pedanther | Entries tagged with allo allo

1. Let the record show that, even after ten years working with computers for a living, I am still capable of spending fifteen minutes trying increasingly arcane methods to get the computer to talk to the scanner before realising that the scanner isn't switched on.

2. The production of 'Allo 'Allo has closed after a successful run, both in terms of audience response and -- very important for an amateur production -- in that everybody in the cast and crew got along with each other and enjoyed themselves.

In theory, this means I can now throw myself into rehearsals for The Duchess of Coolgardie... so of course this week is the week when rehearsals have been called off because nearly everybody is out of town for school (or other) holidays. I'm additionally annoyed that it wasn't next week, because then I could have gone to a Toastmasters meeting (which I haven't been able to do lately because there's a Duchess rehearsal on the same weeknight).

3. Another consequence of 'Allo 'Allo ending is that I now have time to go to the gym again. I went this evening for the first time in a month, and got halfway through the routine before deciding I'd better go home and have a little lie-down until the spots in front of my eyes went away. I did feel much better afterwards, though.

4. In case there's anyone left I haven't already recommended it to, the latest addition to the webcomics I read regularly is Breaking Cat News, in which three intrepid feline reporters bring you the latest on such vital headlines as "Everything on the shelf fell down and broke; there are no suspects" and "It's 7.31am on Saturday morning and the food bowl is still empty".

5. Random fact of the week: The land area of the nation of Andorra is very nearly the same as that of the city of Albuquerque, New Mexico.

1. Over at Mark Watches, Mark Oshiro has just watched his very first episode of Star Trek. (Yes. The fact that Mark somehow missed out on a lot of popular fiction growing up is kind of the point of the blog.) The plan is that he will go on to watch every episode of every Trek series in the original broadcast order. To say that he seems to be enjoying it so far would be a considerable understatement.

2. June 23 is Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Appreciation Day. I showed some concrete appreciation for one of my favourite living fantasy authors by buying a copy The Sea of Time, the latest volume of PC Hodgell's Chronicles of the Kencyrath series.

3. I have been to see X-Men: Days of Future Past. I didn't go to see the first of the new-young-X-men movies because it didn't have Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellen in it, but I gather that the thing with X-men being involved behind the scenes of famous historical events of the late 20th century is something of a running theme. I understand the temptation, but I get the feeling that that's only going to work up to a point before it becomes impossible to pretend that this is a secret history and not an outright alternate timeline... and furthermore I suspect that point went past somewhere in the course of this movie. (The moment where Magneto drops the thing on the thing is a major contender.)

4. I have also been to see Maleficent. I'm not sure I liked it, either as a new take on Sleeping Beauty or as a story in its own right. Lots of telling-not-showing, and a few too many of the kind of plot holes you get when something happens because that's what happened in the old version even though the reasons it happened in the old version no longer apply. (When I try to think of other movies to compare it to, I keep coming up with TV miniseries and things that went direct to video.) And even though this is supposed to be a version with the female characters front and centre, by my count it actually has fewer interesting female characters than the original, because the three good fairies who were a significant presence in Sleeping Beauty have been almost completely sidelined.

5. 'Allo 'Allo is going well. I have learned quite a bit about theatrical makeup in the last week or two, since something was required to make plausible the jokes about my character being over the hill, and since this is amateur theatre I had to come up with something by myself that I could apply by myself. By opening night I had managed something that was generally agreed did the job; with practice, repetition, and incremental improvement, it's possible I'll have achieved something I'm satisfied with before the show closes.

1. 'Allo 'Allo opens tomorrow. The last dress rehearsal went pretty smoothly, which I think I'd prefer to a disaster even if a disastrous final rehearsal is supposed to mean a successful opening.

(

lost_spook, since you raised the subject: I know exactly where I put the painting of the Fallen Madonna; the trouble is that since I put it there, somebody else has moved it...)

I haven't had the opening week nightmare yet, which might mean that it's become too familiar to retain any power. On the other hand, there's still tonight.

2. A couple of weeks ago, I went to a quiz night with a group of people from the cast and crew of 'Allo 'Allo. We upheld my family's proud tradition of always coming second at quiz nights, though it was a very close-run thing and we nearly spoiled it by winning. At the end of the final round we were in equal first place, and it took two tie-breakers to bump us down to second.

It's the kind of result that makes one think back on the points that one's team narrowly failed to achieve. I can think of a couple of points we would have got if the person writing down the answers for that round had listened when I said I had the answer; on the other hand, I can think of a couple of points we would have got if I had listened when I was the one writing down the answers, so I suppose it balances out.

3. Rehearsals have already begun for The Duchess of Coolgardie, though at this stage they involve less acting than they do the producer trying to figure out the movement of the various characters on, off, and around the stage. It's got a relatively large cast for an amateur production, even if you only count the named characters, and there's a fair number of unnamed extras and walk-ons in addition.

My character is turning out to have more facets than I expected a melodrama villain to have. I rather guiltily prefer him to the hero, who has a tendency toward the kind of overwrought moping about his troubles that can only be described as "melodramatic", and frankly the worst of his troubles are more his own fault than either he or the authors seem inclined to acknowledge. The villain is a pretty poor excuse for a human being, but at least he's relatively straightforward and self-aware about it.

4. In the area of theatre I've been to see instead of been in, I saw Black Swan's recent modern-dress production of As You Like It. I liked it a great deal, and significantly it made me like the play itself more than I previously had. The only other production I'd previously seen had a lot of really neat sight gags interpolated into it, but left me cold on the play itself; this production made more of an emotional connection to the underlying story (and also, to be fair, had a few good sight gags of its own).

5. A few years ago, the stage magician Teller, in collaboration with veteran theatre director Aaron Posner, directed a production of Macbeth in which all the mysterious supernatural events were realized using actual magic: none of this business with witches and ghosts sneaking on and off stage in full view of the audience; they appeared and disappeared in front of the audience's very eyes. All the apparations apparated in suitably mysterious fashion. It also got pretty good reviews as a production of Macbeth even apart from that aspect of the production. I was very sad at the time that I had no chance of seeing it, and so I was unspeakably pleased to discover just now that it was filmed and has been released on video. It won't be the same as seeing it live, but it's a lot better than nothing.

The reason I was looking up details of that old production is that I recently learned Teller and Posner have done a follow-up this year, bringing a similar approach to The Tempest.

1. Having got the brass band competition out of the way, I've got time for acting again. I'm in rehearsals for a production that opens at the end of June, and after that it'll be straight into rehearsals for another production opening in October.

The June production is the stage adaptation of 'Allo 'Allo, in which I will be playing an amusing Nazi. It's a bit of a departure for me, in that it's being put on by what I think of, and have occasionally referred to here, as "the other local theatre group". I've been to see some of their shows, and learned from their workshops, but this is the first time I've been in one of their productions.

The October production is a staging of a 115-year-old West End melodrama called The Duchess of Coolgardie, which was given a topical spin by taking as its setting the gold rush that was going on in Western Australia at the time. This will be the first time it's been put on in the part of the world where it's set. Being a melodrama, most of the characters are broad stereotypes, and the supporting cast are mainly distinguished by being The Irish One, The Yorkshire One, and so on. (Also, The Aboriginal One, who occasionally wanders into talking more like The Native American One when the authors have a lapse of concentration.) I've been cast as the villain; it's not clear yet whether moustache-twirling will be involved, but I've already found a stage direction calling for me to laugh sardonically at the heroes' misfortune.

2. The Rep Club's most recent production, the one which I didn't audition for because brass band competition, was The Importance of Being Earnest. I have a feeling that anybody who knew much about Victorian dress, behaviour, or interior decoration would have picked up a lot of lapses in those areas, but it was pleasantly entertaining, and it got major props from me for playing the butlers straight. (Every professional production I've seen in years has cast physical-comedy actors as the butlers and let them wander around upstaging Wilde's dialogue with slapstick sight gags. Drives me nuts, and I can't imagine why the directors thought that would be a good idea.)

3. Back at the brass band, there are deliberations afoot regarding shifting some of the players to new positions, to cover gaps left by players leaving and what have you over the past few years. (When we were at the competition, we had guests from friendly bands, including a few temporarily-returned ex-members, helping to bring us up to full strength.) I have been approached about possibly being shifted not only to a different position but to a different instrument.

There are two things to note here: The first is that every brass intrument except the trombone is built on the same basic system, so if you know how to play one it doesn't take long to learn a different one, if the one you know isn't the trombone. The second is that the only brass instrument I've ever learned to play is the trombone.

Actually, the conceptual leap was the difficult bit; now that I've actually started learning the new instrument it's going pretty smoothly, and I may actually be up to speed on it by the time they decide whether they want me to play it or not.

(I'm still not entirely convinced they're going to end up shifting me off trombone. It's not that there's a shortage of players: even without counting me, there are more players who identify trombone as their preferred instrument than there are trombone positions, which is one of the things that triggered the deliberations. It's just that when the trombone players were polled on which position they would prefer to play, given free choice, all of them except me wanted the same one.)

4. I have given another project speech at Toastmasters, this one on the subject of Nancy Pearl's Doorways into Reading, which I have written about here before.

I have one more project speech to do and then I will qualify as an official Competent Communicator. If I do it before the end of June, I'll boost the club's standing in the annual assessment of club performance. I don't think that's going to happen, though, partly because I'm not sure I'm going to be available for any of the June meetings, and partly because the requirement for the final project speech is to be inspiring, and I have no ideas for a topic I could be inspiring on.

5. Today's Google Doodle on the Australian Google homepage pays tribute to cartoonist and puppeteer Norman Hethrington, creator of one of Australia's most-loved children's television shows (also, with a suitable amount of hand-waving, arguably the long-running science fiction TV series in the world).

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