I have been going non-stop to so many events lately. I will get a bit of a breather next week, but even then I'll probably be out three days in the middle of the week!
I think this mostly started with the three days of the We Quit Theatre residency at Buddies. In the end, I really liked I am Not Your Spaniel a lot but didn't care much for the other two. I tried something new at least.
I saw a few movies reaching back to Taxi Driver (the first time ever!) at Carlton, Exotica at TIFF (with Atom Egoyan in attendance!) and Blow-Up at Paradise. While Blow-Up was interesting, the main character was a total jerk, and I couldn't believe how stupidly the whole movie ended. I also was having a bit of trouble understanding how Vanessa Redgrave's character tracked him down in the first place and (SPOILERS) managed to break into his loft and steal every negative he owned in the space of a few minutes. (More SPOILERS) Maybe this was supposed to be a bigger plot point as in a more conventional thriller, but I don't recall him actually telling Sarah Miles that the person he saw killed was shot, so maybe she was actually in on the cover-up. Dun-dun-duuuun. That would likely have been a more interesting plot twist than ending with the tennis scene in the park. One thing that really spoiled the movie-going experience for me was that some jerk sat next to me and not very long into the movie managed to spill his drink on me!
I ended up moving my tickets for Theatre Rusticle's The Tempest two times. It was getting a bit ridiculous. However, I'm glad I did, since Sunday (tomorrow) is one of the only convenient times for me to see Better Living over at Alumnae. I'm actually meeting a friend for that.
Then I had to switch The Tempest from Sat. to Thurs. On Sat. I had tickets (that I didn't mark on the calendar!) to see a UT Symphony doing some modern pieces as well as Shostakovich's Symphony 9. As it turned out I enjoyed that vastly more than Theatre Rusticle. Basically, they have completely subordinated plot to movements and sound design. There are five female actors who are playing all the parts in The Tempest, but in fact 2 or 3 different actors play Prospero at different times, 2 or 3 play Miranda, at least 2 play Caliban and pretty much the whole group chants Ariel's lines simultaneously. I think The Tempest already suffers severely from a real lack of dramatic urgency as Prospero is never actually in any danger whatsoever, but this just drained any interest in the characters as actual bone fide characters as opposed to just symbols or something. To top it all off, I thought this was supposed to be 2 hours, but then they announced it would be 2 hours and 45 minutes, which is just too self-indulgent. I wasn't feeling it and I left at intermission, which is still something I rarely do (but maybe should do more often).
I also saw Diana and Casey at Soulpepper. It was ok, but not really my thing. I'm not a royalist at heart.* I also found a few elements of the play to be predictable and/or emotionally manipulative. That said, the acting was solid. I had thought I had left my scarf there (and was dreading calling up the box office to go through their lost and found stuff), but it turned up at home. Whew.
Probably the single biggest downside of being out and about so much is that it makes it very hard to go to the gym and at a time when my commitment to going is already on the low side. I simply slept in this morning, but I should be able to make it tomorrow morning before I head over to meet my friend. I think next week, since I decided to pull back just slightly and not go out on Tues. evening, that I can probably get my swimming laps in on that evening.
I am very close to wrapping up Everett's Half an Inch of Water. I expect I'll get through it Sunday evening. Unfortunately, most of the stories do not live up to the first one, so this is no longer likely to make my top 10 or 15 books of the year list after all. I am halfway through McCarthy's The Group. Sometimes it is interesting and sometimes a bit dreary. The bit about having to go see a doctor for female birth control feels almost inserted (pun intended) for its shock value. I am a bit bummed that I was looking up some reviews of the book for something else, and someone went ahead and included a couple of major spoilers, so that was not cool.
I'll be reading Pym's Excellent Women after that and Carol Shields' Swann. I think Swann will be the last of the library books that needs to be returned. I really hope that the on-line TPL (and hold system) is working by this point. It has been a real drag for it to be completely offline. Anyway, after this, I suspect it will be Rushdie's Fury and possibly Lermontov's A Hero of Our Time. In the meantime, I'm trying to read more short stories and get through Xavier de Maistre's Voyage Around My Room, which is also on the short side.
* Though I do have to admit as a child, I tried to wake up early and watch Charles and Diana get married in 1981. I don't know why we couldn't just set an alarm, but for whatever reason I slept through it. I find it baffling now that I would have cared. I do remember when Princess Diana was making a visit to Northwestern in 1996, and the campus was just all a-twitter. Many people tried to camp out to see her walking around, criss-crossing the campus. I'm sure I would have watched for a while if she had passed by, but I certainly didn't go out of my way to find her. I was pretty much done with royalty by that point.
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