All too much - almost

I make mention on my other blog of not needing to look for the best diet pills on the market even though I seem to have put on weight as a result of my recent(pre- and post-op) inability to exercise as much as usual, or even to walk at a reasonable pace. Thank goodness I'm now (literally) back on my feet and (generally) walking at my old (near-frenetic) speed. In fact, it was only today that I realised I'm no longer conking out at work from tiredness, or having to come home and have a lie-down from exhaustion. So I am making progress. (Though not with my overexcessive use of brackets.)
We've had time off rehearsals for the play this week; there's another play on at the theatre, so rehearsals are out. But next week we're back into it with a vengeance, and I'm trying my best to have my Act II lines under my belt before we start rehearsing that section. As in Act One, I only have one scene, but this one is a two-hander with one of the other cast members, and goes on for about five pages. I've taken it in sections, so as to get a handle on it, and have been practicing tonight with my son reading the other part. But it's still not all there. And it doesn't help that in this scene the character is somewhat drunk and tends to repeat himself. I learnt the worst bit of repetition first, since I thought it would take longest to get into the brain, and I was right...
Meanwhile, our church is getting back into short dramas - they're to accompany a special series of sermons. I was at the brainstorming session last night, and somehow wound up with a part. Not just a short bit in one short drama; the characters in these dramas will appear fairly regularly throughout several weeks of plays. Of course the first drama will be on within a few weeks, while the rehearsals for the other play are still going, and as well I'll be trying to get my head around the Varsity work (which, thank goodness, finishes the week after the main play).
I tried to get them to cast someone else in the role they were suggesting for me, but it looks as though that may not be a goer. However, there's a suggestion that they'll avoid having me in the drama that goes on the day after we start performances of the main play! I should think so, too. Who do they think I am? Laurence Olivier?
Kind of apropos of what I've just been talking about, it's curious how rehearsing in a particular place seems to embue that place with some kind of residual emotional feeling. Every time we've spent several weeks rehearsing in a particular building, I can't pass the place by without feeling a kind of nostalgia. And when I first appeared in the Narnia series of plays, which were performed in the same auditorium in which we had church at that time, I used to find that whenever I passed the dressing rooms I'd get all emotional. Weird.
Check out some photos from that first production - I'm playing Mr Beaver and appear in the first and third photos.

Good Grief, Good Knight!

I caught some of an old film yesterday on tv: Knights of the Round Table. When I say ‘some’, I have to admit that I was watching it between doing other things, and in the end actually gave up when there was an awful death scene where humour was bandied around as though it wasn’t manly to be real at such a time.

The actors did their best with the material, and the actors were a fairly sterling bunch: Robert Taylor, Mel Ferrer, Ava Gardner, Stanley Baker, Felix Aymler to name just the A-list lot. The smaller roles were all played by stock actors familiar from many films of the period.

But it was the battle scenes that made it a laughable piece from today’s perspective. The big battle between Arthur and Mordred was so firmly based on Laurence Olivier’s wonderful battle sequence in Henry V that they might as well have used the same footage. Until it came to the two sides meeting. At that point, things fell apart badly. Nobody was really doing any fighting. Swords flashed, but they seldom hit anyone. There was quite a bit of noise, but it was all noise. And the extras. They had to be seen to be believed. Blokes dressed up in silly outfits pretending to fight, and unfortunately being caught on camera pretending – and ambling along without any real effort.

One guy’s ‘fighting’ consisted of jumping up and down in the saddle. There was no passion, no guts to the thing. When Arthur’s backup group of archers got into the story, they shot their arrows off towards the passing knights on horses, and most of the arrows fell visibly within a few yards onto the ground. One or two knights fell down dutifully off their horses, but certainly nobody was actually hit with an arrow.

And later on, Lancelot and his troop walked into a trap set by the Picts. Lancelot basically carried on talking to those around him while the extras in the background did their pretend fighting. Because he was a main character he knew he had no problem with getting hit with anything, so he didn’t really need to take care of himself. And I’m sure the guy who did all the bobbing up and down in the saddle was there in the background again, jumping up and down while fighting nobody. Incredibly one knight even thrust his sword into a passing Pict and the sword very obviously went in under the Pict’s arm and out behind him: no one has ever died of having a sword thrust under his armpit as far as I’m aware, but this Pict did.

There's a review on a site called Monster Hunter which says pretty everything else I haven't said here.