Once Upon a Bookshelf

The History Boys is a play by Alan Bennett, an “unexpected success”, that debuted at the National Theatre in London in May of 2004. It soon after toured around the world, and was made into a movie - all with the original cast.

It is the story of eight bright but under privileged boys attending a grammar school who are studying for their Oxbridge exams in the 80’s. While two of their past teachers are still there helping them get ready for the exams, the school has also hired a new teacher - Irwin - specifically to guide the boys to all get into Oxford or Cambridge. Hector (their English teacher) and Irwin are almost complete opposites as far as teaching styles go, yet both have profound impacts on these boys lives.

While on one hand this is a coming of age story of the eight boys, it is also very much the story of Hector, their slightly eccentric English teacher. Hector is by far one of my two favourite characters in this story. He’s the type of teacher we all wish we could have - minus a few major faults. He taught, not for exams, but for life; he taught boys to appreciate culture in every sense.

“I didn’t want to turn out boys who in later life had a deep love of literature, or who would talk in middle age of the lure of language and their love of words. Words said in that reverential way that is somehow Welsh. That’s what the tosh is for. Brief Encounter, Gracie Fields, it’s an antidote. Sheer calculated silliness.”

Reading the play was so different from watching the movie. I can’t say which one I enjoy more, they are both fabulous in totally different respects. There were extra scenes in this - the play is apparently an hour longer than the movie, so stuff had to have been cut out. Things were changed to suit the screen better when it was adapted. But also, the future of two characters changed, and one of them I’m still not sure how to think of it. It rather came off as quite a bit of a surprise, but I don’t want to spoil it for anyone.

It was amazing how well the actors all portrayed their characters in the movie. While reading the play, I could picture the characters perfectly and hear the way they say every word and phrase. It rather blew my mind and gave me a new appreciation of the film. I wish I had the chance to see the play with the original cast in it; at some point in time I am definitely going to want to see it on stage. As it is, I am going to spend the rest of this evening watching the movie.

Hello. How are we today? A little quiet? I’m feeling a little blue myself. You know, a little anxious for no particular reason. A little sad that I should feel anxious at this age. You know, a little self-conscious anxiety resulting in non-specific sadness. A state that I call blue. Anyway, whenever I’m feeling this way - blue - I like to listen to my music. So I was going through my box of records this morning (yes records) and what did I find, but one of my favourite shows, Gable & Stein’s The Drowsy Chaperone.

I’m going to try to make this as understandable as possible, but my mind is a bit of a whirr at the moment. You see, I saw The Drowsy Chaperone this afternoon. And for any of you who have known me for a couple of years, it is a well-known fact that I positively love this musical. LOVE IT. Fell in love when I saw the performance of “Show Off” on the Tonys last year, got the soundtrack immediately afterwards, and well, you can imagine the rest of the story.

Basic plot - Man in Chair is feeling a little blue and gloomy one day, so pulls out a record (yes record) of his favourite musical from the 1920’s, The Drowsy Chaperone, and leads the audience through the show song by song, pausing the music occassionally to make a couple of comments about the actors performing the characters in the show. (Not the real actors, but the actors that the real actors are playing.) The Drowsy Chaperone (the musical within the musical) is a story about a wedding - an actress is going to end her career to marry a man she met shortly before, and all sorts of crazy capers ensue. Or, as Man in Chair says, “Mixups, mayhem and a gay wedding! Of course, the phrase ‘gay wedding’ has a different meaning now, but back then it just meant fun! And that’s exactly what this show is - fun!”

I have to say that I expected to love this. It surpased all expectations. In an extreme sort of manner. Best play I’ve seen this year. Possibly favourite musical I’ve seen ever. It was so much funnier on stage than I had thought it was going to be. And the dancing and music - ah, the music!

I got to see the original Man in Chair (Bob Martin) and Mrs. Tottendale (Georgia Engel), which was positively LOVELY. I cannot imagine anyone else as Mrs. Tottendale, and she is by far my favourite character in the show, so that was such a treat. As far as Man in Chair… well, Bob Martin was brilliant! I hear Jonathan Crombie is doing Man in Chair once it goes on tour, which would’ve been fun to see (hello, Gilbert?) but… I’m so happy I got to see Bob Martin in the role. He certainly lived up to my hopes from what I heard on the soundtrack and what I saw on the Tonys performance.

I was slightly worried that I wouldn’t enjoy Andrea Chamberlain as much as I love Sutton Foster on the soundtrack (oh, how amazing would it be to actually see Sutton Foster in the role!) but Chamberlain did a fabulous job. I even have to say that I enjoyed Kitty much more than I do on the soundtrack (she is my least favourite character, and I quite liked her in the performance).

The whole cast was amazing though. As I said previously, Man in Chair pauses the record occassionally to make comments, and the cast always freezes in whatever position they were previously in. At another point, the record starts skipping, and it was just so amusing to see the cast do the same litle bit of a song and dance repeated over and over and over.

The only things I was slightly disappointed in were the fact that one of my favourite songs on the soundtrack (”I Remember Love”) wasn’t in the show, and the fact that a good portion of the theatre was empty. We had a hard time getting three tickets together, yet there were groups of three or four seats together that were just empty. Seriously sad.

So yes, this was such a positively wonderfully fantastically brilliant afternoon, and the show was so brilliant, and I wanted to watch it again from the beginning as soon as it was over. If you get the chance to see this, DO. Do not think about it - buy tickets immediately. Because it is That Good. And I’m going to be listening to the soundtrack for the next few weeks straight and driving everyone completely batty, no doubt. But oh, the fun!

Oh I love it so much. I know it’s not a perfect show. The spit-take scene is lame, and the monkey motif is laboured. But it does what a musical is supposed to do. It takes you to another world, and it gives you a little tune to carry with you in your head for when you’re feeling blue, ya know?

I spent a good portion with the lovely Rachel. Among discovering new obsessions, visiting Starbucks numerous times and buying way more books than is good for either of us (especially with the upcoming release of Eclipse), we also went to the Stratford Festival to see To Kill a Mockingbird.

I think I can happily say that I have been to Stratford enough this season. (Am looking forward to next year, however.)

While I have read this book, it’s been a long time since then - it was surprising how much of the story that has stuck with me through the years. The play, dramatized by Christopher Sergel, is one of the most insense plays I’ve seen. You would expect something like that if you know the story, but it exceeded all my expectations. The acting was phenominal, and the audience got completely absorbed into the play. Aside from one person’s cell phone going off half way through the second act (grrr, totally bitter about that!!), everything was deathly silent while we were watching what was happening on stage. It was positively brilliant.

And oh, the girl who played Scout! She was what - 10? 11? Absolutely adorable and quite possibly one of the best children actors I’ve seen on stage - which admittedly isn’t too many, but still. Hope to see more of her in the future.

I was first introduced to A Midsummer Night’s Dream in the summer between grades six and seven. Unsurprisingly, I saw the play at Stratford (twice that year), and had one of those Shakespeare for kids type of books with this play in it. It was my second exposure to Shakespeare, and after this I was completely enamoured.

I discovered something interesting while reading the introduction of the play this time around. This play was first published in 1600; when it was republished about 20 years ago, there had been a few changes made to the play - mostly stage directions and punctuation. The copy I have is an amalgamation of these two versions (the first one has the better text, apparantely, while the second has better punctuation), which “may in some ways appear unfamiliar to those used to the ‘accepted’ text, but it reproduces as closely as possible the text used in Shakespeare’s own playhouse.” (I have the Penguin Popular Classics edition of the book, if anyone was interested. I’m thinking I might want to pick up another copy of the play now to figure out the differences.)

While not one of my favourite Shakespearian plays, A Midsummer Night’s Dream

Puck is not only one of my favourite Shakespearian characters, but he's also one of my all-time favourite fairy characters. He just completely epitomizes everything I believe a fairy should be. He's magical and oh, he is so mischievious. Plus, he has all of the best lines in the play, my favourites being Lord, what fools these mortals be! (which I just noticed Chris quoted this evening in his post about this play as well), And those things do best please me // That befal preposterously and parts of his last soliloquy:

If we shadows have offended,
Think but this (and all is mended)
That you have but slumber’d here,
While these visions did appear.
And this weak and idle theme,
No more yielding but a dream.

I got to spend another day at the Stratford Festival this past Saturday - this time, to see Oklahoma!, one of my favourite musicals. It was the first musical Rodgers & Hammerstein did together, and it “revolutionized American musical theatre.” And it’s just damn good fun.

I thoroughly enjoyed the play; it was one of the better musicals I’ve seen at Stratford. The singing was great, the dancing was fun, and the sets were so cool. I mean, the singing was no Hugh Jackman, but you can’t have everything, now can you? I always love looking at the sets too, to see how they transform the stage - I don’t normally see a lot at the Festival Theatre where they use a lot of sets, so this was quite the change.

I went to the same high school as one of the guys who was in the play; he was a couple of years ahead of me, so I didn’t know him, but I like seeing him in plays every now and then to see how much he’s improved since I saw him in the musicals our high school put on. He’s gotten really good.

When I went to see King Lear, I mentioned that I was debating getting the magnetic finger puppet set of Famous Writers next time I went to the theatre, and I couldn’t pass it up this time. So, Shakespeare, Tolstoy, Virginia Woolf and Charles Dickens will now be not only guarding my frozen foods, they will also be entertaining me whenever I demand them to. However, now that I’ve got one set, I want more and more.