Month: February 2018

Categories
Acting

A Real Blogger?

My third post in as many weeks?!: I may be in danger of becoming a real blogger!

My second Irish play in 12 months: … and although I estimate the Irish to be a magical people … a real actor? I think it unlikely, after all … “the best in this kind are but shadows.”

The Seafarer

I come by Irish connection honestly. My maternal great-great-grandfather emigrated from Dublin to Sydney in 1860 and in 1816 others in my maternal line were transported to Australia for making pot’een (whiskey) without a license. A manufacture that I call a service, not a crime.

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Half my blood is Celtic.

Tickets available here

Great play, great cast. Tickets going fast.

Categories
Acting

If That is Your Real Name…

Regular readers of this column will know that I seldom post more than once a month. But it’s just come to my attention that the BBC has posted online a comedy series that a writer well known to me (a certain Collin Johnson) knocked out a while ago.

Here is the link: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00shdzt

And I’m posting it now, because the clock is running. At this writing there are only 21 days to listen to it.

thThe series stars the late amazing Peter Jones, a British national favorite on the long-running BBC radio game Just A Minute, and the original voice-over artist on A Hitch-hiker’s Guide to The Galaxy, given the immortal line, “Space is big. Really big. You just won’t believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it’s a long way down the road to the chemist, but that’s just peanuts to space.”

Other wonderful actors in the show include the luminous Celestine Randall and the splendid, Jeffry Wickham

When the very first episode of Capital Gains (not posted online, but available in this volume) was broadcast, we had a large mailbag from the public. My favorite was a letter that said, in praise of Peter Jones and his incomparable voice, (Desert Island Discs another long-running BBC radio show, is the reference) “… he would be my luxury on a desert island.”

 

 

Categories
Acting

Political Theatre

Deeply sad news this week of the too-early death of Jan Maxwell. I only worked with her once, back in 2002, when I took over from Nick Woodeson in House and Garden at the Manhattan Theatre Club.

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On stage Jan was an elegant, intelligent presence, handling language with poise and precision and impeccable comic timing. Backstage her vocabulary was, what’s the word I want? Vigorous, energetic, vivid, feisty … all of these and more. I specially enjoyed her acerbic wit. She was the most generous of scene partners and a joy to play with.

I say political because as a dedicated artist, Jan worked whenever she could for The Wrestling School, a theatre company which produces the plays of Howard Barker. It was good to see the New York Times acknowledge her work both in an obituary and a feature article.

My own politics are green-of-centre.

I am among those subversives who wants clean energy solutions. In memory of a truly sparkling talent I recommend www.Kiva.org — it’s a way to fund eco-friendly people and projects.