A quick post to let you know that you should support Shaggy in the Webcomic Planet’s War 2010. He’s the artist behind Binary Souls / Other Dimensions, one of my favorite webcomics. Read all about it here. Thanks!
Sweeney Todd
Signature Theatre
4200 Campbell Ave., Arlington, VA
February 9 – April 4, 2010
Buy Tickets
My husband and I saw this show on Thursday night, the 11th, and thoroughly enjoyed it. We’d decided to go because we’d enjoyed the movie and knew the play would be longer, fuller, and better. And indeed, it was. Staged in a black box-style setting with sparse but deliciously detailed sets, we were absorbed in the ambiance of the show even before the lights went out: smoke machines, blood dripping into buckets, randomly dimming light fixtures, and assorted noises set the mood. The play started all at once, and instantly we were pulled into the action of this crazy musical horror-comedy.
The cast, over all, was just great. The ensemble was very tight, though sometimes they were singing so quickly I couldn’t understand them. Sweeney Todd himself (Edward Gero) had some of the best facial expressions, adding humor and depth to character. This was when I was especially glad for the intimate setting, because I was able to actually see his face more often than not. Mrs. Lovett (Sherri L. Edelen) was simply a delight. I was introduced to this character via Helena Bonham Carter, whose singing voice in that role, er, leaves a bit to be desired. Edelen was able to balance the ridiculous accent, the droll inflection, and the crude mannerisms with a striking voice that was both funny and pleasant to hear.
Now, while I feel Tobias Ragg (Sam Ludwig) did a marvelous job and has a beautiful voice, he was simply too old to play the character. Toby is supposed to be, at the very most, a teenager, but the fellow playing him was clearly well into his 20s. This is no fault of the actor’s, to be sure, but it did distract from the realism a little bit. The other youngish male lead, Anthony (Gregory Maheu), looked distractingly like Jude Law. This says nothing about his performance, which was fine, but it’s all I really have to say about him.
The villains were fun: I actually preferred Chris Van Cleave’s Judge Turpin over Alan Rickman’s (and I love me some Rickman, so that’s saying something), and Beadle (Chris Sizemore) repeatedly cracked me up with his falsetto shenanigans. Saving the best for last, Johanna (Erin Driscoll) was absolutely lovely. Many of the notes she had to sing were incredibly high, but she nailed every one solidly and beautifully.
All in all, a wonderful show. Go see it if you can!
I totally slacked on this and forgot to post this in time for people to actually sign up, and for that I apologize, but I suppose I might as well let y’all know what I’m up to this month: Thing-a-Day. Based on an idea by the incomparable Ze Frank (whose videoblog The Show was simply excellent and I miss it), the challenge is to create something new every day for the entire month of February and post it publicly on the community blog. It doesn’t have to be a big thing – I plan on doing a small drawing each day in a new sketch book I got for free – but it does have to be something and it has to be completed. (At least, I assume it does. You can’t really claim to have created something until it’s finished, right?)
Anyway, I’m participating. This year’s blog format is on posterous, so everything’s going there. I’m uploading them to my gallery as well, because I am just that kind of exhibitionist. The scans aren’t very good but that’s not really the point. The only really irritating part of all this is that I appear to be in a much later (earlier?) timezone than posterous, meaning that my 3am post on February 1st was timestamped the 31st. What do folks in Europe do? Oh well.
If I remember, I might post a month-end wrap-up about the experience, but if this post’s slackitude is any indication, you can expect that it to actually happen sometime around mid-April.
So after yesterday’s discussion of romance novels it occurs to me that maybe I really am a generic trend-follower and the real draw for me, regardless of genre, is vampires. Case in point:
: These ate my brain* for a while during college. Interview with the Vampire (and the associated movie
) remains my favorite, perhaps because of an affinity for Louis that Rice herself obviously did not share. (In an intro to the IwtV DVD, Rice referred to Lestat as her “dark lover.” Um.) The books declined in quality as time went on, and eventually I gave up without reading Memnoch the Devil and only bothered with a few of the spin-offs (The Vampire Armand, Violin, and Pandora, if I recall correctly).
: I actually rather enjoyed the book (to which the movie
was reasonably true), but it didn’t have a whole lot of Dracula in it. (More detail at my post on the Dueling Monsters Read-a-long.)
: The film
was fairly forgettable, but I really liked the series, to the point where I was perfectly happy watching back-to-back-to-back episodes during much of graduate school.
: Silliness to the extreme and felt more like fanfic than homage, but I loved it for what it was.
: Oh god, don’t get me started. Short version: this horribly-written series totally ate my brain* for several months in 2009.
: Probably my favorite recurring guest star on Dangermouse
, but I’m not sure that has anything to do with him being a vampire.So I guess this means I would probably enjoy The Lost Boys
*ate my brain: overwhelmed my psyche, to the point where I was thinking about it practically nonstop and could not get enough of it. See also: short-term obsession. (To be fair, this also happened when I read The Time Machine by H.G. Wells. So there’s that.)
My friend Ed has been doing a series of posts on why men (in general) don’t like romance novels – as in the genre shelved all together in the bookstore, that is, not love stories as a whole. They’re very well-written and insightful, and I don’t plan on overlapping them here. However, it has gotten me thinking about why I don’t like romance novels. I haven’t read a whole bunch cover-to-cover, I admit; I read a couple of Harlequins back in the day just to see what all the fuss was about and wasn’t too impressed. There was only one sex scene between the two of them, which kind of surprised me, but what really bugged me was how they were pretty much the exact same story: woman meets unapproachable man (a “bad boy”), woman and man are forced together by unlikely circumstances, woman breaks through man’s gruff exterior, woman and man fall in love. There were also numerous mentions of kissing so hard their lips were bruised, which doesn’t sound like much fun to me.
But you know, I did read Twilight. Which are, in a nutshell, about a girl meeting an unapproachable boy, breaking through his gruff exterior, and falling in love. And I’m sure his oft-repeated marble lips bruised hers on more than one occasion. And yet, I was totally entertained (though admittedly perhaps for the wrong reasons). Cleolinda Jones, by the way, has an excellent theory about why girls like bad boys. This is just an excerpt; be sure to read her entire post for more brilliance.
“I actually don’t think girls like a guy who treats them bad. But I do think they–we–get off a little on the idea of changing someone for the better, or the idea of having the power that someone loves us so much that he’ll change or sacrifice something for us. [...] A nice guy doesn’t need to change, and, most importantly, he’s already nice to everyone. How do you know that you’re special if he treats everyone else with as much kindness and respect as he treats you? The “bad boy” type, though? He may range from simple, garden-variety jackhole (hello, Sawyer!) to appalling psychopath (hello, Dr. Lecter!), but you know he loves you because he’s completely different around you. You are an exception to his very nature. [...] Mr. Darcy and Mr. Rochester are both cold, prickly, withdrawn types until Lizzie Bennet and Jane Eyre arrive, respectively, to bewilder and melt them. That’s the fantasy.”
I completely agree with this. Cleolinda goes on to say that in reality, most people who treat other people badly eventually also treat you badly, which is why most (mature) woman aren’t actually all that interested in bad boys in the real world. Just in fiction.
So what’s the difference between Twilight and romance novels? Not much, except that the Twilight characters are teenagers and most romance novel characters are adults. But maybe that’s important, you know? Teenagers are supposed to be impulsive and rash and obsessive and malleable. Adults aren’t, so it’s hard to be sympathetic with the angst and unlikely personality changes. And sure, perhaps falling in love with a nice person isn’t quite as thrilling to the outside observer, but it can be just as satisfying if written well.
The other romance novels I’ve picked up since those couple of Harlequins (including subgenres like historical romance, romance suspense, and paranormal romance, all genres I usually enjoy without the “romance” tag) were given up after a chapter or two. I just didn’t care about the characters or storyline one whit.
Maybe I’m just reading the wrong romance novels. I’m open to suggestions.
Ring in the new year with video games, music, and general geekery at MAGFest in Alexandria, Virginia. I’ll be there with my dear husband and a bunch of folks from OverClocked Remix. Should be good times.
If you’re going to be at Anime USA this weekend in Arlington, Virginia, please stop by the Binary Souls / Other Dimensions table in Artist Alley. We’ll be there selling all kinds of nifty stuff like comics, buttons, CDs, and more. Come by and say hello!
On the morning of Halloween this year, I will be participating in the Making Strides Against Breast Cancer Walk in Washington, DC. I am walking in honor of my mother, my grandmother, and my aunt, all of whom survived breast cancer. I’ve never done one of these charity walks before, but I think it’ll be good.
If you would like to make a donation or learn more, please visit my participant page.
If you’re in the Washington, DC, metro area this coming Saturday, there are plenty of things to do. Fall for the Book in Fairfax is winding down and the Maryland Renaissance Festival is in full swing. The Baltimore Book Festival is this weekend, conflicting as it does every year with the National Book Festival in DC. My local BookCrossing group will be cavorting around the National Mall, handing out books. Heck, even my home town is having its annual festival on Saturday.
But I’m not going to any of it. My husband and I will be at the Small Press Expo, geeking out on indie comics. And I can’t wait.
We might also stop by Horrorfind Weekend on Sunday, but that’s still up in the air. Either way it’ll be fun times.
In This Club, Books Free to a Good Roam: A lovely article in the Washington Post from this past Tuesday (11 August 2009). BookCrossing shows up in the international media on a fairly regular basis, but this one is special because it’s about my local group, BC in DC. I wasn’t mentioned by name, alas, but I did meet with Ms. Ianzito. The woman in the photograph is our own crrcookie, one of the most prolific (and most organized) BookCrossers I’ve ever met.
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