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Servant Of Two Masters
I'm really glad we booked tickets for this, it was great. My mother and I dissected it in the car on the way home. I adore anything by the Bell Shakespeare, no exception, but I don't think I liked SoTM as much as Comedy of Errors last year. Not because it wasn't Shakespeare, more because the slapstick was so relentless that after a while you grew accustomed to it and it wasn't as funny as it would have been if it had been interspersed with normality.
Darren Gilsherwhatsit (Mum stole the program so I don't know half the names) was simply amazing as Truffeldino - he's got the best sense of physical presence and humour that I've seen. Noone else could have done it that well. Occasionally his jokes were milked for a little too long, but the audience laughed dutifully. It was hard not to. The other actor who had an excllent grasp of slapstick was...here we go, I'll stuff it up.. Daniel James? Maybe the other way around? Anyway, Mum was trying to work out where she'd seen him. Turns out he's a regular presenter of Playschool ^_^
Blazey Best has a truly stunning vocal range, I can see why she's such a great classical actor. Every time she sat on her little stool on the side of the stage and laughed at Darren you could hear it echo through the Playhouse. Dom - if you see her any time soon, give her my congratulations.
Matthew Moore as the romantic lead... well. He has this HAIR, and it's dark and comes to his shoulders and helookslikeLouis. And he walks around wearing this little blue vest that shows off his muscles half the time, and the other half he wears this coat which I coveted like anything. Silver. Tailored. With black and white sort-of-zebra-patterned cuffs and collar and lining. It was gorgeous. And he wore thigh-high leather boots with silver bits and I coveted them too. Anyway.
He makes a good classical lead - handsome, tragic, got the puppy-dog eyes down pat. His debut for Bell Shakespeare was as Ferdinand, and I can see that he'd do that really well. His delivery of the physical side wasn't as good as much of the cast's though - same for Blazey, though not as much. It wasn't at all bad, they were still hilarious, but you could tell that they were working harder to sustain the energy and keep the laughs going. Darren made it look effortless.
I think I might have been sitting next to Matthew's girlfriend or sister or something because he waved at her lots and she kept blowing him kisses and some of the actors went and talked to them beforehand. And she and her friend kept muttering "Okay, be quiet" whenever Blazey laughed particularly loudly. It was quite amusing.
And I want to meet their movement coach and worship the ground he walks on, because some of the bits where they weren't talking were the funniest of all.
The set was simple, well-used but very casual - the actors sitting calmly watching the proceedings made it a little hard to maintain the illusion of character, though, making the whole thing seem just a bit too farcical. The costumes as a whole were gorgeous, they reused Sean O'Shea's dressing gown and hat from CoE <3 Beatrice's costume was appallingly yellow for a currently-blonde like Blazey to be wearing, but that was hardly her fault. And did I mention that I wanted Florindo's entire outfit?
Thought so.
And we got to stand up and throw streamers at them during the encores because the theatre staff handed them out during interval and there was gorgeous Italian music and lots of dancing (yes!) and jokes about Ian Thorpe and an Elvis impersonator and more gay innunedo than you could poke a wooden spoon at.
It was fun.
And now I'm home and my feet are cold and I was going to RP with Shiv but she's NOT ONLINE DAMMIT.
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And am agreeing with the gay innuendo. Was lots.
We didn't get streamers. No fair.
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