Weekly Update 07/03/2022
Good evening, good evening, good evening!
I've had an exceedingly wonderful and lovely weekend because I went to see Macbeth at the Leeds Playhouse, and I can't recommend it enough - it's still running until the 22nd of March, so definitely go along and see it if you're nearby and can make the journey! They do so much great stuff with the production - the staging is great, the costuming and a lot of the small details are so impeccably done, and just the whole performance is breathtaking.
Macduff is played by a Deaf actor and Lennox then serves as his interpreter as well as his friend, and I obviously adored Macduff's performance throughout because the role is just played so viscerally, with so much passion and then so much grief and a real intensity of purpose, which I think for Macduff is so important, that wildness of person that then gets funneled into such focus on revenge as the only thing he has left? But Lennox too is so great, like, I'm always obsessed with servants and service and bonds of duty between characters, brothers-in-arms very much included, but this particular exploration of the role is great - it's great seeing Lennox and Macduff work with one another, because you see Lennox interpreting as best he can, and you see Lennox mirroring and echoing elements of Macduff's frustration when that work is interrupted or stopped, but what you also see is the close bond there, the things that Lennox doesn't want or doesn't know how to interpret and translate, especially with the death of Macduff's family. It's just... a lot, there's so much value added just by that dynamic, and that's not talking about other uses of BSL and layers of understanding and interpretation between characters in the play (Macduff's wife is also Deaf, so you see their son interpreting; the Weird Sisters also use a lot of sign, and Lady Macduff plays one of them too), and ditto the central of the Weird Sisters being blind!
I really loved watching those elements of the performance, because it seems like such a small thing, but seeing Karina Jones use her cane and the way that the cane is part of the performance as she's playing the witch, and specifically the way the cane is made able to sling over her shoulder and settle there so solidly when she then relies on someone's arm to lead her on the set and stuff, it's great. For me, there's just something... incredibly healing, I guess, but also just such a pleasure and such a relief, seeing disabled actors work and play disabled characters, because it just adds so much more depth than abled people would ever be capable of bringing to the roles even if they wanted to, because, you know. Ableds.
There's other aspects that are really wonderful - Lady Macbeth was excellent, and of course Banquo was extremely good, the tragedy was all so affecting, I loved the use of music throughout, and of course, most of all I recommend paying close attention to Ashleigh Wilder's performance, because I am biased and I love them. They're excellent in their roles, and they do such a good witch's cackle. Go and see it if you can!
Other media I really loved this weekend was:
The Duke (2020, dir. Roger Michell) - I love Roger Michell's work, and I always recommend Le Week-end, which is a movie he did ALSO with Jim Broadbent, where Jim Broadbent and his wife go on holiday, and Jeff Goldblum is like, "omg, I'm in love with you" at both of them, but is especially really into Broadbent, who's... baffled by the positive attention and so uncomfortable, and it's SO good. This movie is very different to that, but it's still Jim Broadbent being fucking great, as ever - Jim Broadbent and Helen Mirren, winning combo, and it's all about a terrible darling old man who makes a ruckus all the time out of his desire to make things good for other people, and then there's a BIG HEIST, and a lot of Northeners being glorious. At no point in this film are you expected to meaningfully give a fuck about the well-being of a posh person, and it's such a relief. It's a really funny film and I loved it to pieces.
Fanny Lye Deliver'd (2019, dir. Thomas Clay) - This movie fucks. I only threw it on because I'm hot for Charles Dance, but it's brutal and so amazing - this is set during Cromwell's reign, it's about religion and gender and duty and abuse and most of all about power and differentials in power dynamics - between couples, between people of different classes, between governments and governing bodies, and so on. I will say that it's very violent and that the gore hits suddenly and all at once, but that only adds to it, I think. It's great.
The Magdalene Sisters (2002, dir. Peter Mullan) - This is really good, obviously - it's all about three women at one of the Magdalene laundries during the height of their running. If you're not familiar with the Magdalene laundries, they were de facto detention centres for unmarried women who became pregnant or otherwise acted outside of sexual acceptability in the eyes of the Catholic church. As in any Catholic establishment that was centred around the detention of women like this in any country, they were centres for rape and sexual assault, for the trafficking and sale of stolen children, and most of all for institutional abuse and torture of the most vulnerable people in society, especially by nuns and priests. The last laundry didn't close until 1993 in Ireland. As you can imagine, this one is hard-hitting and pretty fucking harrowing, but it's very well done, and there is a grit-teeth satisfaction by the end of it, even if it can't exactly be called a happy ending.
Belle (2021, dir. Mamoru Hosoda) - This is such a delight and I loved it to pieces - it's very funny, it's very cute, and it does so much work like... exploring trauma, exploring identity and its evolution in the aftermath of trauma and the recovery there from, domestic abuse, fractious identity and the formation of identity and the ways in which we separate ourselves in different spaces, and also online dynamics and parasocial relationships online. It's cute and it's fun and it's so heartfelt, the music is great, and it's just gorgeous in so many ways, I loved it.
New Works Published
TweetFic: Like A Thief and an Assassin
A thief works under a new handler, a sexy ex-assassin. Light-hearted and sexy, lots of competence kink, mutual teasing and challenging, two experts getting the measure of one another. Age gap too!
Serial Update: An Uncommon Betrothal
Chapter Fourteen. Harry comes home to find that Alexos and Larry have disappeared; Alexos tentatively considers a friendship.