Excellent Drunkenness

I had written a long blog for today and for Saturday and Sunday but that was before I lost the lot when the word document that I had it stored in went corrupt. This was, I'm sure, the fault of Word 2007 which they have given us at work as an 'upgrade' from 2003. It is already becoming clear that this package is the devils incarnate itself. It has always been Microsoft's mission to make the next version of Office harder to use that the previous one and now they've sussed out the best way to do, remove the menus at the top. Problem solved. So no long blog today because I can no longer remember everything that happened today.

I know I came in the car because in the evening we were going over to Derby to see Twelfth Night, done Moulin Rouge style by Derby's Amateur theatre company and first thing in the morning we took the dogs for a spin around the pond. I still managed to make it to work without having to rest my eyes in a ditch somewhere.

We struggled to get tickets for the play due to the box office's computers being on the blink all week. We ended up on the balcony where the seats were a bit on the cramped side, if you've ten years old you'd probably be fine but any one else would struggle.

Viola is shipwrecked as usual put then pitches up in Paris circa 1900 rather than Illyria. Masquerading as the male Cesario she gets work in a cabaret club working for Orsino, who is the boss there. Here the Moulin Rouge pretence ends really. Lady Olivia is still really the same and Viola/Cesario is despatched to do Orsino's romancing for him. Olivia of course only has eyes for Cesario, whilst Viola, were he not pretending to be Cesario, would like to get her hands on Orsino.

The usual humorous subplot is good and better than I've seen it done before. There is some excellent drunkenness and Sir Toby Belch is superb. Sir Andrew is played totally in the style of Tim McInnerny's Lord Percy Percy from Blackadder II. McInnerny once stated that he had based that character on Sir Andrew but I'd never seen the connection before, let alone in reverse.

When they trick Malvolio into thinking Olivia is in love with him, it's a shame they don't keep the Paris theme going and get him to dress up as a Moulin Rouge dancer but no they stick to the traditional yellow stockings cross-gartered.

Then of course Viola's lost brother Sebastian shows up, confusion reigns followed by the happily ever after bit.

All in all very good with some excellent acting. Twelfth Night isn't one of my favourite Shakespeare's but this was better and funnier than any professional play or film I've seen.