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Mar
5thWoman in Black starring Daniel Radcliffe
MEGA SPOILERS AHEAD. BEWAREZ. I should preface this by saying that I am not a connoisseur of scary movies. I nearly leap out of my skin at your average Doctor Who episode, and I consider “Silence of the Lambs” to be nearly too scary. But I love Harry Potter, and I was curious to see what Daniel Radcliffe could do since I “missed out” on seeing him <s>naked</s> in Equus while it was in New York, and I’m not a big enough masochist to go to see How to Succeed in Business without really Trying. Then I see the previews for “Woman in Black” and hey, I can tolerate a scary movie for DRad, right? Until my best friend Lauren told me that she’d seen the play version of Woman in Black in London, and that it haunted her, even 13 years after viewing. I asked her what could have been so bad: did everyone die? And she said that the ending was WORSE than death. What could be worse than death? I know it isn’t cake! Her chilling tale gave me pause — what, exactly, had I signed up for? I decided to go to a 10pm showing at the local Alamo Drafthouse, because they sell you tasty food and drink, and how scary can a movie be if I’m getting to eat fried pickles during it? The previews should have been warning enough. Previews are built around expected target audiences, so they’re a good portent for whether you’re going to enjoy a movie because […]
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Feb
10thJohn Gabriel Borkman at BAM
I will admit that my original motivation in buying tickets to see this play was to placate Adam’s mother, who is an unabashedly huge fan of Alan Rickman. Once we realized that, on account of the impending storm, that Adam’s mother wouldn’t even be able to attend the show, I will admit too that we nearly didn’t go at all. But money is money, and money is tight, and if it meant that I might get to MEET Snape, Alan Rickman, then dammit we’d be the only people in the theatre on a snowy evening. Except that we weren’t! Amazingly, despite the abysmal forecast, there was little actual snowfall by the time we attended the 7:30pm show in Brooklyn, and the house was completely packed. Not an empty seat anywhere, New Yorkers refused to stay home. In lieu of Mrs Singh, David Gcame with us, and the three of us packed into our obstructed view seats. The set design seemed particularly funny considering the environment outside. It was sparse, and punctuated by huge white snow drifts that were the only dressing on the stage, which shone like black volcanic glass and echoed back little reflections of the white of the snow. There were three pieces of furniture as well, Victorian-style, in an otherwise colorless design, but the colors were still pretty muted. I really liked the sparseness. It ended up giving the sense that the whole cast of characters were always cold, and colorless, and that their footing was on a […]