On the weekend, went to see "The Black Rider", which is on as part of the Sydney Festival. It's the musical (for want of a better description) with words by William Burroughs and music by Tom Waits. It was meant to have Marianne Faithfull in one of the roles but if it's the role I think it is (the devil), the guy who took it on was just amazing.
It was a very strange production -- deliberately of course, very other-wordly, kind of Grimms fairy-taleish, cartoony but dark. A tale of villagers, foresters, loving the wrong person and deals with the devil. The design was wild, with characters reminiscent of everything from Japanese Kabuki to Frank-N-Furter to the guys from Split Enz. It had a very deep-in-the-German-forests feel to the story, and at the moments that feeling was really prevalent, Waits' score really indulged his oom-pah-pah tendencies.
My girlfriend followed the detail of the story better than I or the friend we went with did. *SPOILER ALERT* She picked up on the backstory pretty accurately, as far as I can tell, whereas I just got that the guy in love with the girl wanted to impress the girl's father with his (thus far rather poor) hunting skills, and made a deal with a devil in exchange for magic bullets that would hit their target dead on.
Of course, the devil's bargain meant that a price had to be paid, which was that the last bullet killed his about-to-be wife. My girlfriend was also the first to pick up on the fact that Burroughs had shot and killed his own wife years ago, whereas the program notes referred far more to the story's derivation from Germanic folklore.
Anyway, the other Festival show I REALLY wanted to see was sold out soon after being announced, which was "I Came So Far For Beauty", a tribute to Leonard Cohen featuring Nick Cave, Rufus Wainwright, the McGarrigle sisters .... *sigh*
.....
In the car yesterday, apropos of some silly argument about nothing significant, TheFuckOffGirl called me a numbskull.
"Why?" quoth I?
"Your skull's numb," she respondeth.
Such is our lot.
It was a very strange production -- deliberately of course, very other-wordly, kind of Grimms fairy-taleish, cartoony but dark. A tale of villagers, foresters, loving the wrong person and deals with the devil. The design was wild, with characters reminiscent of everything from Japanese Kabuki to Frank-N-Furter to the guys from Split Enz. It had a very deep-in-the-German-forests feel to the story, and at the moments that feeling was really prevalent, Waits' score really indulged his oom-pah-pah tendencies.
My girlfriend followed the detail of the story better than I or the friend we went with did. *SPOILER ALERT* She picked up on the backstory pretty accurately, as far as I can tell, whereas I just got that the guy in love with the girl wanted to impress the girl's father with his (thus far rather poor) hunting skills, and made a deal with a devil in exchange for magic bullets that would hit their target dead on.
Of course, the devil's bargain meant that a price had to be paid, which was that the last bullet killed his about-to-be wife. My girlfriend was also the first to pick up on the fact that Burroughs had shot and killed his own wife years ago, whereas the program notes referred far more to the story's derivation from Germanic folklore.
Anyway, the other Festival show I REALLY wanted to see was sold out soon after being announced, which was "I Came So Far For Beauty", a tribute to Leonard Cohen featuring Nick Cave, Rufus Wainwright, the McGarrigle sisters .... *sigh*
.....
In the car yesterday, apropos of some silly argument about nothing significant, TheFuckOffGirl called me a numbskull.
"Why?" quoth I?
"Your skull's numb," she respondeth.
Such is our lot.
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Oops. I mean, most certainly, my dear chap.