Worthy of Agatha Christie!

In the venerable, though perhaps not as venerated as it was once, Burgtheater of Vienna, the show must go on... even after an actor cut his throat on stage!

It was part of Schiller's Mary Stuart, when the actor, Daniel Hoevels, had to act a suicide on stage. Unfortunately it was a real knife that came to his hands, not a safe prop knife. The audience applauded the very realistic (and very real) gush of blood, only realising that something had gone wrong when he did not get up for his applause.

Was it an accident? Was it planned? The busy criminologists of Vienna are on the case. Read all about it here.

Funding problems at the Burgtheater

The Burgtheater in Vienna is a venerable, if not entirely to be venerated these days, institution in Vienna. Everyone who is anyone needs to be seen at this theatre. Next to it is the Café Landtmann, a similarly venerated institution, which, like the Burgtheater, has recently suffered lapses in taste (one with its theatrical productions, the other with its architectural extension). Café Landtmann, incidentally, is also the place where Sigmund Freud used to hang out – a park named after him is not far from there. I digress.

Shakespeare’s ‘Measure for Measure’ is a new production. Like many non-English productions it uses the text very freely – in this case almost only as a skeleton. I’m not very familiar with this play, but the joins between the new bits and the original bits were so obvious that it was like being hit with a sledge hammer.

What makes me think the Burgtheater is short of cash? It’s the first theatre I have come across where you pay (albeit voluntarily) for a pee, and a woman looks after the two toilets, wiping them down after each customer. Are the Viennese so disgusting in their toilet habits that this needs to be done? (Ask Mr Freud). I hate having someone stand outside my door, waiting for me….

The inside of the auditorium is not only astonishingly plain, but it has seen better days. Someone should tell them that these days there are non-smelly paints that do not give people headaches – these should be applied freely, especially to the ceiling (it is also possible to rent scaffolding…).

The plainness was exarcerbated, in this case, by the stage set resembling a DDR asylum for the homeless dining room of ca 1975. Which shortly afterwards was peopled by the people belonging in this place. Again the shortness of cash showed seeing that most actors had several roles (though no doubt this was An Artistic Methodology).

The punters of the asylum talked pure Austrian apart from one guy who, I realised with a start, sounded like a Berliner. Homeless people migrate, too, I guess. So I did not understand what they talked about, mostly. But there was much talk about how the German ‘schlager’ (an particularly atrocious form of

popular music) was true, much mention of the unemployed and so on. In the interval I overheard that the ‘native’ actors might have been from the Volkstheater (folk theatre). The audience laughed at this, quite a lot, so I guess they liked being taken to the underbelly of society (it’s kind of safely exotic, you know).

And then there were the Shakespearean bits, where the language suddenly completely changed – and boy, these parts were so boooooring! The audience was restless in these, when they were not asleep (a guy a couple of rows behind me had three severe snoring spells, all coinciding with fairly quiet Shakespeare). Another guy, in the theatre on his own, checked his text messages and picked his nose and ears extensively during moments like this. Memo to him – when you are bored, people around you may be bored, too – and watch the audience rather than the stage.

I left at the interval – I was not the only one. Should have gone to the Musikverein to hear Daniel Mueller-Schott in the Dvorak cello concerto instead....

I did not wait long enough!

to see Godot, in the State Vilnius Little Theatre's production of 'Waiting for Godot'. Last time I had seen it in Tbilisi, where Robert Sturua had shrunk it into a one-act play. I was a bit surprised when at what seemed like the end there was not a clap of applause. Not a smidgeon! Turns out this production is 3 hours - in Tbilisi it was half that.

The Little Theatre, in Gedimino prospect, is little, with about 200 seats or so. It was recently done up. When I entered the auditorium I immediately felt at home on hearing the accordeon version of 'I could have danced all night' - the identical version that Robert Sturua loves to use. My favourite actor Zaza Papuashvili instantly flashed through my mind, doing his funny little dances to this music - is it in Hamlet? No, it's in 'Twelfth Night'.

So anyway, half of Godot, with partial understanding of the words. From what I could tell, the translation was quite good, into very vernacular Lithuanian, given the level in society of the characters. Vladimir was lovely, as was Estragon. Found Lucky's monologue quite weak, though, compared to the machinegun delivery of his colleague in Tbilisi. The boy was lovely. Shame that they translated Lucky's name into 'Lakis' - kind of lost the whole point!

Overall, though, it was a much straighter production than that in Tbilisi; little song and dance (music by Faustus Latenas - unless the second half turned into an opera, I don't think he did much composing here!), straight down the line, every word translated. Not so enterprising, and got few laughs, apart from Leonardas Pobedonoscevas as the boy. There should have been more laughs - but perhaps it's my social worker sense of humour which is sicker than that of the average caring audience member.

Strange article here about World Theatre Day. This is typical for the worst of Lithuanian writing; all ethereal and oak trees. What's the point of saying this?

Kontrabosas

Caucasian male, height - 5'10" to 6"; weight - in proportion with height, keeping himself fairly trim; age - about 40; hair -brown; distinguishing marks - appendectomy scar; beautiful hands with long fingers. (For non-Americans, a 'caucasian' is a white person; nothing to do with the Caucasus).

This is Šarūnas Puidokas who I did not expect to see when I booked my ticket for 'Kontrabosas' (Double bass), the play by Patrick Suskind. It's a play I had wanted to see for a long time, but never was in Vilnius at the right time. Actually I expected to see a different actor, so I was tiny bit miffed. But never mind.

'Double Bass' is a monologue lasting just over an hour. It features an actor, and, surprise surprise, a double bass. On a fairly bare stage. My heart sank a little at the sight of this. Having been to theatres in Georgia with my 10 words of Georgian I feel that I now have an obligation to go to Lithuanian theatres, too, with my maybe 500 - 1000 words of Lithuanian. Whereas in Georgia I just let the words wash over me, in Lithuania I feel I should make an effort and try to understand. In any case, it's difficult to do anything else in a monologue.

The instrument confused me. The strings, at the end of the fingerboard, were about 4 inches above the fingerboard. How can you play that? What was wrong? The fingerboard looked like it was in the right place....but hey, what's the bridge doing right at the end of the fingerboard? And that tailpiece, why has it got such a long tail? Once I worked all this out, I could move my attention back to the actor. But it was weird; when he left the stage at the end, he did not take his big fiddle with him. That really grated!

So the play is about an orchestral double bass player who has been playing it for years (he's a proper civil servant - it's a German play); he begins by saying how important the double bass is in the orchestra, and goes through all the history of the role of the double bass (he was mostly right, though there was something which sounded out of place to my musicological mind; can't remember what it was). He then meanders around the meaning of life, a performance with Abbado conducting, him never getting a solo, some woman problems. I thought that it was a play translated from American - this guy was very nervous, and kept saying 'gerai, gerai, gerai' as in 'ok, ok,ok', but now I wonder what the German equivalent would be. Šarūnas Puidokas did really well; it seemed just so natural, like a total stream of consciousness which it would be in real life - but I missed Robiko Sturua's funny walks! Puidokas even got a note or two out of the instrument, when it was needed, which was great. And his hands - oh his hands - they are soooo beautiful!

Though, if you are a foreigner in Vilnius, with not a word of Lithuanian and no knowledge of music, maybe pick another play to go to, eh?

Another President Play

It's Tbilisi, it's the Rustaveli Theatre, it's a premiere - it's a president play ('Birdie died in the glen' - go figure - it may be part of a Georgian poem not very well translated). Remember that democracy is a bit fragile in Georgia - exactly a month ago today the teargas and the soldeiers were streaming down the main street. Today the soldiers were streaming down the street again, to the Rustaveli Theatre where they watched the performance - three rows of them in uniform. It must have given the creeps to folk on the street seeing the soldiers wandering along.

Anyway, theatre here (and the Rustaveli under Robert Sturua in particular) seems to see it as its role to propose democracy and expose the weaknesses of those against democracy, ie currently the President. Someone thought that this was a very dangerous play at this time. I don't know. The same theatre has another play on the same theme, 'The Soldier, Love, Bodyguard and ...the President'. Frankly, they are both much of a muchness, portraying the President of Georgia, played by Beso Zanguri in both shows - it's the likeness - as a womaniser, who likes to wear his wife's clothes (an impossibility in real life given the different sizes of both), married to a foreign wife (yes), a rather paranoid person surrounded by security guards who he can or cannot trust, by friends who he can or cannot trust and so on. This play, in one very long act (about 100 minutes), does not have much of a plot, other than the signing, or refusal to sign, of some document. He has conversations with different people, but never more than one other person at the time (they hardly ever talk to each other or are on the stage with each other). There's a live pond on stage which both women have to jump into at some stage, but otherwise it's not very interesting.

I would be inclined to go and see 'The Soldier' etc; it is a bit more interesting. Or maybe it was because it was the first president play I had seen.

Don't think I would be rushing back to see this again. Thankfully it was being translated by the same deadpan person who has translated earlier, otherwise it would be quite unbearable.

In the foyer before the show I saw David Papuashvili, father (I think) of Zaza Papuashvili, both of whom I have on the DVD with that soft-porn film 'Georgian grapes' [and that dreadful German film]. I congratulated him on the film I had seen but tried to mumble its title - other people were present.

Moliere via Rossini

Went to the Marjanishvili Theatre (Tbilisi) tonight for a play advertised as Moliere's 'Vain Doctor'. My colleagues told me the title would have been better translated as the 'Fake Doctor'. Whatever.

Had not been able to find any reference in the internet to a play of either title, so I tried to memorize the names of the characters - and now I've found it; it was 'Le medecin malgre lui' (imagine the accents in the right places). Did you know that this site apparait a avoir les textes complets de tout ce qui Moliere a ecrit? Merveilleux! So I could just quickly read what I have just watched.

It was a generally traditional performance, as far as you can get 'traditional' in Georgia. Certainly the frocks were traditional - the stage was rather bare, with bits and pieces hinting at this corner of countryside and that bourgeois living-room. I think the play is about a chap from the country who is paid to pretend to be a doctor, to cure someone's potential wife (or perhaps his daughter) of her stutter; she is in love with someone else (as she should be if she is his daughter), and when the right couple finally gets together ....and so on. It's a short play - with the interval we were out in just under 2 hours. I suspect the big red pencil may have gone through some scenes.

Like all plays in Georgia, it turned into a musical - but a Rossini musical! When the curtain opened, I thought - does this theatre use the same music for everything? But then I remembered that last time I had heard that tune played on a piano it was at the Russian Drama Theatre in Vilnius, when they put on Beaumarchais' play 'The Barber of Seville' to the same music, in the style of the Swingle Singers. I must see if it will be on when I will be in Vilnius next month.

Here they went further, sometimes with orchestral interludes, sometimes with the piano, often singing the arias, sometimes as they are, sometimes adapted to one word, and sometimes in Georgian. Naturally it was not the quality of singing you'd expect in the opera house, but it was a pretty good effort. Probably Moliere had also not written into his play the group of belly-dancing girls which were extremely effectively accompanied by one of the actors playing an Arabic string instrument and singing. (The Marjanishvili theatre seems to be blessed with multi-talented actors, though the young flautist is not the best actress...).

Even though I had not a word of Georgian, and no idea what the play might be about, other than that I know a bit about Moliere's plays and had some idea from the title, I could follow it more or less. Probably if you know the plot it would go even better - but it was a lovely show, and a lovely evening out! Worth doing again.

Fairly terrible (French) Swiss Georgian Co-production

Oy veh! 'Traveling round the world is just a waste of time if you return the same person as you left' by Jamel Mahmoud. Hmmmm, dangerous to have 'waste of time' in the title of this event.....

It was a coproduction funded by the Swiss Embassy. Not sure that anyone Swiss was there, though there was an artistic looking young woman with Swiss-looking shoes. It took place in the Atoneli theatre, a tiny theatre in the backyard of some buildings down the road from the Marriott Hotel; I might have walked past it, had I not clocked a woman carrying a sprig of lilac, and followed her (one knows the symptoms of theatre goers!).

The theatre itself has some 88 seats, in rows of benches rising up rapidly. Can be a problem if you have bare knees and the person in front of you has a ponytail that tickles past your legs constantly.

The play was a continuation of last year's film 'One Soldier's Story'. Those of us with a musical bent know of course Stravinsky's 'Soldier's Tale', and since a violin and piano were also advertised I had some tiny hopes. And right enough, the summary of the film they showed broadly appeared to reflect the Stravinsky story line. Except that it had a happy end, with the soldier rescuing his sweetheart from her deathbed. The word 'amateur' comes to mind, especially when you see village residents acting, but glancing towards the camera at the end of every scene, or when you have a scene in a house and through the windows you see cars passing by, while otherwise it seems that the story is set a very long time ago.

The story then went on live, on the stage, for about 5 minutes, as 'what happens next' continuing from the film, before drifting off into another film that, frankly, my dog could have shot. Looked like a bunch of amateurs running about in Vake park in Tbilisi, sweeping stairs, going for a meal; my lack of Georgian did not matter, since there was no dialogue anyway....Did I mention that the live acting was in a mixture of Georgian and French? I left after half an hour, and was the 7th person, out of a total audience of about 45, to leave.

I think the Swiss can do better than this. What irritates me most is that the ticket price was not much less than in the very high class, highly professional Rustaveli theatre. Value for money, eh?

Would you turn that ****ing phone off?

Georgia Today made a total hash of its weekly cultural calendar today, getting its days, dates, months and accompanying pictures all mixed up, with the result that I rushed to buy a ticket for 'Twelfth Night' and found myself in '12 Angry Men'. No, I was not angry!

Luckily I had decided to pay for the translation - just as well in a play so based on words. It was originally the 1957 film of that title (though wikipedia says it's a play adapted to a film), about 12 white men in a court house having to decide whether a young man has murdered his father. One is convinced that he is innocent, or at least that the case against him is weak, and that leads to a very long debate of the criminal case. It says in the blurb that the play examines the 'twelve men’s deep-seated personal prejudices, perceptual biases, weaknesses, ignorance and fears that threaten to taint their decision-making abilities, and cause them to ignore the real issues in the case, and potentially lead them to a miscarriage of justice'. I'm not sure about the deepseated prejudices (against, in the film, a Puerto Rican teenager); I did not really feel that they came out, though prejudices against people 'in the gutter' were heard. It's possible, of course, that the play was suitably adapted. Particularly in the case of Georgians who are the subject of fairly fierce racism themselves in places like Russia.

It's an amazing play - well-written and extremely well-paced. It did not hang once, and it was fascinating to watch how the group interactions developed. Of course, Sturua's direction helped to move it along extremely snazzily. I don't know how the jury act in the 1957 film - the only still I can find shows them sitting round a table - in this production there is not much sitting still! Inevitably there are the song and dance scenes, the coordinated stepping out, the young crazy guy (do all his plays deal with psychiatric illness?), people rushing all over the stage, the story of the train noise supported by most actors becoming a train... Even though it deals with the potential for someone's death, it still came out as quite a funny play as well (which perhaps is not the case in the original version?). I wonder if Sturua can produce anything unfunny?

It was a great evening out and I would go to see it again, though again with a translation....

Oh yes, the headline? That's what I said to the person behind me when she answered her phone for the third time during the play. It did not ring after that. The play had ended....

Stop me before I kill again...

(no, it's not what you think)...is what George W Bush says on the back of my anti-capitalista t-shirt which I picked up in Friedrichshain market last Sunday. Told you it had interesting things. At another stall a young woman sold t-shirts with poems. One of these went 'I am the stag and you are the doe' - it's a poem by Hermann Hesse. A guy who had sidled up beside me muttered, in awe, 'that's an enormous statement!' (No, I did not buy this one!). Both t-shirts are relevant in the context of 'Bambiland', a ...well, what....kind of play by Elfriede Jelinek.

Elfriede Jelinek, you will remember, is the Austrian author won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2004, much to some people's surprise. Amongst other things she has written 'The Piano Teacher', a book about a sex-obsessed and mother-dominated piano teacher who abuses her student. Many of her books are like that; I've read about two or three....They are not easy reads (in case someone is looking for a bit of pornography...); the language is very complicated. In view of this I was a bit concerned to see a four-year-old going into the theatre. Jelinek did not go to pick up the prize, on the grounds of agarophobia or some such condition. That does not seem to stop her having a site on myspace.....unless one of her fans set it up.

Today was the premiere of the play in the National Drama Theatre in Vilnius, by the Oskar Korsunovas Theatre, but with the production by one Yana Ross from the US. The full text of the play is on her website (click on 'Bambiland' above, then on 'Aktuelles', go to 2004 and 'Bambiland' in German, or 2005 and Bambiland in English [incomplete]), and is a non-stop monologue based on the model of Aishylos' 'The Persians' (in the current climate the British Navy might wish to produce a new interpretation of this play...).

Actually it's about the Iraq war (hence my desire to have worn the t-shirt). It was not put on as a ceaseless monologue, thankfully, but by about 8 actors, five men and three women. One of the men wore the most enormous platform boots, and a huge rubber cone on top of his head; he played God, generally (remember, it's based on a Greek play). The other men and women, bar one, were soldiers in the first half and gods in bambi trousers with little bambi tails in the second half. The final woman came on stage as the Queen of England to the National Anthem (I had to restrain myself from standing up!), but later was a normal person. As normal as can be in this play. There were scenes with people in hoods (Abu Ghraib), a mother picking up toys in the street (which reminded her of her dead children), a puppet show involving inflatable bambis and a skull, another scene involving lots of bloodstained clothes of all sizes and redundant toys; at one moment a pig's head (real, but dead) was dismembered with an axe very close to the front row, bits flying everywhere. It would seem there was a vegetarian rather too close to the action....

Actually, the text is very funny, astonishingly crafted (as you should expect from a Nobel Prize Winner...) and totally scathing about the Bush and Blair coalition with all the others - since I am not allowed to quote anything, I cannot, but it's well worth taking a look at it - if you have time, go and read it. Considering there were no stage directions since essentially it's a polemic rather than a play, the producer had managed quite well keeping up the interest. Of course there is no real dialogue, it's more that the words are tossed about between the actors. This perhaps made it difficult to keep up the interest at times, and there were moments when I found my eyes drifting to 'closed' but I got over that after a while. The applause was rather weak, though, so maybe it was not just me. It's clear that this text has a lot to say, and having it as a play maybe connects it to more people; but it's not easy for producers. I suspect the text is better than the production was, but the producer did try her best.

Masturbation, gang rape and Booh!

Another [normal?] night at the Deutsche Oper Berlin. A night out for two young companions (one who had played in it in an orchestra, the other one a very visual person) and me, for something that is easy on the ear, and, in a promised staged performance, good on the eye, too.

Hmmm. This interpretation by Götz Friedrich has had me rushing to research the content of Carmina Burana. It's based on 12th and 13th century poems found in Bavaria. This is the same period of Chaucer's very bawdy Canterbury tales. According to this the poems are about the twists of fate (2), spring, nature and love awakening (7), drinking and gambling (4), love (10), and a repeat of the fate theme - I see one of the last lines in the love section refers to 'virgin most transcendent' - not in this interpretation, it wasn't. Also I never realised the Carmina had so many words! The spring theme also reminds of Stravinsky's Rite of Spring, and this interpretation's treatment of the woman is not far off a sacrifice.

So the stage opens with a woman tied up; she then frees herself, rushes about, and at anything in trousers - even at the body builder who joins her on stage is rather underdressed in tiny green briefs and a green hood (the not very jolly green giant?). When a man is not available she uses a rope or anything else that comes to hand to pleasure herself. At one stage a person pops out from a giant pair of lips (oral, but displayed vertically...). During the pub scene another woman enters the stage with huge balloon breasts and buttocks which are then pierced by someone's [metal] pin. In passing our woman, now half-naked, is raped by a bunch of guys. The tenor takes off his clothes (not all of them, thankfully, he's a big guy) and at one stage sings from a steaming bath.....

I suppose that the interpretation might reflect the approach to women in the 13th century - who really knows? The verses are vastly more subtle and beautiful than this interpretation could ever dream to be - it's romance with a jackboot. Then again this refers to the [a?] woman as a 'medieval sex worker'. One of my companions wondered about the image of women as reflected in the show and whether the rape, nakedness and all that were a way of attracting attention? But in 1995 when the production was premiered that was already a bit old hat in Germany.

On the musical front it was a bit disappointing. Maybe we are too used to having bits of Carmina Burana blasted out at us in adverts and films, but the choir seemed weak, as if sung by thin elderly men well past their sell-by date. It was also felt that choir and the huge orchestra were not always entirely together.

This was the first show ever where I heard 'booh' from the audience. It seemed to be directed at the poor conductor, which was a bit odd, but perhaps it was because he was the only person in charge present in the theatre. But it seemed to be the same male who shouted a number of times; thankfully only during the applause, not like last week in Vilnius apparently, where a member of the audience, during Hamlet, shouted abuse during the whole first act, was ejected and taken away handcuffed, apparently turned loose outside the theatre, and returned for the third act with more of the same, to be again arrested...

Now if you go to see it, you know what to expect!

Wasn't!

Belted home from work, wolfed down half a tin of beans (cold, with mustard), shot down the hill...to find that my Friday evening fix of 'Hamlet' had been cancelled. Bit weird anyway, it had only been put on the programme relatively recently. Had they not sold enough tickets? I'd looked forward to a relaxing evening watching my favourite dialogues, but well... have seen it before, might see it again. And anyway, the theatre gave the money back for the tickets without any problems.

Not in my case.

The Rustaveli Theatre has the habit (it's a Soviet thing, I think - I have seen in many non-EU post-Soviet countries) of printing books of tickets, for every show. These books are multi-purpose, and you identify the show by stamping the date on the show on it, as well as the starting time and the ticket price. Let me rephrase this - the date of the show is usually stamped on the back of the ticket. Picture the person sitting in the box office, stamping sheets of paper on the front, with two different stamps, and then turning them over and stamping them on the back, with a further stamp. She will not make a mistake by eg forgetting to change the date on the stamp because if she does, she will probably get punished for it, eg by reduction of salary. In case you ever wondered why certain things work only slowly over here. Labour is cheap.

So, in case you had not noticed, I am a frequent theatre goer. That means I have piles of tickets for different performances. Usually I try to arrange them in date order, but it's difficult when the date is on the back of the ticket. Also the person checking the tickets at the theatre is busy, looks at the front of the ticket which most people usually show, and does not check the date on the ticket (but tears off a strip, in case you were beginning to have smart ideas).

Thus it happened that a week ago I had two tickets in my bag, and on 25 March I handed over the ticket for 30 March, and had the control strip torn off. Discovered my mistake as soon as I found someone else in 'my' seat. The girl suggested then to buy another ticket, I said I had it at home (in fact I then found it in my bag and I found my correct seat). So today I was prepared to tell my story in case the lady looked at the back of the ticket. But then this did not arise.

What did rise, however, were the eyebrows of the person at the ticket office when I showed her today's ticket, with no control strip, and last week's ticket, complete with control strip. She wasn't having any of it. I tried to explain in best Russian what had happened (I could see her point to some degree); there was a man in the box office who tried to shoo me away...but, as an experienced social security administrator, I know what our customers would do if we were to try to shoo them away. So I stayed, and blocked the tiny box office window....until I got my 10 laris back....It's all a big mix-up, but the fact was that I had paid for two shows, and been able to see only one.....

It's time the Rustaveli Theatre follows the Tbilisi Opera House which already has those new-fangled ticketing machines which print everything on the ticket. But perhaps the Rustaveli needs to use up lots of ticket books first?

Ended up going for a drink at Betsy's hotel, the Friday night hang-out for expats. But arranged a hike for Sunday, which is not bad, even though I will have to cater for about 20 people in our choir practice on Monday night, after a day's work....

Nationalism on stage

Another Sunday, another night at the Rustaveli theatre - Ilia Chavchavadze's 'Is he human, this man', edited by Robert Sturua and others. Actually, the original title of the play is 'Is a human a man?'. Leaving aside feminist thoughts, it reminds a bit of Robert Burns' 'A man is a man for a' that' - wasn't that sung at the opening of the Scottish Parliament?

You may have spotted the Georgian name of the author. There are at least two writers of this surname, Ilia who has a fine avenue named after him, and Alexander, a poet, who has a steep little cobbled street named after him (albeit opposite the opera house, and the one I have to climb every evening to get home; twice if I go out at night). Guess who is more highly rated, I guess.

According to Wikipedia, Ilia of that ilk was, amongst other talents, the leader of Georgia's national liberation movement from 1861 till 1907, when he died. There was much of this around at the time in other countries, especially in Eastern Europe. He was also a lawyer, poet, humanist, philosopher and publisher - all of which gave him plenty of scope to further the aims of his movement.

This figures. The play, which had English translation, is about a Georgian nobleman and his life. This guy is greatly given to philosophising about life, and the meaning of life. His court contains his wife, of particular ugliness, two random women, one of whom seems to be a bit feebleminded but usually hits the spot with her remarks, two male servants, and a Russian military type who loiters in the bottom lefthand corner of the stage (halfway down the pit), and who knocks back the shots of vodka.

For the first half of the play the main character just philosophises, talking to his wife, his servants, the random women and the Russian, who often corrects his facts. He tries to drink vodka with the Russian but cannot drink so fast (a frequent jibe at the Russians; there were quite a few sideways comments at Russia). He is dumbfounded, though, when it turns out that the Russian has a Georgian mother. Then the play flashes back to his earlier life; where he loses his mother quite young (as did Chavchavadze), the death of his brother (ditto), and where he goes looking for a wife - 'if the worst comes to the worst, he can always taken an Armenian girl'. Eventually a wife is found for him, and to everyone's horror, she is not excessively pretty. However, they arrange themselves, but no offspring arrives in 20 years. Off they go to pray at a particular shrine, possibly in Tbilisi (St David's mountain is mentioned - on which I live; it's a holy mountain). And would you know it, the wife becomes pregnant. Unfortunately then some Brits appear, including a guy in a kilt, and it seems, just buy the country off them - or have signed an agreement to get the land.....

It was a great, very close to the audience performance - the actors mostly leaned over a fence at the very edge of the stage - luckily they had not sold the tickets of the seats bang in front of this fence. The music was, guess what, Kancheli's Styx (again!) but also some other music, including that wonderful polyphonic Georgian song 'Suliko' which we also sing in our singing group.

I wonder what effect such plays have on the audience at a time when national pride might be a bit in the forefront, and considering that the President himself modelled his movement on Chavchavadze's moment of over 100 years earlier..... This play was premiered during Shervanadze's time, in 2000, and it would be interesting to know what the reaction was at the time. Now perhaps it provides a useful counterbalance to the other play about the president?

Fairies, flashing furtively

...or 'knickers, boxers and y-fronts'. Sounds worse than it was, Shakespeare's Midsummer Night's Dream at the Marjanishvili Theatre in Tbilisi! Don't ask who the producer and actors were - I don't know and the Theatre's website is in Georgian - 'tis too much to deal with at this late hour.
In any case, it's not Mr Sturua who produces the shows; he presides at the Rustaveli Theatre. That theatre's website has some English.

The Marjanishvili's productions are not as in your face, and strident, as those of the Rustaveli Theatre (she says confidently, having seen two of the first and five of the second). For a start, the music does not touch the pain barrier, and it does not involve Mr Kancheli's music either.

This production then was very pleasant, a real fairy tale with fairies flitting across the stage, a very camp Puck (who had even glittered his armpits), a pretty camp Oberon (though he seemed to go for anything), a lovely little old theatre director for the show-in-the-show, especially when at the end he appeared in a floral jumpsuit, some lovely music, good use of the stage machinery, yes, they did flash, lots of laughs for the audience, also from the dialogue - these were the most laughs I have ever heard in Tbilisi, including the two comedies I have seen at the Rustaveli theatre. Maybe those productions are just too brash? Even without translation, this is a great show to go to for those who 'know their Shakespeare' - and if you don't, you look it up on the internet.

CO-Gas Alarm!

Don't know how we got around this in today's performance of 'The Misfortune of Darispan' in the Rustaveli Theatre. 'CO-Gas-Alarm' maybe needs to be explained to those whose parents did not leave a car with the engine running in an underground car park whilst going shopping ... then again....

Tonight's offering was a Georgian comedy, about an impoverished nobleman with 4 daughters who is having trouble marrying them off, finally finds a guy who two of the four daughters fancy (not convinced that all four daughters were on the stage), but I am not sure if he actually married one - come to think of it, maybe he did not....Seems to be a well-known story, though I am not sure what these pictures are doing on the Georgian Parliament website - they are not from our production, anyway. Should also mention that the production was in Georgian (of course), no translation and hence I guessed or was told by my friend who had joined me.

As we now know, the Rustaveli Theatre turns everything into a farce, and often very successfully. Straight comedies, however, do not seem to work well - this is the second time I felt that the acting was well over the top; seriously into slapstick country, hamming it up, with lots of silly voices and silly walks, almost not a straight step was taken! Then again, would I have noticed linguistic subtleties? Some of the (sparse Friday night) audience loved it and were giggling all the way through. Zaza Papuashvili (Hamlet, Vladimir from 'En attendant Godot' and Malvolio) was a total 'Del Boy' in his role as Darispan, all pretence and 'fur coat and nae knickers' - all that was missing was the three wheeler car. But he did one better - his Renault with which he drove off the stage with squealing tyres had a wheel at each corner. And plenty of exhaust fumes, too - the Georgian audience has to be tough!

The music, of course, was essential, some waltzes, some Bach, a wee bit of Kancheli and some other bits and pieces which I am beginning to know well from other plays. Not sure that it was that appreciated - the applause was a bit thin....I wish, though, that the Sturua productions came to a clean end - they are a bit like a Beethoven symphony - you think they have ended, and then you get some more - in music they call that a cadence event, I believe, or 'making a meal of it'. And the applause, when it is sparse, does not need to be milked quite as much - there seemed to be an element of politeness in the audience when the actors just did not leave the stage.

Boxing Day

Another Boxing Day; it's dreich and dark outside. We've eaten the first of many turkey left-over meals, walked the dog, and are now ready to settle down for 'Mary Poppins' on the box.

No, wait!! It's a bright but chilly Sunday in Tbilisi, and Mary Poppins runs in the Musical Comedy Theatre, a 45 minute hike from my home. Wow! Normally I would not take this hike, especially twice on the same day (I have learnt not to trust the local papers for starting times of performances), but for memories' sake it was worth checking it out.

I realised why the performance was sold out - this new, or very well renovated theatre does not have many seats! Not only is the stage limited, for a bit of an intimate performance, and with little stage technology, but inside the auditorium two large staircases swing their way up to the upper tier. If the stairs had been outside there would have been room for another 100 seats. I will say nothing about the loose chairs stood on terracing in the stalls area. Nor will I say anything about where I sat, having somehow got myself into a sold-out performance - but the hairs of firemen seeing this would have stood on end. Perhaps it's meant to create an club-like atmosphere.

It was not like the film. Obviously the actors were different - the little boy with the jug ears in the film must be sixty by now, and hopefully had that operation, but the story was quite different (involving two babies, for example), and the songs were from everywhere - including, I am sure, one from the Sound of Music (Do Re Mi? - it was discussed on a music list recently); the 'spoonful of sugar' song became a riding song, and other songs appeared at odd places. They were also short, mostly. Judging from the costumes and the sets, this theatre runs on a shoestring budget, and hence could not have afforded the scene shifts - though imaginative stuff could have been done. (Sue the architect!)

Mary Poppins was wonderful - she looked, and behaved, just like the character in the book and (Julie Andrews?) in the film. You would trust her with any child, and she would be able to deal with ADHD without any problem. She even went and said 'hello' (gamarjobat) to the children in the audience.... The boy (man) in this show did not have the ears, but he acted with an impressive lithp. The mother of the children seemed a bit of a vamp while her husband was the generally gormless type you'd know from the film. The domestic staff wore uniforms that might have escaped from '101 Dalmations'. There was a rather daft love story involving two dogs, stuck together at one point, but I am sure that little detail would have passed by the mainly juvenile audience.

The show lasted for about 1 1/2 hours, fastly paced, with lots of songs and dances and the children seemed to follow it very well, and enjoy it. That's good then.

Having been allowed into this sold-out performance (with paying), the theatre staff afterwards thanked me for coming. That's the friendly Georgians for you!

Being a young president...

...in a newly emerging democracy (really only 3 years in Georgia) must be hard! Not only are you a young guy, with not such great experience, running a country which, at the time, was deeply mired in corruption, deep poverty, no electricity etc, but then you find geezers, older and younger than you, ganging up and producing a satirical play called 'Soldier, Love, Bodyguard and... the President'. But what can a President do? In a democracy he cannot really be do anything unless the play is deeply offensive (which it's not, almost) but then again, one does feel for him now and again.

This is one weird play. Described as a comedy, but the first half is hard work - the programme notes are the funniest bit here. Essentially it is a play of two halves, with the first half about a soldier who returns from one of Georgia's many wars minus a leg, but who meets angels who restore the leg (though he drifts in and out of angel contact and keeps gaining and losing the leg - bit of a bravura acting job for Gagi Svanidze). Eventually he settles with the leg but loses his wife instead (she is actually a disguised angel). The second part is then set in the chancellery of 'a' president where various shenanigans go on. Funny that, considering that in Georgia the President's office is called the 'Chancellery' whereas in Lithuania, for example, it's called the 'Prezidentura'.

The programme notes state, at the start of their description of either half, that 'Act 1' (or 2) 'is not about the president'. They also helpfully provide a list of 'songs and poems and cliches' used in the performance, one of which is the 'bear', described as a symbol of 'Georgia's big northern neighbour'. And finally the tell the joke that the angel was trying, unsuccessfully, to tell the soldier, Valiko, all through the first half.

This performance is thin on dialogue, and heavy on action (the latter like most of Sturua's performances). The Ministry of funny walks has been busy again, and has developed a separate branch of funny arm movements. The second half is much better than the first half, which seems a bit pointless and very tenously connected to the second half - the applause at the end of the first half sounded bewildered. The president only appears in the second half (played wonderfully by Beso Zanguri who seems to specialise in playing men in high places); he suffers from fear of the dentist, has oral sex with his wife (missed a trick here, why not the secretary?), his wife is being accused of being a spy for a foreign country, the song (hymn?) 'America, America' keeps popping up with the whole chancellery snapping to attention, at the end everyone is dead because the president's bodyguard, who has a gay crush on him, has killed them all. You get the picture.

And the joke? A hunter bumps into a bear in the forest. The bear says to him, 'Hunter, do you prefer I kill you or I rape you?'. The hunter chooses to live. The same happens again and again. When they meet for the fourth time, the bear asks, 'Hunter, do you come here for sex or hunting?'.

Before the theatre I had been to a small concert at the conservatory of a young pianist, playing Bach, Schubert and Mozart in the face of adversity....A TV camera man wandered round with his big camera, filming the guy from all directions, almost up his nostril, and then departed in a clatter of camera, while the pianist was still playing. Not nice. He played quite well, but seemed a bit stiff in his interpretations. And the Steinway lacked warmth, I thought. But it was nice seeing someone play with relaxed hands....

Yawning Emptiness....

.... in the theatre tonight. Friday night is not good for getting theatre audiences. On the programmme was 'Styx'. Seen it before, but love the music by Gia Kancheli, which this play without words is based on.

It's a bit weird, now, going to the theatre after three helpings of Hamlet. You see an actor on the stage, and think - 'oh, there's Hamlet' (or Polonius, Laertes, Claudius, Gertrude, that other girl, and Hamlet's ghost). The first time I saw the show there were just a bunch of actors on the stage. More to the point you think that 'Hamlet' has all the main roles in the show, when in fact in this piece there aren't really main characters, particularly. Though 'Hamlet' did get to fry the eggs and burn his mouth eating them, before putting his head in the gas oven - gasp! Or rather not....

Also realised how much the producer, Robert Sturua, has pulled apart Kancheli's 'Styx'. Not surprising really, considering that it only probably lasts half an hour or so - the music can hardly be slowed down. So there are lots of gaps between bursts of music. It needs to be said that Kancheli's music, for all the wonderful that it is, is heavy on the eardrums - some reviewers in amazon also thought so. It has moments of extreme quiet and extreme noise. Makes it really hard to listen to it on the home stereo. In this, wordless, play that might have been a good thing - the actors are not dancers (you are not so good on synchronicity, boys - banging your feet on the floor sounds like a scatter gun, not like a single shot), and the audience needs to be shaken up every now and again. But I wondered if Sturua has not only cut up the piece, but jiggled it around a little, with the bits not being in the right order? Particularly at the end where the piece has quite a few bars of extreme quietness followed by a BIG BANG of noise. I used to listen to it whilst cycling to work in Vilnius, and could never hear the quiet bits over the traffic, so kept being shocked by the explosions ... could have sworn there are two bits of quietness followed by two bursts of sound - but the last burst never happened in this piece, so there was a bit of confusion in the audience about when the piece had finished and we should applaud.

Too close...

...or the most-reviewed play? Last night, Friday night, nothing to do, so popped off to see Hamlet for the third time. This time without translation but with a programme. It states that the performance uses 'excerpts of the classic translation by Ivane Machabeli'. That explains a lot....

The theatre being a bit empty, I slipped into the front row. I like being in on the action at concerts and other performances, and in Vilnius Opera and Ballet Theatre it works well. But there's a pit 'twixt the performers and me. Here the performers were sometimes no less than a metre distant from me. If they were lying on the floor I had to look round the uplighter at the edge of the stage. It was like watching TV with your nose pressed against the screen. And there were far too many sharp, pointy, swords flying around for me to be entirely relaxed in the front row!

Agonising moment and illustration of the sharpness of the swords - Hamlet was stabbing Claudius; on the second insertion the sword tip caught slightly on Claudius' coat (which Hamlet could not see) and did not 'go in' far enough - I wonder what he thought (Have I stabbed the guy??) - what to do. Eventually, seeing as the actor did not collapse, he 'extracted' the sword and shoved it in again - this time right through the folds of the coat.....

Go-done

So, I was at a bit of a loose end after 6 this evening....and my legs carried me to the theatre, to see if I could get into the show. Even half an hour before the start people were milling outside the theatre, but what were those tickets they had in their hands? It seems they all had invitations - so that's why there were no tickets for sale! Seems a bit pointless, advertising the show then. A lovely old lady, looking for an invitation for herself, also organised me one - to slightly bewildered looks (what, she does not speak Georgian, what is she doing going to our theatre? It seems the ladies at the entrance know me already....).

I think it was an event to celebrate teachers. At the beginning many people were on the stage, giving speeches, and a number of people were called up onto the stage and given envelopes and flowers, including some very rural looking ladies. All winners were women, one elderly lady (life-time award, that sort of thing?) and the rest were quite young.

And then they were treated to 'Waiting for Godot'. Perhaps not the kind of thing you would normally expect for such a celebration. It was also performed without a break - that's after half an hour of speeches. No wonder the audience was a bit restless. Looking at the script, I wonder though if the piece was not cut a little....or quite a bit?

It was another, typical Stuara tour de force - I've decided he's a song-and-dance man, and I like that! Opening with an excerpt of Kancheli's 'Styx' (bits of which he seems to use in all his plays, especially the wordless play 'Styx') the characters acted, sang, danced their way through the piece. It's amazing how variable my favourite Zaza Papuashvili is; here he (Estragon) and his mate David Berikashvili (Vladimir) were just like two tramps, having a great deal of time and not enough activities to fill it with, fussing with, and exaggerating, every little thing and playing it out interminably. Estragon scuffed around forever with one boot on and the other half off, driving me just a little crazy every time he walked. Pozzo came with his own signature tune, a hollywooded version of 'Oh Tannenbaum', and Lucky attached to him at a very long rope with various pairs of bloomers drying on it. (Does Lucky always have hair to the ground? and maybe he does not always sing a Chinese song....). For this play, it was probably a fairly normal production, and as always, it was fun!

To Godot or not to Godot?

The loveliest post on cats and inexperienced owners is here. I hope this cat has the deluxe cat litter tray photographed in Vienna last week. Why do I go around photographing cat litter trays? Don't ask! A musical cat called Solti has something to do with it. Yes, it might look like a swimming pool, but no self-respecting cat would look at it that way. Though perhaps those who have accidentally made contact with a pool would not care for this litter tray.

Went for a walk up the hill behind my house, to the TV tower, much the same route as the hash a week ago. The Georgians do not seem to be very good at taking their litter home, and really the whole area, a very popular area, it seems, is covered in plastic bags, broken glass and so on. It's a shame. Around the TV tower plateau much work is going on to make it a beautiful spot again, though this involves construction work rather than litter picking. It seems there is a permanent fun fair with scooters and all sorts of roundabouts; some of the buildings are being restored and it should become very nice, if only it was tidier.

Took a different turn on the way down, and oy veh, was it hairy. This was not an approved path, indeed this was not a path, more an avalanche of stones and mud, thankfully held up by trees - which also held me up! More than once I approached the side of a path only to find a vertical cliff below me....but there was evidence of footsteps (though I should have been alerted by the absence of litter) and finally I made it onto a street below. The legs stopped shaking a short while later.

Had considered going to see 'Waiting for Godot' tonight; my favourite actor is in it. We read it in French at school (in Germany), spending much time on interpreting it ('interpreting' in German means finding the meaning behind it).

The questions I was asking myself included:

• it's in Georgian and nothing much happens. Does that matter?
• Is the dialogue important? Read somewhere that scholars now think that it is just people playing with words. It's a likely explanation given that the author was Irish and the Irish are famous for their 'craic', meaningless but funny conversations.
• If the dialogue is not important will the acting be enough to keep me interested? (The music, as if you had not guessed, is by lovely Gia Kancheli again).

The answer turned out to be that the show is sold out, even though it has been running since about 2001. Shame - I had found the text in the internet. Managed to get some tickets for some other performances, though, including two Georgian plays (one allegedly a comedy about the current president....). Both are supposed to be translated into English - I would not have a cat's chance in hell getting synopses for these, otherwise.

Meanwhile the opera house is advertising 'Giselle', with a prima ballerina who has just returned from Moscow. Seems that the show is not going to go ahead, but the posters are still up.