daasgrrl

After seeing the NT Live production, I desperately wanted to get hold of the DVD of Coriolanus, starring (and directed by) Ralph Fiennes, which was happily at the library. I know it's a weird thing to say about a Shakespearean tragedy, but it was so much fun. I think it was the incongruity of seeing a modern-day Coriolanus in "a city that calls itself Rome", complete with machine guns, press conferences, and flat-screen TVs with news broadcasters breathlessly delivering the latest updates on military conflicts in blank verse. I was grinning inappropriately most of the time, actually. I don't think I would have enjoyed it nearly as much without having become acquainted with the story first, but given that I already knew where the beats were going to fall, it was interesting to see the contrast in the way it was handled on film. One thing I did quite like about the modern setting is that Volumnia (Coriolanus' mother) is presented as ex-military in her own right, which only feeds into her ambition for him and underpins all that "thy valiantness was mine; thou suck'st it from me" stuff. I'm sure they massacred the play even more than usual (as do most film adaptations) but since I'm not really familiar with it anyway I didn't mind the way I usually might. I think the weak points in the story became more obvious, though - I still think the Tribunes' ability to turn the people against Coriolanus so quickly lacks a certain believability to it, as does Coriolanus' return to Aufidius, unless he's really committing suicide-by-former-enemy, which doesn't really come across clearly. Maybe if I actually read the play in its entirety it would all make sense *g*

I also woke up at 2am this morning - seriously - with the bizarre urge to write this. I mean, there wasn't a lot else to do at that hour: ( Coriolanus - a summary )

I think that basically covers what I got from it, anyway (x-posted to tumblr).

Reading

A whole grab bag of things, which I'm too lazy to write much on:

Carry a Big Stick (Tim Ferguson) - Tim Ferguson is best known as one of the Doug Anthony Allstars (whom I loved and adored and are why I have this username) so I was keen to read this. The Dougs broke up in the 90s under vaguely acrimonious circumstances, which weren't really aired in public at the time. In retrospect it turns out that Tim had been experiencing symptoms of relapsing-remitting MS for some time, and it had finally become impossible for him to continue. Of course, he didn't actually bother telling Paul or Richard WHY he was leaving, which I think led to a bit of bad blood all around. He went on to further work in TV, but something a little more controllable and less exhausting. This book is part autobiography (I was surprised to learn that he grew up in Singapore and also that he never actually went to university), part reflections on the art of comedy (which he now teaches), but the driving impetus is his experience of living with MS. Library book.

I also read Little People, Big Lives (Carole Lander) which contains various (Australian) perspectives from people with dwarfism. No particular reason - I don't even personally know anyone affected by dwarfism, I'm just interested. Library book.

Finally read The White Lioness (Henning Mankell) which is actually one from my bookshelf. Hooray? Another in the Wallander mysteries which I loved for a while and then just got kind of bored with, although I'm still watching the Branagh series. It starts with the murder of a real estate agent in Ystad, and the discovery of a severed black (African) finger, and turns into an ambitiously complicated novel involving an assassination attempt on an prominent-but-undisclosed South African figure as the apartheid era draws to an end. You get two guesses, and that's pretty much all you need. Although the identity of the figure isn't really the point; it's more about the complex and far-reaching ramifications of massive changes in society. However, because it's centred around a Swedish detective, it was neither fish nor fowl - I thought the combination of depressed domestic Swedish crime-fighting and turbulent, hot-blooded South African politics a very odd and unsatisfying mix. Donate.