She sounds stressed here, (the cries of
'Azael') but it's dumb writing for the voice.</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-US">DAMEGWYNETHJONES: Yes. Could have been better. Pity. Nice singer,
not a BBC Cardiff Singer Of The Known Universe though.</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-US">NOTSOWUNDERBAR: Oh, I love the big sweet smile before the Nedda!
Bringing the house into the hall.</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-US">DAMEGWYNETHJONES: I really like this.</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-US">NOTSOWUNDERBAR: Me too. Stratas-y, before Stratas just started
screaming her head off.</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-US">DAMEGWYNETHJONES: I quite fancy that beardy flautist too, have been
thinking that all week. It's all about beards these days. I really only know
Stratas as Salome, Despina and Santuzza.</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-US">NOTSOWUNDERBAR: Ha, the usual parts...I have missed the beardy
flautist. I shall watch out. She looks like Juliana Margulies circa ER, but
sweeter.</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-US">DAMEGWYNETHJONES: She has a lovely face. She is quite endearing in
general.</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-US">NOTSOWUNDERBAR: Oh yes. STORMED the end. That's actually one of the
best versions of that aria I've ever heard.</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-US">DAMEGWYNETHJONES: It was brill. Christ, Cabell won in 2005?! It only
seems like the other week. That's a gorgeous voice.</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-US">NOTSOWUNDERBAR: I don't know much about her. People seem divided.
So, Mr Wales. Gary Griffiths, which sounds like a made-up name for a sitcom.
He's brought his own choir!</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-US">DAMEGWYNETHJONES: Teeny bit camp? Or is that just Welsh accents?</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-US">NOTSOWUNDERBAR: He's got a beard. Haud yersel' back. Ok, he's really
really good.</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-US">DAMEGWYNETHJONES: Yes. I was going to say terrible choice of piece (Finch’han
dal vino’)for a competition, but actually he's managing to show off a very
beautiful timbre in something that normally turns into frantic bawling.</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-US">NOTSOWUNDERBAR: Yes, it's nearly always badly sung by not Thomas
Allen. Did he corpse himself as he started the Onegin aria?</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-US">DAMEGWYNETHJONES: I hear a frog. Bit less comfortable here?</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-US">NOTSOWUNDERBAR: Really? I think this is lovely. Much better than Mr
Russia, who you like, wrongly.</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-US">DAMEGWYNETHJONES: Seems a bit unsettled to me. I bet he can sing the
pants off this, but I don't think he is here. Brilliant voice.</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-US">NOTSOWUNDERBAR: He's not cold and condescending enough for Onegin,
but I suppose that would be a brave choice in concert.</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-US">DAMEGWYNETHJONES: Going for a top f? You're right. More of a jolly
fuzzy bear. No top f, let the record reflect.</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-US">NOTSOWUNDERBAR: LOVELY at the end. Just lovely. And yes, there were
husky moments, but he's my favourite so far. Oh joy unconfined, the universe
has heard my plea for some Amboise Thomas /sarcasm</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-US">DAMEGWYNETHJONES: Of all the things he could have sung.</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-US">NOTSOWUNDERBAR: He's stopped acting! He doesn't know what to do! Oh
that's better. He's back.Interesting fact: he's kind of hot until he's shot in
profile, when he isn't at all.</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-US">DAMEGWYNETHJONES: Don't mention the trill.</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-US">NOTSOWUNDERBAR: What trill, etc etc etc. I'm a little teapot arms a
little unfortunate at the end. Don't like the mimed drinking. Winner so far?</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-US">DAMEGWYNETHJONES: Not sure. I wasn't as convinced as you were by
him. But I guess probably, on balance. Need to get a glass of charders, hang
on. So Dame Kiri's pearls were stunning, in that clip.</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-US">NOTSOWUNDERBAR: A reminder while you were away that Nafornita didn't
win her heat. Then a bit of Je Veux Vivre,</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-US">DAMEGWYNETHJONES: Hadn't realised that about Nafornita. Re this next
lady: People who feel the need to tell you they have a big voice are always
suspect, IMO. </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-US">NOTSOWUNDERBAR: Olyana from Ukraine now, showing off her Big Voice
with, um Handel. This is lovelyish, yes?</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-US">DAMEGWYNETHJONES: I know! They always offer me unsuitable roles for
my big voice! So I'm going to show them my... Cleopatra! Yes to lovelyish.
She's not making it easy for herself with all this delicate piano stuff. But
she's mostly managing it.</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-US">NOTSOWUNDERBAR: Winner, if she carries on like this.</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-US">DAMEGWYNETHJONES: Agree. Massive audience reaction.</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-US">NOTSOWUNDERBAR: Another crazy edit. Oooh, Come Scog. Promising the
way she changed the set of her face before beginning: actor. Oh well I mean
this is brilliant.</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-US">DAMEGWYNETHJONES: Yes it is. Far better than last night.</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-US"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>NOTSOWUNDERBAR: (apart
from one unfortunate breath, but we'll let her have that) Flubbed the C a bit,
but not unacceptably so.</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-US">DAMEGWYNETHJONES: (and a slightly unfortunate passage through the
high c) Oh, snap. It was just a bit out of line. It's a stupid c anyway.</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-US">NOTSOWUNDERBAR: She wears a red frock damn well, too. Very castable.
YOU LEAVE THAT C ALONE I LOVE THAT C</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-US">DAMEGWYNETHJONES: Yes. Dubious taste when it comes to the hair
style, but she can get help with that. Sorry Jon. I love it too. It just
doesn't love others. She has a very complex and rich sound.</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-US">NOTSOWUNDERBAR: Great ending. She's way out in front. 'Totally
sensational' says Mary. I love love love 'Gluck das mir verblieb'. Too bad
they’ve jumped a verse. She's already the finished article, isn't she? Kind of
pointless to edit the way they did. Thirty seconds of singing and a long
orchestral playout.</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-US">DAMEGWYNETHJONES: Pretty much. I'd actually like her to sing out
more. But she's very clever to have learnt how not to.</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-US">NOTSOWUNDERBAR: Only 26!!!!!</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-US">DAMEGWYNETHJONES: Did not fall foul of
Mary's bête noire! Oh, and maybe she was right about the big voice bit. Still
don't see why she feels the need to point it out though. Josie understands
Ukranian!</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-US">NOTSOWUNDERBAR: Look!This man can juggle! How important and
relevant!</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-US">DAMEGWYNETHJONES: But Jon, it's just like being an opera singer.</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-US">NOTSOWUNDERBAR: This guy is smashing. Sounds like Calleja. A little
nasal, but otherwise lovely. In DESPERATE need of having his barnet chopped,
mind.</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-US">DAMEGWYNETHJONES: Yeah, I'm not loving the way it goes via the nose
to the top. I'm not loving the timbre generally actually, but I think he's so
impressive, probably carries amazingly in the hall (like Calleja does, as you
say), and he seems to be able to do exactly what we want. Very employable
indeed.</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-US">NOTSOWUNDERBAR: Oh, sorry readers: we are talking about Yuri
Gorodetski, Belorussian tenor, singing Una Furtiva Lagrima.</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-US">DAMEGWYNETHJONES: The boy needs to have some sandwiches though.</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-US">NOTSOWUNDERBAR: Every one of these singers is better than every one
of last night's. Apart from maybe the mezzo.Yes to sandwiches and cake and pie.
His cummerbund is all sad and skinny.</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-US">DAMEGWYNETHJONES: That c was a real shame.</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-US">NOTSOWUNDERBAR: Oh dear. Gounod tripped him up. That was a hell of a
crack at the top. C is killing all the tenors this year.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-US">DAMEGWYNETHJONES: I guess the most recent soprano has it - no
comparable flubs in her performance. Had he not had that disaster I'd have been
unsure how to call it.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-US">NOTSOWUNDERBAR: ANOTHER clumsy edit in the lensky aria. This is vvg
though. Yes, he's superpromising, but she was so solid and secure she has to
have it. And actually I think she is just better than him anyway. He's lovely
but he can only really do 'soulful'.. And it's not just the C, his top is a bit
wing-and-a-prayer generally.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-US">DAMEGWYNETHJONES: I'm kind of getting bored of his timbre. Is that a
really horrible thing to say?</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-US">NOTSOWUNDERBAR: No, me too. He's unvarying vocally and interpretatively.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-US">DAMEGWYNETHJONES: I think it's cut and dried then.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-US">NOTSOWUNDERBAR: So since he seems to sing Mozart everywhere, why did
he try to sing bigger stuff?</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-US">DAMEGWYNETHJONES: You read Mary's mind!</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-US">NOTSOWUNDERBAR: I think we should mention that Finley said 'squillo'</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-US">DAMEGWYNETHJONES: Gerry agrees with me on the Welsh bloke - not in
his comfort zone.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-US">NOTSOWUNDERBAR: Anyone you'd put in the final apart from Miss
Ukraine?</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-US">DAMEGWYNETHJONES: I would still hope to hear Barton, Broderick and
Miss Ukraine.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-US">NOTSOWUNDERBAR: Yeah. Still no men. Wales and Belorus came close
though. So, Ukraine wins. Ben Johnson tomorrow, who didn't blow me away at ENO.
But we shall see. Thanks for chatting! I had better make the flatmate some
pasta now.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-US">So there you have it, readers. Ms Ukraine is very special, Ms
Portugal is just lovely, I made my flatmate some pasta, and if anyone ever asks
if you want to watch ‘Storage Wars’, run like your life depended on it. See you
in Round 4!</span></span></div>
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jondrytayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07014577384156823525noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5295296336756910308.post-70729462929064663512013-06-20T01:34:00.000+01:002013-06-20T04:01:49.242+01:00A Good Fair Creature, If It Be Well Used...<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
This might all go horribly wrong. I was out tonight having some drinks with pals, and fully intended to write up tonight-slash-last-night's heat tomorrow morning (probably this morning, by the time you read this. It's a pointlessly complicated timeline. Call me Stephen Moffatt). However, I've arrived home *just* before midnight and, what with having actual paying writing to do tomorrow, it makes sense to give you my thoughts on tonight's contenders before I go to sleep.<br />
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Warning, though: I've had a couple of pints, so if I say that any of the contestants are my best mate, or challenge them to a fight, you'll know why. I've also had tonight's heat slightly spoilered for me, but in quite an exciting way; apparently tonight's winner is reminiscent of a controversial singer I like rather a lot, so when SPOILER ALERT a soprano comes along singing Lady M or Minnie with reckless abandon oddly white tone, and a cavalier attitude to pitch, that will be our winner. You can add your guesses to the soundalike in the comments, if you've nowt better to do.<br />
<br />
So, here we go. Titles are still a chase scene, but in my more grown-up (read: slightly drunk) mood, they feel less Harry Potter, more Crimson Tide. Someone should totally do an opera set on a submarine; it could be a sequel to Klinghoffer. Too soon?<br />
<br />
Jokes in dubious taste aside, these titles are PROPER SILLY. It's a singing competition, not an episode of 24 (or Harry Potter, or Crimson Tide. The comparisons are going to keep on coming). Seriously, though, there really isn't this much jeopardy. 'Will I get the B flat in Abscheulicher' just isn't as tense a question as 'should I cut the blue wire or will that blow up the orphanage?'<br />
<br />
Lovely Katerina Karneus is one of the judges tonight, which is ace as she's one of my favourite ever Cardiff winners. We get a little moment of the 'Non Piu Mesta' where she zinged joy into the room in a red frock. Mary K is excited because the singers marked in the dress rehearsal. Is that exciting? I wonder if it's more sort of commonplace. Petroc, meanwhile, is excited because we're getting the Habanera and Yeletsky's aria. I am wondering why that is particularly exciting. Maybe it's the same singer doing them.<br />
<br />
We get a rundown of the singers: Gala El Hadidi, a mezzo from Egypt who must be, given that voice and nationality, resigned to a lifetime of intoning 'Pace t'imploro' over people's graves. Loriana Castellano is an Italian mezzo, which is sort of a shame because what the world needs is a cracking Italian soprano. WAIT! I am doing national determinism. For all I know they'll both be treating us to some Korngold. Alexei Bogdanchikov, baritone, is from Russia, so maybe the Yeletsky? I'm not prepared to guess that, see above. Luthando Qave is a South African bass baritone, which in this competition means he'll be a baritone having a crack at Fiesco, and kicking us off is Maria Celeng, a Hungarian soprano. And for those of you who may have baulked at me gaying it up over Mr Croatia last night, it's only fair to add that, by the look of her mugshot, Ms Celeng is hawt and knows it.<br />
<br />
Oh. Oh. Oh. Regular readers (as if) will know that I have a special relationship with the Rusalka aria, because it's all bound up with things about my dad and him dying and all that shizzle. And I am totally excited, because the few seconds we get of Celeng in rehearsal singing said aria are time-stopping. Totally gorgeous. They're interrupted by Josie asking her if she wants to win when she plays chess. I'm beginning to feel sorry for Josie.<br />
<br />
Celeng starts with some Alcina, and it ought to be gorgeous but isn't quite. I can't quite put my finger on why; there's some smudgy ornamentation, I guess, but it's not that. She's maybe giving more vib and more voice than we're used to in this kind of music, but it's not that either. Maybe it's just that it's a bit overdone. Too much voice, too much grimacing, just a bit troppo. It's obviously a smashing voice though, so let's wait.<br />
<br />
Come Scog! The aria that made me fall in love with opera, mefans. I confidently predicted that one Suzanne Braunsteffer would make a big career on the basis of this aria last time (because winners such as Mattila and 'Yes I'll be there no I can't make it' Harteros had sung it previous competitions) and Celeng is giving it a good old go, but again I'm finding that distance from her. Nothing to fault in the singing, I promise, and interpretatively she's giving it socks<br />
<br />
Stopped typing because actually I'm warming to her more and more. The last part of the aria is very impressive. She has an immediacy to her performance which intially put me off but which is melding into an exciting intensity. Doesn't have the bottom for 'non vi renda audaci ancor' but hey, who does since Carol? She eats up the ending and I'm beginning to worry I may have misjudged her.<br />
<br />
Karneus is sold, and now we get the Rusalka. Before it starts: I'm not crying, it's just dusty in here, ok?<br />
<br />
Whoa, this is interesting; she opens the aria with such intensity that the voice becomes less lovely. Having thought she was someone with a great instrument who didn't communicate, I now find the opposite happening. No, this is gorgeous. She opens up the big tune beautifully (someone shoot the conductor; STOP RUSHING HER).<br />
<br />
She makes me cry at the end. Just lovely, vocally and dramatically. I am seriously conflicted about this singer, had you noticed? I think she's basically ace, but there was something- until the Rusalka- which stopped me from entirely loving her. Karneus loved everything; Mary didn't like the bottom of the Fiordiligi either (so to speak). I wish I knew what I thought of this singer, but I just can't decide.<br />
<br />
KLAXON KLAXON KLAXON. Petroc is announcing an aria which introduces 'a real wheeler-dealer' and saying, heavily, that Mary has 'combed' the archives.<br />
<br />
You know what this means, kids. Largo Al FactheFacoff. Please, baritones, stop.<br />
<br />
I've fastforwarded the video of Mary giving us all the people who have done it before. I'm tempted to fastforward the performance too, but that wouldn't be fair on Alexei Bogdanchikov. He's starting with 'O Carlo Ascolta', which is also overdone, but I don't mind because people don't mug the living shit out of it.<br />
<br />
Husky start to the big tune on 'Io morro', and again some breath issues, here. Also, a personal bete noire of mine: he takes the line 'Ah di me non ti scordar' by showing off his big rich top on the 'Non', taking a massive breath, then going down to a whisper on 'ti scordar'. I know everyone does it, and the music sort of demands it, but the good Rodrigos are aware that this is, you know, the middle of a sentence rather than a chance to show off your technique. He deals with the end well enough, but he's not the answer to the Verdi baritone problem: he's a lyric pushing it, rather than one of those massive dark forces of nature that seemingly were born in every Italian village circa 1915.<br />
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And, as if to prove it, he caresses his way through some Tote Stadt. Sumptous singing, but I am getting worried about the men in this competition- the women are leaving them at the starting gate when it comes to powers of expression. The words of the aria are, Korngoldly, all perfume and sensuousness. All Alexei gives us is Sincere Face and the Isokoski Frown. When he smiles at the end it's a reminder that mouths can do more than sing.<br />
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Ok, here we go. Figaro qua, Jonathan a long way over la.<br />
<br />
Well, he's not mugging. But he's not speaking to us, either. If you're going to roll this one out, you have to FLATTEN us with personality, and he isn't doing so. Needs to watch his Italian, too (I have a degree in Italian, so screw you, people who were about to call me pretentious). The 'lalala's have a very Russian heaviness, and 'fortunatissimo' becomes, unfortunately, 'fartunatissima'. Poor lady.<br />
<br />
But: it seems I'm grumpy tonight. There's a real voice here. And he gets MASSIVE points for not going into falsetto on the last 'Figaro', although he does that squawky 'LOOK! I'M BEING A WOMAN!' thing elsewhere in the aria.<br />
<br />
Petroc has just told us that this was the <i>first</i> Largo of the evening. I'm going to get another beer. Meanwhile, what did Mary say? She totally agreed with me, again. I may marry her, if Croatian Marko says no.<br />
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BRILLIANT Josie moment. She smilingly asks him if he enjoyed it out there and he gives her back the full Uncle Vanya Doing A Degree In Computers. I'm definitely beginning to feel sorry for Josie. She is so charmingly upbeat, and she's getting a hell of a lot of reticent gloom in return.<br />
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Runthrough of the judges: you know who they are.<br />
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Miss Egypt now, and there's a smashing Joserview about the politics in Egypt and how it affects her as singer of 'Western' music. Could have seen more of that, particularly since she seems to have a fiery, witty personality. Rehearsal footage gives us a Baltsaish, Bartolish Habanera, and that's what she starts with- a lightish voice whose personality reveals itself in a rich, glassy chest voice, and in performance. I like this singer a lot: the voice is on the ok side of great, but she knows what she's doing, and she'll delve into chest at the drop of a hat. I'm clearly in a perverse mood tonight: as an instrument, she has nothing like the first two, but she engages me more than either of them did. She's in trouble careerwise, though; the bottom of her voice suggests Carmen and Eboli, the middle and top veer closer to the -inas. Some Stolz now, and it's not an aria I know, but it's his attempt to have a piece of the Gypsy song action and therefore sounds like the exact midpoint between Saffi's aria and that Noel Coward song. El Hadidi gives it all the 'Hey ha heia ho' with some gusto, and luxuriates below the stave, but she's not going to win. I think she's smashing, but I can't see a rep for her; she'd tear herself apart as Amneris or Azucena, and I don't think she has the middle or top for the lighter mezzo rep. The most immediate performer of the night though, by a country mile. Karneus- who is as utterly lovely and sweet as you would have guessed from that Non Piu Mesta- is utterly lovely and sweet. Mary is a bit damning; too damning. We're no longer friends, Mary and I, especially after El Hadidi proves as much of a bundle of fun in her post-show Joserview as she promised to be in her VT.<br />
<br />
Now, the Italian mezzo. I was hoping for a new Cossotto, but she's doing 'Svegliatevi nel core' in her rehearsal so I guess we have to wait. I'll spare you the painful football-related VT with Josie. As someone who loves both opera and football, I should have been the core audience but... no.<br />
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Ooh, Parto Parto to start, and already you can tell she's good. This is a hideously overcrowded fach, though- she's up against Bartoli and Fink and Garanca and DiDonato and Connolly and and and. She has a lovely basic sound, and is a communicative performer, so it's all up to the twizzles at the end. She nails number one... sails through number two... and although number three sounds and looks effortful, it's all there. And she ends it with a brilliant blue steel look, intense as anything. I don't think she'll win- I don't think she'll even win tonight- but she'll work.<br />
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Another Sesto next, and PLEASE, BBC editors, can we NOT start in the middle section of a da capo? It makes no sense musically and does no favours to the singer. Not that Castellano needs it, because this reveals that her role models are more on the Bonitatibus side of things. Like I said, she'll work. She's already a fully formed Baroque mezzo and you'd be more than happy to find her as your Sesto (either) or Ruggiero or Amastre or, I dunno, Ercole sul Termodonte.<br />
<br />
She's finishing with Cenerentola, which is interesting- I wouldn't have had her down as a Rossinian, because she didn't toss off the end of the Clemenza aria in the manner of people like Murray or Berganza who are on their way to bel canto. (Yeah, Murray and Berganza. Bite me). And, so it proves. The fireworks at the end are accurate but careful, and who wants fireworks to be careful? Bit of a panic first time she gets to the top, too, but she makes up for it subsequently. She gave a smashing account of herself in the Rossini, but I want to hear her sing loads and loads of Handel and Viv, please.<br />
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Karneus found the coloratura to be too effortful, which is the first even slightly critical comment she's made all night.<br />
<br />
And now a bloody smashing Joserview- with our South African bass, who is studying at the Met, and sings a stunning Yeletsky in his VT- but he has a real story to tell; watching Cardiff in his township changed his life. Josie lets him tell his story and hey, that's what those VTs should be for.<br />
<br />
And then he ruins it all by- sigh- singing You Know What. Although he is MUCH better than Mr Russia earlier, I.. I just... PLEASE DON'T DO IT ANY MORE. Apart from anything, it's not much of a test of a voice. It's solely a performance piece, and it belongs in its opera where it works very nicely; anyone who sings it in concert ends up trying too hard. Qave shows every sign of being proper ace, but then we get to the 'jokes' and although he doesn't do anything wrong, everyone in the known world wants to shoot themselves a little bit. And you know what? All you find out from the end of the aria is whether someone's diction is any good, which is way down the list of criteria for a great actor-singer. Anyway, all moaning aside, he did it very well. But STOP, EVERYONE.<br />
<br />
Then we get to see what a good singer he is- his Yeletsky has legato for days, even though a bit of phlegm finds its way in here and there, and the breath isn't all it could be. Agh, as I typed that a crack came in, which I think may have been a breath/phlegm combo. Like Mr Croatia, he's hugely promising but not ready. Oops, more phlegmy cracks at the end. I think we may have a smoker here. Karneus calls him elegant, which is true, but we get more phlegm at the beginning of his last aria (Maravilla? I claim ignorance, shamefacedly) and it continues. Lovely tone, legato, but rattles and husk behind it all. He's talented, but he ain't ready.<br />
<br />
Oh: he's ill. Discard the above. What rotten luck. <br />
<br />
Filler again, before the results. Even though we're not live, we're having filler again. Please don't do this all week (they're going to do this all week). As Petroc wraps it up, he reminds us that tonight's winner may not make the final. I kind of have to agree. I can't see a winner here; of the whole thing, I mean. Celeng will win the heat.<br />
<br />
Pointless recap, then we're told that Celeng has won, which she deserved. I still have that odd reticence about her, though. And I'm going to do a big divface to the person who (remember the potential spoiler?) told me she was like Zampieri.<br />
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jondrytayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07014577384156823525noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5295296336756910308.post-3797074257192578002013-06-18T21:02:00.003+01:002013-06-19T14:28:11.707+01:00Blogged myself, have you?<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-US">Well, if anything was going to get me back
to this blog, it was Cardiff, wasn’t it? It’s the one ‘tradition’ that seems to
have sprung up round here (yes, I know that ‘twice’ doesn’t really count as a
tradition, but shut up and leave me alone, you’re not my real dad). Anyway, I
blogged the last two Cardiff competitions ‘as live’ and since I’ve not been
here for a bit, tonight’s first round (which actually took place last night)
seems a good time to return.</span></span>
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-US">I mean, I doubt there’s anyone still here.
It was October the last time I put interpen to cyberpaper. I’m not really sure
why the gap has been so long- I’ve been busy dahn the Nash and that, but I
don’t think that’s the only or even the main reason for radio silence. On occasion
I’ve felt sufficiently hyped-up about something to start a blog post, and then
almost immediately have felt a kind of resignation about it. ‘Do you really
think someone hasn’t already said that better?’ says the
anger-or-devil-I-haven’t-decided on my shoulder as I start to spout off about
equal marriage or food banks or online etiquette or whatever it is I’ve started
to type. The result is that I tend to find myself halfway through some
tortuously made point and then give up and go off to make a pie* or something.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-US">But no pie here tonight, no siree. Tonight
we have the sacred responsibility to blog-as-live the first heat of a
competition which has genuine starmaking potential- after all, our last two
winners, Valentina Nafornita and Elena Scherbachenko are never off our screens,
right? They are so world famous that they dine solely on swan and whole
airports are cleared whenever they even <i>ponder </i></span><span lang="EN-US">going
anywhere.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-US">Heavy-handed sarcasm aside, it is tempting
to wonder if Cardiff still has the clout it once did. Scherbachenko has
certainly made a career on the back of her victory- singing at the Met, La
Scala, and as an apparently disappointing Mimi at Glyndebourne- but may not be
quite where she’d have imagined, four years on. Nafornita has been even quieter
(by which I mean I’ve not heard what she’s up to: she could be alternating
Turandot and Siegfried somewhere) and even trusty old Operabase can’t tell me
what she’s been doing, although someone on Parterre mentioned something about a
Mimi somewhere. It’s this kind of rigorous research that keeps people flocking
back here, I know.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-US">At any rate, it seems to me that this has
become more of a rubber-stamp for singers already on their way (Scherbachenko
had sung Tatiana at the Bolshoi before entering, ffs) than the opportunity to
uncover untried youngsters that it was, or at least felt like, back in the day.
That I have heard of at least two of this year’s entrants- and one, Jamie
Barton, is doing well enough to need the boost of this competition precisely
not at all- may be a sign of the times. Or just a completely unsubstantiated
theory, but hey.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Barton’s
certainly someone I’m looking forward to hearing and seeing. A
friend-of-the-blog has also had encouraging things to say about another
Katherine Broderick, the English entrant who has been the last two Donne Anna
at ENO (check THAT out for a precious compound plural) so hopes are high where
she’s concerned.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-US">Where hopes aren’t high: The Joserview, if
she’s back. It’s not her fault but I’ve banged on before about how Josie d’Arby
is always determined (or briefed) to get contestants to say that they never had
any interest in being a boring old opera singer and they’re only here because
their dream job of space astronaut/ ice-skating trampolinist/ porn fluffer etc
etc etc fell through for some reason. It’s always time which would be better
spent seeing a bit more of their actual performance. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-US">Where hopes also aren’t high: that young
girl from Verona, who wants to live in this dream, per M. Gounod. If I hear one
more ‘Je Veux Vivre’ I’ll give her the bloody poison meself. Having said which,
that was just 2011’s irritant. Maybe there will be an irritating glut of a
different aria this year (last time, the Vespri Bolero was getting close). It
could be that, by Friday, I’ll be saying ‘If I hear ‘Ich sah’ das kind’ or ‘To
this we’ve come’ ONE MORE TIME... Except that won’t happen.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-US">Final worry: someone, one night, will
attempt some coloratura they have no business going near, in the manner of the
crazed Chilean Semiramide of 2011. To be honest, I’m not dreading this one, so
much as secretly hoping for it.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-US">Also, I hope the judges are sat on big red
leather swivel chairs, have to press a button to turn round for any singer they
like, and join in the arias showoffishly in the manner of Jessie J and Danny
The Nodding Irish Twat.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-US">So, preamble over, here we go!</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-US">…with a heat which has already been
spoilered for me. I will attempt to keep things tense and unpredictable but
could quite easily lapse into ‘grumpily sulky’ at any moment. I hate it when
it’s not a surprise. Humph.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-US">Titles: the music is seemingly borrowed
from one of the darker chase scenes from a later Harry Potter- stabbing chords,
mumbling chorus, you know the deal. We are flying around Cardiff on our
Quidditch sticks, while MASSIVE OPERA SINGERS are projected onto public
buildings, SINGING. Soundlessly, of course. Drama! Excitement! No Actual Opera!</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-US">Nice intro with Dame K and- look!- there’s
Nafornita, telling a sweet but slightly random story about how when she won,
her sister told her she had won. So that’s nice. Then we cut to Petroc
Trelawny, with a salt-and-pepper beard like a footballer who has just taken the
decision to become a manager. He introduces Mary King, always a worthwhile
panelist, and David Pountney, who was Killing Opera with Big Machines when I
was a teenager, if you believed the press (he has since handed over the job to
Robert Lepage, I hear). Then a quick Josie before we meet the panel and I cry a
little over how old Neil Shicoff is now.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-US">And there are going to be some
competitors! Chinese tenor Yi Li, the aforementioned Broderick and Barton,
Marko Mimica from OH HELLO HERE’S MY PHONE NUMBER, um, I mean Croatia, and,
starting us off, Kiwhan Sim, a Korean bass with hipster specs. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-US">Oh, babies! I had forgotten the bit where
the competitors show Josie their babies. Last time it was on their phones, this
time on iPads. In 2015 we’ll just get snaps of opera singers’ babies beamed
into our heads by the power of holograms and thought. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-US">He’s giving us ‘Non piu andrai’, which is
close to being on the forbidden list, but he’s got a lovely rich voice and a
certain amount of personality- although ‘smiling and hands in pockets’ isn’t
quite enough for this most misleadingly playful of arias. Yep, as the aria goes
on I have found myself checking the earlier part of this post for typos, which
isn’t a great start. I think he’d probably make a decent job of the whole part,
but he was just a little dullish in concert.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-US">Bit of Bizet, now. I’ve been to Perth many
times, which has affected my take on his opera about the Jolie Fille therefrom.
I always picture her in the grim shopping centre, flicking chips about outside
River Island. Anyway, this is a nice piece of singing, and yes, I said nice,
and yes, that’s double-edged. He’s not doing anything wrong, and really the voice
is lovely, but he doesn’t compel. He’s in a wee bit of trouble at the bottom of
his range, too.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-US">We are now getting La Calunnia, which
Petroc informs us is sung by Dr Bartolo. I’m sure there’ll be some kind of
‘spot the deliberate mistake' competition, later, right? I mean they wouldn’t
get something that easy that wrong in an actual written link, would they?
Personality again from Sim, but that equates to the same twinkly smile and
relaxed body language we had in Non Piu Andrai. His Basilio (you’re welcome,
Petroc) and his Figaro are the same person. Shame he doesn’t manage the ‘…far
crepar’ section in one breath, but then we can’t all be Giorgio Tozzi. In fact,
hardly any of us can.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-US">‘Lovely voice, not enough character’ say
Pountney and King, agreeing with me, because I’m right.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-US">Eh? What? There are going to be two South
Koreans? That hasn’t happened before. I mean with any country, not just SK.
Seoul singers!</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-US">Katherine Broderick now, who by the sound
of her VT has a slightly stressed dramatic soprano and a glorious folk voice.
She’s starting with ‘O Sachs mein freund’, which is a canny choice for a baby
dramatic and gives her the chance to impress on the first phrase, which she
duly does, opening up to a slightly unlovely but very secure top. She’s an impressive
actor too, doing less externally than Sim ever did but inhabiting her character
more fully. She means it.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-US">Now we get (some of) Tatiana, courtesy of a
rather brutal edit. I know it’s too long an aria to show in full, but we did
crash in a little ( at ‘Drugoi!’). For once, I’d be tempted to edit shorter on
this one, and just give us the ‘guardian angel’ bit- an easier in. Wait, I’m
supposed to be talking about the singing, which is rather lovely. The slight
glinty edge on her tone which wasn’t quite radiant enough for Eva is very
suitable for Tatiana. It’s a rather Russian-sounding voice all round, in fact,
I’d say. And again, her acting is very touching. Look, I’m not going to say
‘innig’ because I’m not a tosser, but you get me, yes? And as the climax of the
aria proves, she can open up the throttle when she needs to be, um ‘outig’,
too. She gets a huge ovation and a justified one, and certainly puts Sim’s
performance into perspective when it comes to the overall standard. I knew I’d
like her, because friend-of-the-blog does, and he’s right about everything
except Scotto. King and Pountney agree with me AGAIN. Buy an opinion of your
own, hey, guys?</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-US">Quick break to interview Karita Mattila,
looking not unlike a lively Come Dine With Me host, about what it was like to
win 30 years ago, and then a few moments of the spectacular Or Sai Chi L’Onore
she won it with. You just sit back and think DAMN, she’s good.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-US">The next competitor is Chinese tenor Yi Li,
who stands at the piano as Josie sits at it. He should call her bluff and ask
her to play Erlkonig. Anyway, we get a double Joserview whammy as they talk
about how he likes basketball and has babies. So, he’s doing Pour Mon Ame,
which could be fun. Can we all count to nine?</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-US">His French is… well, it nearly is, anyway.
And we’re not at the Cs yet but his top is already sounding like it could do
with a little WD40. Ok, here goes- 1 and 2 ok, 3 worrying, 4 consolidatory, 5
and 6 all throat and hope, 7 dangerous, 8 carcrash/falsetto, 9 ok but pulling a
great deal of husk into the voice as he gets off it.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-US">I mean, call me cheap for focusing on the
Cs, but really, why try a freak show with 9 when you could impress us with the
one or two you actually have in your locker? Petroc consoles with the ‘he was
great in rehearsals’ thing, which<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>may be true but is, of course, in the last analysis no help.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-US">‘E la solita storia’ now, which is not
necessarily the kind of rep I would have expected from him (although a snatch
of ‘Werther’ in the rehearsal VT suggests that he may be undecided too) and
this is much more successful, plangent and sweet. He’s an uninteresting
performer, though, when he’s not attempting the circus tricks. Broderick’s way
in front so far.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-US">Oh, here is the Werther. As you can tell, I
wasn’t exactly clamouring to hear another aria from this guy. But this, as with
the Cilea, just serves to show what a batshit crazy choice the Fille aria was.
This is a pleasant, mildly sappy lyric tenor. If he’s going to do Donizetti, he
might want to check out ‘Una Furtiva Lagrima’ for the time being. There’s a
reason Juan Diego gets all the Florez. (I’m here all week).</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-US">Petroc is unusually hardline about the daft
rep choice, and Pountney points out how nervous the climax of the Werther was-
still worrying about the Fille aria. Backstage, Li beamingly tells Josie that
he thought it went well, then lets out a bubbly giggle “Some notes not good”.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-US">More Harry Potter drama music as Mary King
tells us where some singers come from, and then we’re onto Barton, who I have
been looking forward to hearing as much as I’ve been looking forward to seeing
that Croatian fella. Barton’s established enough to get a one-shot to camera
rather than a Joserview, and she comes across as likeable and intelligent.
There’s some pretty exciting rehearsal footage- this is A Voice.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-US">*presses button and turns round*</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-US">Oh. Agh. Jamie’s frock is… gowny. She’s a
good looking woman but she’s fallen into that fatal way of thinking that if one
is a larger lady, One Must Wear Grecian Draperies. A belt detail from the Katie
Price Diamonique Collection doesn’t help.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-US">But it matters not a whit, because this is
real singing. ThemezzoariafromGiocondawhichisn’tasgoodastheotherone isn’t my
favourite aria in the repertory, but she just EATS it. This is by a mile the
most finished, polished, secure and glamorous singing we’ve heard tonight.
She’s following it with something from I HATE ELGAR’S VOCAL MUSIC HATE IT HATE
IT HOW CAN A GREAT COMPOSER BE SO FUCKING STODGY? Sea Pictures which she does
an equally sumptuous job with, although- and you may not know this- I’m not a
huge fan of Elgar’s writing for the solo voice.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-US">So, this woman has essentially blown me
away with two pieces of music I don’t like, while wearing a dress nicked from
the TOWIE production of Antigone. I think that means she’s good.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-US">‘O mon Fernand’ to close, making her three
for three on rep I’m not wild about, but again this is lovely. And- other
competitors take note- the three pieces she’s chosen require different tone
colour, different interpretational choices, different vocal personalities from
each other. This is how to impress. Sounding alternately like Horne and like
Verrett doesn’t do any harm, either. That good. But I want to see her work with
a provocative, encouraging stage director- she has that School of Isokoski
tendency to stand and sing with an unchanging slight perturbed frown, so I’m
not sure how much of an actor she’d be in-house. Clear winner, though, even
before she ends the aria with a ‘you wanna know if I’ve got a top? I’ve got a
top’ moment. And she’s just so charming and so sweet in her interview and
basically I love her.</span></span></div>
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<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-US">So, speaking of people I love, here comes
Marko from Croatia and he’s really rather a good looking fellow. There’s a
weird ‘Look Around You’ style opening to his interview with Josie (to be fair,
she was damned good in that, which is what probably reminded me) where she says
‘lights, camera, action’ into different cameras because he likes acting or
films or something. He lives in Berlin. Hey! Marko! I LOVE Berlin! Let’s go for
a drink in Berlin sometime!</span></span></div>
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<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-US">A ropey start for Attractive Marko, though-
some nervous Handel where he’s not in control of his breathing at all- ends of
lines are being puffed out with the hope that some sound will come with them.
It’s a beautiful voice but all he’s really conveying is worry. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-US">Good LORD, he’s doing Tu sul Labbro next,
because nothing follows Handel like Big Verdi. He does a good job here- it
really is a lovely sound- but he’s not a true bass so it’s compromised a little
and the end is more a low hum than anything else. And, alas, the worried
expression has hung over from his Handel.</span></span></div>
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<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-US">And indeed, we get it in his Semiramide
aria too, but it’s otherwise much more successful. He wants to be careful of
clasping his hands so hard in front of him though- surely that amount of
upper-body tension can’t be helping. But this is very good, nuanced, shaded
singing and at the end of the aria proper, he reveals the top of his voice to
be totally, unequivocally baritonal- and a rather good baritone at that. Once
again, poor rep choice has skewered a good singer. But we’ll hear more of him:
he’s only young. I’m not going to say how young because I’m in denial about the
age gap and I’m on hold to Berlin Registry Office.</span></span></div>
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<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-US">‘I wouldn’t mind having that in my company.
In my ensemble.’ say the judges, and my euphometer explodes. Twice. They also
found the Italian rep more successful than the Handel. Backstage, Marko broods
handsomely over how badly he thinks he did.</span></span></div>
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<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-US">A brief chat with Dame Kiri before the
results, doing the ‘thank you all for coming, the orchestra was lovely, the
singers were terrific, let’s have a round of applause for the bridesmaids’ bit.
Then we have a pointless ‘recap’: pointless because we get about ten seconds of
singing, which we can’t hear because Petroc and Mary are talking over it. I
don’t really understand what this filler is for: THIS IS NOT LIVE. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-US">Everyone is unanimous that Barton should
win. I’m saying nothing, because I already know, remember? Thanks a bunch,
twitter. Barton duly wins, although I’d say Broderick has a chance for the
final. The men didn’t cover themselves in glory, but Marko is a real prospect
for the future (quiet at the back), and might have been better off waiting for
Cardiff 2015.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-US">A good start, then, and we might have seen
the winner tonight. But she’s already booked to do loads of cool stuff at the
Met and elsewhere, so is that really all that exciting? Fingers crossed we get
some extraordinary 18 year old from a tiny village or something in one of the
next heats. Well, not that, but you know- maybe split the difference?</span></span></div>
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<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-US">*funnily enough, in between watching the show and typing this blog, I have also made a pie. </span></span></div>
</div>
jondrytayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07014577384156823525noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5295296336756910308.post-9752996206468866852012-10-03T23:34:00.001+01:002012-10-04T00:32:40.327+01:00Below The Line<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Sometimes, the things I post on here are so spectacularly boring that not one person is moved to leave a comment. I think of these posts as orphans, as poor changeling children staring at an unthinking world wondering what they've done wrong. So when I discovered tonight that a post on this blog- my rant about the housing association which administers my neighbour's flat, which was parochial and inconsequential even by my standards- had, four months on, garnered a reply, I was overjoyed.<br />
<br />
Here's the comment:<br />
<br />
<h4>
1 comment:</h4>
<div id="Blog1_comments-block-wrapper">
<dl class="avatar-comment-indent" id="comments-block">
<dt class="comment-author " id="c7785382471467196036">
<a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=5295296336756910308" name="c7785382471467196036"></a>
<div class="avatar-image-container avatar-stock">
<i><span dir="ltr"><img alt="" height="16" src="http://img1.blogblog.com/img/blank.gif" title="I'm watching you" width="16" />
</span></i></div>
<i>
I'm watching you
said...
</i></dt>
<dd class="comment-body" id="Blog1_cmt-7785382471467196036"><i>
get a job and stop wanking off your neighbour
</i></dd><dd class="comment-footer"><i><span class="comment-timestamp">
<a href="http://notsowunderbar.blogspot.com/2012/07/genesis-housing-and-prisoner-of-azkaban.html?showComment=1349296423517#c7785382471467196036" title="comment permalink">
3 October 2012 21:33
</a>
</span></i>
</dd></dl>
</div>
Hi, 'I'm watching you'! Thanks for the advice. I have a couple of thoughts about it which I know you'll welcome.<br />
<br />
Firstly, that username! C'mon, buddy, you and I know that you mean it in a benevolent, 'got your back' kind of way. But just because we both see you as my guardian angel doesn't, sadly, mean that anyone else will. This is the internet, and tone is very difficult to read. Some people might take 'I'm watching you' as a pathetic attempt to be intimidating and threatening, which I know was the very last thing on your mind.<br />
<br />
Now then. You advise that I '<i>get a job</i>'. Sometimes that's exactly what I want to do, too! The freelance existence can be very up and down, and there are scary times when my phone isn't ringing. Fortunately, that hasn't been the case at all this year. In fact, what with corporate work, voiceovers, writing commissions, producing radio and going to auditions, sometimes I think I might have a few too many jobs to deal with! I just think it would be ill-advised for me to get another job on top of the ones I already have, not to mention that 39 is quite late in life to attempt to acquire a new skill!<br />
<br />
The next part is a little confusing to me. You advise me to '<i>stop wanking off my neighbour</i>'. That's initially confusing as both my neighbours are female and 'wanking off' is more usually used about a man. Maybe it was a slip of the keyboard and you meant 'fingering'? Probably an easy enough mistake to make, especially since I get this funny idea that you haven't yet performed either activity with another human. Anyway, it's rather baffling since I've barely even spoken to my neighbours, so they might be a little surprised if I were to attempt to take things 'to the next level' in the way you suggest.<br />
<br />
Given all this, I wonder if you might have been having a go at some 'banter' and maybe even implying that I might be homosexual, which is always very 'jokes', isn't it? If only you'd read the long, ranty post that appears immediately above the one you were moved to comment on (it's below this one, in case you have any trouble with the difference between 'up' and 'down'). In that post I make it quite clear that I find that particular lifestyle so very unembarrassing that I've enthusiastically adopted it myself, so as banter it doesn't really work. Try mentioning weight or baldness in future. I'm much more uncomfortable with those topics so there's every chance you might score a direct hit!<br />
<br />
Are you a fan of Hue and Cry at all? They were big in the 80s so may have been before your time. The reason I mention them is that the chorus of their biggest hit, 'Labour of Love' starts with the line 'Gonna withdraw my labour' and the way Pat Kane sings it, it does sound a little bit like 'Gonna wank off my neighbour'. Might it perhaps have been that you were thinking of? If so, I applaud the breadth of your cultural knowledge but it might be slightly too niche a joke to resonate with a wider audience.<br />
<br />
Anyway, thanks for your input. But please, please don't feel the need to help me again. I know internet time can be very precious and next time mum and dad leave the parental controls off, it might be a better use of your time to download some music or consume some pornography.<br />
<br />
So, toodle pip for now. Keep watching!</div>
jondrytayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07014577384156823525noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5295296336756910308.post-86058650160665899892012-07-26T04:30:00.001+01:002012-07-26T05:16:23.755+01:00Enough with the semantics already, aka Well Done Scotland<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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</style><span lang="EN-US">I lost my virginity illegally.</span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US">Actually, that’s not quite true. By the
time I had my first proper sexual encounter with another man I had already had
two long-term, sexual relationships with girlfriends. Proper ones, pregnancy
scares and all. I first put my [redacted] into a lady’s [redacted] at the
red-blooded age of sixteen, and jolly nice it was too. So nice, I spent the
next couple of years repeating the experience.</span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US">But nonetheless, I had always been pretty
sure that I was much more interested in the male downstairs than the female equivalent. So
my first experience with a man- which involved nothing more graphic than
getting a grab of another fella’s [redacted] and jiggling it around for a bit- was
the moment when I truly felt I’d crossed the irrevocable border into adulthood.
It was at that moment that I felt I was doing what I needed, wanted, was meant
to do, rather than what I thought I ought to and hoped I could.</span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US">I was 18, and he was 23. We were couple of kids,
I realise now. But the thing is, in 1991 it was against the law. My cackhanded handjob
was something for which the unlucky recipient could have been prosecuted, and
labelled the worst kind of criminal.</span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US">At the time, it didn’t bother me over
much. I came from a loving, liberal family. I was at a university where homosexuality
wasn’t so much accepted as positively encouraged, as all of our nation’s most
famous spies could attest. I knew that I could fool around with as many men as
I wanted and nobody would cart me off to chokey. I had a
<i>vague</i> anger that 18-year-old women all over the UK were
doing exactly the same thing without the danger that their partners would be
labelled paedos, and I <i>vaguely</i> wanted it to change, but I
had a <i>vague</i> idea that you Can’t Fight City Hall, and that
Things Would Change Eventually.</span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US">I was the ‘innocent party’ in other
criminal sexual encounters by the time my second year of studies was over. I
hope you won’t be too shocked to hear this, but I actually slept with a COUPLE
MORE men who were OVER TWENTY ONE when I was NINETEEN or TWENTY.</span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US">It astonishes me, and angers me, now that
I’m 39, that those men were risking prison. But it didn’t particularly anger
me at the time. That was just the way things were. When I was 21, the law changed. The age of gay consent was
lowered to 18, which handily decriminalised-in-retrospect anything I’d done
with those predatory 21 year olds. It was at that point that I started to get a
better handle on this whole equality thing. 18 wasn’t enough. I had no desire
to sleep with a sixteen year old, and nor did any of my straight friends. But
the fact that they were hypothetically allowed to do so, and I hypothetically
wasn’t, began to stick in my craw a little. </span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US">And yet, and yet. There were always greater
injustices, things that it was more pressing to be crosser about. I am a first-world, educated, middle-class white male. The entire
structure of the world was still,
unfairly, skewed in my favour, so it felt selfish to be bothered by that
little, niggling inequality. I sat back, secure in the knowledge that my
sensible, liberal nation would eventually equalise the age of consent. In the
meantime, it would be greedy and singleissueish to shout too loudly about how I
wasn’t properly equal. And anyway, in 2000 the age of consent was equalised in
the UK, so it was all fine.</span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US">Except that it wasn’t. By 2000, I was 27.
My friends were starting to marry each other. I became increasingly aware that
I didn’t have that option, and wondered why that was OK. Even at that point,
the language of equality didn’t enter my brain. ‘Marriage is for straight
people’ I thought. ‘I don’t want to interfere with that. But it would be nice
to have legal partnership rights’. Can you believe that? Here I was, an out and
proud gay man, who was AGAINST what I would have called 'gay' marriage, or, if not against it, didn’t
think it was important enough to make a fuss about. Give us the same <i>legal</i>
rights, I thought, and the rest is just words.</span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US">When civil partnerships were brought into
the UK, in 2004- I was thirty-one years old at this point- I thought. ‘Phew. No
more fighting needed. We’re equal now. The people who are arguing about
marriage are being unnecessarily silly about a word. Equal rights are about the
law, not about semantics’.</span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US">Today, a part of my country- not,
unfortunately, the part of my country that I live in- has accepted that there’s
no reason why we need a different form of words for two gay people who want to
profess their commitment to each other. And I’m ashamed that I ever thought it
was a fight not worth fighting. Because, over the last few years, I’ve heard all the arguments against equal
marriage, and realised that they’re all pathetic.</span><br />
<br />
<span lang="EN-US">Nobody’s straight marriage is made any less
committed, or any less wonderful, or any less of a miracle, or any less
anything, by equal marriage. Marriage doesn’t belong to any religion, because
civil marriage has existed in most nations on earth for decades, across faiths. Two atheists can marry, without marriage being devalued (and I know this: I've sung a Catholic hymn in a C of E church at the wedding of two non-believers).
Come to that, various major faiths have, in their time, married grown men to
prepubescent girls, which I cite not as an attack on religion but as a rebuttal
of the ‘tradition’ argument. In fact- and I use the word ‘fact’ advisedly-
marriage, throughout history, has been the word we use to describe two people
who make a public, binding commitment to each other. That’s why it’s not a
pointless, ‘semantic’ argument. Religion, and tradition, don’t own the word
marriage- people do. Every age decides what the word means, in law, in practice, and in love.</span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US">So, yeah, I am passionately, fervently in
favour of equal marriage. </span><span lang="EN-US">There are other, more pressing injustices to get
angry about: right, let's do that, but let's not allow whatabouttery to
take our eye off this particular ball</span><span lang="EN-US">. I am the man who wasn’t that fussed that my first
proper sexual experience was illegal. I am the man who fell in love with a 21 year old
when I was 20, and wasn’t angry that he was risking prison. I am the man who
thought that civil partnerships were enough. But now, here, in our 2012 world, I am also the man who is baffled that some people can marry and I can't.</span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US">I don’t want to use the emotive language of
‘us and them’, especially since more of my straight friends are passionate
about this issue than my gay friends. But it’s time, now. It’s time that ‘we’
have what ‘they’ have. And if you find those inverted commas divisive, you’ve
just made my point for me. </span></div>
</div>jondrytayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07014577384156823525noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5295296336756910308.post-85344814709771603602012-07-12T00:05:00.000+01:002012-07-12T00:31:13.332+01:00Genesis Housing and the Prisoner of Azkaban<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">The fact that my upstairs neighbour had her flat broken into and her keys stolen will be of no interest to you. I understand that. I'm not going to revisit the story yet again. I've already risked losing every twitter follower I've ever amassed by doing a near-rant on the subject.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">On the other hand, the attitude and behaviour of the housing association who act for my neighbour's landlord have stunk. They've been unhelpful, entitled, incompetent, obstructive, and downright rude, particularly to my flatmate and to my other neighbour. And I DO want as many people as possible to know about that.</span><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br /></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">So, I've had an idea. I'm going to get google to help me out*</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">JUSTIN BIEBER NAKED (Genesis Housing is staffed by ill-mannered malcontents!)</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br /></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">ADORABLE PICTURES OF KITTENS (Tempted to work for/ rent to/ rent from Genesis Housing? Don't! You'll be surrounded by uselessness and wankerdom!)</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br /></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">FIFTY SHADES OF GREY VOLUME 4 (Genesis Housing treats its clients and their neighbours with contempt!)</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br /></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">HOT XXX CELEB PICS (Genesis Housing responds to legitimate complaints with snotty emails saying 'this issue has now been resolved' when it hasn't!)</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">HIGGS-BOSON WIKI (Do you know what a Genesis Housing employee said when we asked them to understand that their actions had made our flat unsafe? She said 'No, I can't understand that, I live in a house') </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br /></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">LONDON OLYMPICS 2012 (...will be a model of efficiency when compared to Genesis Housing!)</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br /></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">HOUSING ASSOCIATIONS LONDON (Avoid Genesis Housing at all costs!)</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"> </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Sorry if I've disappointed any new visitors. On the other hand, you know now what awful people Genesis Housing are. So, every cloud...</span><br />
<br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">*<i>before I get lots of emails from SEO experts, I know this won't really work. I mean, I'm basically joking. Apart from the bits about how Genesis PERFECT POACHED EGG RECIPE Housing is evil. Those bits are deadly serious </i></span></div>jondrytayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07014577384156823525noreply@blogger.com48tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5295296336756910308.post-71037893562410234422012-05-31T00:07:00.000+01:002012-05-31T16:10:43.850+01:00Here, today.<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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</style><span lang="EN-US">The one thing I always said when I started
writing this blog was that I’d never, ever review theatre. Far too dangerous-
as an actor myself, I’d always be making all kinds of icky quasi-moral choices
that I didn’t need to make. What if I gave a rave to a director I’d like to
work with and it ended up looking like sycophancy? What if I saw a mate being
dreadful?</span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US">Well, rules are made to be broken and I
hope you’ll understand why I felt the need to share some thoughts about Polly
Findlay’s devastating production of my dad’s translation of ANTIGONE, which
opened at the Olivier tonight.</span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US">It’s become a cliché to talk about how the
greatest Greek plays effortlessly bridge the 2500 year gap since they were
written, but my goodness this play is about things which are in our newspapers
daily. Just look at this week’s news: ANTIGONE has something to say about
Syria. About Leveson. About Charles Taylor’s imprisonment and Julian Assange’s
extradition. About austerity and plan B. I’m pretty sure I could find a link
with the French Open, too (Serena and Venus have something of Attic Tragedy
about them) but I don’t want to labour the point. It would probably be
labouring the point, too, to point out that in my first two paragraphs I used
the phrases ‘moral choices’ and ‘rules are made to be broken’. There are
Antigones everywhere, every day.</span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US">But it wasn’t the 2500 year gap that was
uppermost in my mind. It was the nine year one, and the twenty-eight year one.
Making no apologies for partiality, the crowning glory of this production is
dad’s extraordinarily tight, lucid, poetic, clear and theatrical translation.
He started work on it in 1984, directed it for telly the same year, and died in 2003. It's an old translation, by anyone's lights; we're as far away now from when he wrote it as he was then from Bill Haley and Hungary and Suez. But we don't even need to do that striking piece of maths. When he died, never mind
when the translation was written, we lived in a very different society. </span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US">We were at war, just, when he died- but dad
never lived to see the Messianic, god-told-me-to-do-it Blair, just the slick
politico who smoothly paved the way for invasion. Dad was dead long before
London exploded in 2005, when those four kids- Antigones themselves, or maybe
Creons?- strapped bombs to their chests in the name of what they thought was
right. And that means that he lived and died in a Britain where our civil
liberties were never a major issue. He never worried about being scrutinized by
government, or having his emails read, or leaving voicemails for friends that
would be listened to by journalists. He didn’t see our current government,
which when it is caught out in lies tells us loftily and with a sense of
entitlement that those lies don’t matter. And yet in his interpretation
Sophocles’ words, heard in 2012, don’t sound like they were written by a dead
man a lifetime ago. They sound as if they were written tomorrow.</span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US">More accurately, in this production, they
sound as if they are occurring to the actors as they say them. There’s a
freshness, a directness to the way the lines are delivered- not a moment of
‘acting’ takes place all night. Jodie Whittaker, as Antigone, manages to
radiate moral authority without ever sounding pious or preachy; there’s a
simplicity to her passionate belief in what’s right. But then, as Antigone
faces death, she pulls off a heartbreaking change of tack. When she appears in
a prisoner’s smock, allowing her possessions to be bagged and signing her own
death warrant with a flourish, she is defiant, certain. But once Creon has
pronounced exactly how she is to die, we see real life and real death flooding
into her idealistically-created moral kingdom, bringing terror with them. It’s
the difference between the way we all airily say ‘yes, I think I would have
died to defeat Nazism’ and the way we might actually behave if someone were to
have a gun at our head. Whittaker’s Antigone never loses her nobility or her
integrity- but she breaks our hearts by showing us her fear as well.</span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US">Christopher Eccleston’s Creon is daringly
undespotic, reasonable even. He has all the arguments and his refusal to bury
Polynices because of the message it would send is hugely modern- it reminds us
that we have somehow degenerated into a society where the PR implications of a
decision have become more important than the moral ones. His final
disintegration is breathtaking. We don’t get the stagey destruction of a tragic
hero (‘Howl, howl, howl, howl, howl’ and all that) we get something smaller,
more honest, a man who isn’t even close to processing what has happened to him.
At the end of the play, this Creon knows nothing, except that it’s all his
fault.</span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US">But it’s invidious to focus on Whittaker
and Eccleston, outstanding though they are. This is a supremely good ensemble.
I could write a paragraph on the excellence of the Haemon- here a bright,
unworldly public schoolboy who is too clever and too young for his own good- or
the brilliant Soldier and Messenger, or the show-stopping Tieresias, or the
stoically silent and heartrending Eurydice. One of the incidental irritants of being an actor is that
when you go to the theatre, there’s usually at least one performance which
makes you think ‘Nah. He’s not as good as me. Every line he says is going to
annoy me from now on. In fact I’ll probably be trying out my own line readings
in my head after everything he says’. None of that here, no distractions at
all, in fact. I was in the unusual audience-member position of being entirely
immersed in the world of the play from its first moment to its last.</span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US">Of the production itself- set. costume,
directorial decisions- I don’t want to say too much, because I hate reviews
which leave you with no reason to see the actual show. You may, however, be
unsurprised to hear that I thought they were all ace.</span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US">So now, it’s over to the inky scribblers to
pronounce on the success or failure of this production. (I was sat next to one,
and in front of another, of our most respected critics and can I just say at
this point, gentlemen, that you should A: clap properly and B: stay till the
end of the curtain call. It’s only a few hand bangs and about 45 seconds out of
your very important lives, and it’s also only common fucking courtesy). The
initial signs are that the notices are going to be good. But that doesn’t
matter, because tonight something bigger than any review happened. Tonight a
man who died 2500 years ago, and a man who died 9 years ago, got together with
some actors and a director and a designer and a crew, and told us about a
society neither of them ever saw, but which both of them understand. </span></div>
</div>jondrytayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07014577384156823525noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5295296336756910308.post-79770644945953658712012-03-10T13:08:00.002+00:002012-03-10T13:10:36.779+00:00What I wrote.<span style="font-style:italic;">"Dear Mike Freer,<br /><br />As one of your constituents, I am writing to express my deep concern<br />about the Health and Social Care Bill currently before parliament. I'm<br />sure you'll have seen this article from the BMJ:<br /><br /><a href="http://www.allysonpollock.co.uk/administrator/components/com_article/attach/2012-03-08/BMJ_2012_Pollock_HealthSocialCareBill.pdf">http://www.allysonpollock.co.uk/administrator/components/com_article/attach/2012-03-08/BMJ_2012_Pollock_HealthSocialCareBill.pdf</a><br /><br />The Royal College of GPs, the Royal College of Physicians, the Faculty<br />of Public Health, the Royal College of Nursing, and the rest, are all<br />against the bill. They believe it will harm patient care. They're<br />correct.<br /><br />I know that, as a Conservative, you'll be in favour of the bill. But I<br />am writing because your party cannot be allowed to pretend that these<br />are changes the public or the medical profession want. We are rightly<br />proud of our NHS and don't want to see the ground laid for its<br />privatisation. This mess of a bill is being foisted on the British<br />public against our will and when you force it through you will have<br />begun the dismantling of one of the most important pillars of British<br />Society. We will not forget.<br /><br />Yours sincerely,<br /><br />Jon Taylor</span>"<br /><br />You can write to your own MP at http://www.theyworkforyou.com/jondrytayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07014577384156823525noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5295296336756910308.post-30442848545802684172012-02-26T19:39:00.004+00:002012-02-26T19:59:30.562+00:00Later Review?The other week, I was reminded that you should never go to the theatre on a Monday. I went to see a West End comedy which featured an excellent cast being very funny for very little reward. The audience was dead, sluggish, and very much on the quiet side. But that’s what Monday audiences are like- it’s one of the rules.<br /><br />Yer Monday audience probably booked their tickets by looking at the date rather than the day, only realising they’d booked for a Monday when they saw it staring back at them from Microsoft Outlook. Most of them spent Sunday thinking ‘Oh God, work tomorrow, and then I have to go to the bloody theatre in the evening’ when all they really wanted to do was ease into the working week with a ready meal in front of America’s Next Top Model. A Monday audience is the second hardest audience to make laugh.<br /><br />The hardest, of course, is a Saturday night audience, for pretty much the opposite reason. Saturday night audiences are dangerous because they have high expectations. This is their weekend treat, and you’d bloody well better deliver on it. You’d think that would make them up for it (like their Friday counterparts, so pleased to have reached the end of the week that they’d laugh at the telephone directory) but no. For Saturday night punters the stakes are too high. They’ll only relax after the interval, once (and if) it’s been established that Someone Else Thinks It’s Good.<br /><br />The point is, after you've been doing this job for a while, you begin to notice patterns emerging. And no night of the week can compare for weirdness to that changeling child of any run, the Press Night. Last night I came across <a href="http://blogs.thestage.co.uk/shenton/2012/02/when-an-opening-night-isnt-an-opening-ni"/> Mark Shenton’s blog </a> about the current West End run of Hay Fever, whose producers have taken the interesting step of embargoing any press reviews until after the first weekend, in essence giving themselves three press nights. As Shenton says, Thursday night’s performance had all the Press Night trappings- starting half an hour early, and so on. As an audience member, I can vouch for the fact that it felt like a press night, too. During the (beautifully played) first scene there was that strange, slightly manic laughter from the Stalls that speaks of too many well-meaning friends trying to warm the audience up. There were a couple of moments, too, where a laugh seemed to take the cast slightly by surprise, another PN hallmark.<br /><br />You see, Press Nights are entirely sui generis. There is no other performance in any run which is similar. The first public performance is all about adrenalin, getting through it, easing into the sensation of being in front of an audience, focusing on the end of the show and that ‘we did it’ feeling. Further previews, if you’re lucky enough to have any, are about bedding down, getting comfortable. Then the Press Night comes along and any relaxation that might have crept into the show is subtly tempered with a very specific kind of tension. Things don’t flow quite the same way as they have done in rehearsals or previews. The shape, the feel, the timing are all a wee bit off- as if one is playing a piece one knows very well in an unfamiliar key. I’m not saying that Press Nights are bad- some of the ones I’ve been in have been excellent- I’m saying that they’re always, by their very nature, different.<br /><br />Which is why I’ve always thought it was a shame that it’s the Press Night that gives birth to the reviews. I wonder if critics assume that plays are always performed with an undercurrent of nervous tension, that no actors ever relax. How could they think otherwise, since they only ever see Press Nights? It drives me mad when a review refers to a performance being ‘uncertain’ or ‘tentative’ (my favourite example of the genre is- and this from a celebrated critic- ‘Michelle Collins, making her stage debut, seemed initially nervous’). Duh. Come back on a Wednesday matinee.<br /><br />Because that’s the thing, of course. A review of a Press Night performance can never truly represent the show that audiences will see on any other night. Of course, a show has to be ready. If an audience is paying big money for tickets then they’re entitled to a certain level of expectation. But even a couple of days after Press Night, a show tends to be a very different beast- and yet the reviews remain in suspended animation, always reflecting what happened on one night and one night alone.<br /><br />I’m sure most of the nation’s press will have been at Thursday’s performance of Hay Fever, and it’s that performance they’ll review (favourably, if they’ve any sense- it’s a delicious production). But how wonderful if the Thursday-Saturday idea being floated by Hay Fever’s producers were to catch on. The two rep seasons I’ve done never suffered from Press Night Syndrome, because you never knew when the papers were going to show up. It would be a boon for actors, reviewers and audiences alike if West End shows were afforded the same luxury.<br /><br />And as for the show I’m doing at the moment- Toxic Bankers at Leicester Square Theatre, details <a href="http://leicestersquaretheatre.ticketsolve.com/shows/126521591/events"> here</a>, well, we’ve managed to sidestep the issue entirely. Our Press Night and our first public performance are one and the same. Watch this space...<br /><br /><i>I should let you know that I’ve actually concealed a plug for the excellent show I’m currently working on somewhere in this blog post. If you managed to spot it, why not reward yourself by buying a ticket?</i>jondrytayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07014577384156823525noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5295296336756910308.post-89632921497308004012012-01-04T12:11:00.001+00:002012-01-04T12:11:25.629+00:00Call Off The Search.Bored with the ‘Hat Game’? Tired of ‘Mafia’? Too old for ‘Spin The Bottle’?<br /><br />Well, worry not, because Brede McDermott and I have invented the perfect parlour game. It needs no dice, boards, playing pieces or chips. No gambling is involved. It will not make people cry like ‘Psychiatrist’ or drunk like ‘I’ve Never’.<br /><br />Ladies and Gentlemen, I am proud to introduce to you your new favourite game, ‘The Mirror Crack’d’.<br /><br />NOTE FROM THE CREATORS: <br /><br />If you are unfamiliar with the work of Agatha Christie, spoilers may lie ahead.<br /><br />--- SPOILER EXCLUSION ZONE ---<br /><br />Welcome back, the rest of you. Right. Here are the very simple rules of the game.<br /><br />YOU WILL NEED:<br /><br />2 players, a timekeeper, and some onlookers.<br /><br />PLAYER ONE is Marina Gregg (Elizabeth Taylor, Claire Bloom, Lindsay Duncan)<br /><br />PLAYER TWO is Heather Badcock (Maureen Bennett, Judy Cornwell, Caroline Quentin)<br /><br />GAMEPLAY:<br /><br />PLAYER TWO must engage PLAYER ONE in conversation for fifteen seconds, during which PLAYER ONE is not allowed to speak. PLAYER TWO must talk about being a huge fan of PLAYER ONE, but can otherwise say whatever he or she likes, in whatever accent(s) he or she chooses. PLAYER ONE must make appropriate ‘being talked to by a fan’ faces, and maintain eye contact.<br /><br />At any point of his or her choice after the fifteen seconds, PLAYER TWO must mention the words ‘German Measles’. The moment the words ‘German Measles’ have been said, PLAYER ONE must immediately look away from PLAYER TWO, and stare at a fixed point in the distance for fifteen seconds. PLAYER ONE must at this point have a completely neutral expression- no smile, no laughing, no anger, no regret. His or her gaze must remain fixed. The neutrality of PLAYER ONE’s expression will be adjudicated by the ONLOOKERS, and the fifteen seconds timed by the TIMEKEEPER. During this time PLAYER TWO can continue speaking, saying whatever he or she wishes.<br /><br />If PLAYER ONE maintains the fixed neutral expression for fifteen seconds, the mirror is crack’d, and PLAYER ONE gains a point, and vengeance. If PLAYER ONE’s expression flickers (for example by laughing) then PLAYER TWO doesn’t drink the poisoned cocktail and gets to stay alive (and also a point).<br /><br />There are possible extra rules, but I will spare you those for now. They mainly involve poisoned hay fever remedies. <br /><br />Anyway. Try it. It is the best game ever. <br /><br />Happy New Year.jondrytayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07014577384156823525noreply@blogger.com1