Antony and Cleopatra

last night, we (Jon, shermarama, cjwatson, Benedict and I) went to see Antony and Cleopatra performed by the RSC.

It wasn't a play I'd known anything about beforehand, and I do not think it will ever become one of my favourites. I still vastly prefer Julius Cӕsar, for example.

Cleopatra seemed too... insane, selfish and neurotic to have held onto an empire. Antony seemed more flighty and less stable than in Julia Cӕsar. I am told that these are aspects of the play rather than direction.

Direction generally was very good; I'd always rather see a play with good direction and bad acting than the other way around. I liked the use of space and light, I liked the music, and I particularly liked the way the play started slowly and built up pace until BAMM complete silence after Cleopatra's death. I have a bit of a thing about pace; bad pace can completely ruin a production for me.

Acting; well, I particularly liked the actress playing Iras, Emma Jay Thomas. She utterly fitted her part, and had a grace in movement which made it seem much more real. Patrick Stewart as Antony, however, was a complete disappointment; I could barely understand a word he said, I think because of poor diction rather than poor projection.

All in all, worth seeing, but I'll not go to see Patrick Stewart perform again.

I won an icontest

I got joint most original in this week's birthday_celebs, being joint with myself, with these two icons:



I am very happy with this.

One thing I had been wondering; I think there ought to be an icon contest community for icons to do with poetry, but can't find one. I was wondering whether it might be worth starting one, but am worried it would just fizzle out.