No Time for Wilde

I suppose that is a bit misleading.  I just managed to get to Lady Windermere's Fan at George Brown on Thurs.  I have been working quite late for two weeks now and actually briefly debating seeing if I could switch tickets to a different date (since next week should be marginally less busy).  However, it appears that this is the last week, and there may not even be a Sunday matinee.  So that means if you haven't seen it (or planned to and gotten your tickets early), this is the last chance and you may indeed have timed out.

I enjoyed Lady Windermere's Fan quite a bit (concurring with this review), though the one small issue I had was that the characters are all supposed to be of all ages, and here they were all played by people in their early 20s.  Anyway, I actually cabbed it down, making it with 5 minutes to spare, though they held the door another 5 minutes or so.  Still, cutting it too close has been a way of life for me for a bit too long.

I had no idea how many of Wilde's famous epigrams are loaded into this play, which is quite clever and very entertaining.  My favorite was "All of us are in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars."  But I liked it even more when Wilde had another character flat out mock the first one for using such poetic language.  I still think The Importance of Being Earnest is a slightly better play, but I would be up for seeing this another time at some point down the road.  I wasn't sold on An Ideal Husband and will probably forgo seeing that again.  I think the only significant play by Wilde I have left to see is A Woman of No Importance.  I vaguely remember having the chance to see this, but didn't for some reason.  I probably will at some point, however.

I guess I will report back that I came teasingly close to winning the Fringe Lottery.  (I was working late again of course and had to skip the party, so I just followed the draw on Twitter.)  They pulled OS126, but I had ON126...  Apparently, there are 3 times the slots for the short program than the long program (75-90 minutes), which makes sense since it is so much easier to program around the short ones.  Still, in my case, I couldn't squeeze Straying South into 60 minutes. Still, it is something to keep in mind to aim for the 60 minute slot next year, even though I am pretty sure there are more entries and thus more competition.  Oh well.  I'll just have to finish the script and try to figure out a way to put this up myself.

Anyway, it looks like I can get at least a little sleep this weekend, which would be a good thing.

Though in fact, tomorrow I will be seeing Alan Bennett's Talking Heads (part 2) which also only has a few more days left in its run, so you have been warned.