This is a corner of my lounge transformed into a set with lighting rig for my appearance in Shrapnel, the play that Claire wrote about life under lockdown and which was presented online to quite a substantial number of people.  The cast of eight were together in a Zoom meeting acting away while Claire's dad magically scraped the appropriate combinations of characters for each scene out of Zoom and fed them to the world via Youtube.  The whole thing was topped and tailed by scene titles, music, cast list and so on plus an invitation to donate to our chosen charities.  The critical reception was quite good and audience reaction very positive.

Here's how the audience saw it.

After that finished I returned to being a consumer rather than a provider of entertainment.  I watched the last of my Trollope DVDs - The Warden and Barchester Towers, wonderful stuff with a sublime portrayal of the slimy Mr Slope by Alan Rickman.  The films were shot at Peterborough Cathedral and coincidentally I had just seen a TV documentary which had whetted my appetite for a visit and the DVDs reinforced my wish.  As soon as Covid lets up I shall make a plan.

The Citizens streamed a filmed performance of Fibres.  The play is about how a man's exposure to asbestos affects himself and his family years later.  Not a cheerful subject but a good production and the writer slipped in a reasonably happy ending. 

The SCO continues to provide music online and their concert featuring music by Anna Clyne and Benjamin Britten was delightful.  You can listen here and then maybe drop them a bob or two.

There's been a French film festival on and I watched two features and a collection of shorts.  La Bonne Epouse was a feeble comedy about an institution preparing girls to become perfect little wives.  It ends with the girls, the headmistress and her nun assistant heading for a national homemaking exhibition in Paris just as the 1968 student disturbances were getting underway.  I forget how it happens but they throw off their bourgeois carapaces, abandon their bus and stride through country lanes determined to join the revolution, dancing and singing the while in what, like the pastel shades the film is shot in, I took to be a nod to Les Parapluies de Cherbourg.   

Felicità was a degree, but only a degree, more up my street.  Ex jailbird father and eccentric mother who enjoy pranking one another and pre-teen daughter Tommy who doesn't want to be late for the first day of term get into scrapes of one sort or another. They need to flee the country but delay for a day to let Tommy achieve her wish. Dad gets her there in time in a stolen car, goes back to jail but the loving family is reunited when he comes out.  Not very good nonsense really. 

Of the ten shorts two were excellent, two very good.  No descriptions but names and trailers that may jog my memory at a future date.  Pile Poil,  Une Soeur, Mon p'tit Bernard, Le Chant d'Ahmed, 

I saw a weird thing called The Kids are Alright by an outfit or three called  Encounter, Fuel & Northern Stage in which a man dressed as a woman danced around a small patch of grass, shrubs and trees outside some houses pursued by a woman who was mostly bent double and from time to time used an American accent to contribute to their dialogue.  From looking into the matter it seems I may have seen only the third act of a play dealing with bereavement.  Indeed the dialogue which I thought echoed Becket in its incomprehensibility but lacked his humour did include references to death.

Chagall's painting and other art works are lovely but that hardly seems sufficient to explain why someone would write a play that relates the events of a period of his and his wife Bella's life.  It was charmingly done and I suppose made points about the value of art, freedom of expression, anti-semitism and whatnot but The Flying Lovers of Vitebsk didn't do a lot for me.

But I enjoyed it, as I did a winetasting on Zoom which didn't do a lot for me either given my nasal inadequaces and my insensitive palate. 

On the film front I scooped up a Black Friday bargain.  The British Film Institute who inundate me with emails and whose beguiling catalogue has long tempted me extended their free trial subscription offer by a month so I signed up.  So far I've focussed on Japanese films but there are lots more goodies available.

Off to Perth concert hall tomorrow (virtually) to join the SNJO in celebrating their 25 years of existence.