Evil Ate At Table Eight
Jun. 11th, 2007 11:18 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
alexsarllI never took to Gaslight on screen (I may have attempted the wrong version), but the Old Vic's stage version was another matter. It's much stronger for observing the unities...well, most of them; for a psychological thriller, once or twice it does come a little close to French farce, at least once accidentally. The Bond girl and Pompey both give excellent performances, but the surprise for me was Andrew Woodall; where Anton Walbrook was far too obviously sinister as the husband, he makes a believable Victorian paterfamilias, much more ambiguous as he infantilises his wife, much more plausible. And the real surprise for me was how much that theme's played up, how strong a feminist statement the play makes - because from the four novels I've read, most of Patrick Hamilton's women are absolute bitches.
After a whole season of Russell T Davies smugly grinning and SFX techs geeking, I abandoned Doctor Who Confidential, but I made an exception for the Stephen Moffat episode because Moffat always gives good interview. I had no idea, though, that we'd get him and Tennant interviewing each other around Television Centre and a generall great documentary out of it. But the most moving bit came, surprisingly, from RTD, when he talked about how, as a kid, he always thought that at any moment you could turn the corner and see the TARDIS there, door half-open.
Which reminded me of the TARDIS-a-like 'phone box in Derby Children's Hospital, and rushing towards that half-open door, and finding only a payphone inside. I wonder if that's where it all began to go wrong?
Didn't make it to Stokefest in the end - my sources informed me of crowding, and summer crowds are not my idea of fun. But the local history...that I liked. Rampaging elephants! Bob Hoskins! Mutant milkmaids! Finsbury Park has had it all. Maybe even Ho Chi Minh, though the evidence there was hazier. Plus, the definitive sources on all this include the work of Ken Gay. Now, you'd think a name like that was hard to beat, right? But you'd be reckoning without his collaborator, Dick Whetstone.
Never mind the stripper vicars - what about a flasher judge?
After a whole season of Russell T Davies smugly grinning and SFX techs geeking, I abandoned Doctor Who Confidential, but I made an exception for the Stephen Moffat episode because Moffat always gives good interview. I had no idea, though, that we'd get him and Tennant interviewing each other around Television Centre and a generall great documentary out of it. But the most moving bit came, surprisingly, from RTD, when he talked about how, as a kid, he always thought that at any moment you could turn the corner and see the TARDIS there, door half-open.
Which reminded me of the TARDIS-a-like 'phone box in Derby Children's Hospital, and rushing towards that half-open door, and finding only a payphone inside. I wonder if that's where it all began to go wrong?
Didn't make it to Stokefest in the end - my sources informed me of crowding, and summer crowds are not my idea of fun. But the local history...that I liked. Rampaging elephants! Bob Hoskins! Mutant milkmaids! Finsbury Park has had it all. Maybe even Ho Chi Minh, though the evidence there was hazier. Plus, the definitive sources on all this include the work of Ken Gay. Now, you'd think a name like that was hard to beat, right? But you'd be reckoning without his collaborator, Dick Whetstone.
Never mind the stripper vicars - what about a flasher judge?
