Add another Oscar-nominee notch to the belt of my celeb sightings and he is a Fiennes one - Ralph Fiennes, who we saw in a fantastic play, “God of Carnage,” by award-winning playwright Yasmina Reza (“Art”). A four-hander, the show also starred Oscar nominee Janet McTeer and RSC stalwarts Ken Stott and Tasmin Grieg. The story is of two couples in Paris who come together after their sons have been in a fight..and..well, let’s just say the meeting does not go well..lol. Sharp clever writing and perhaps the 4 best performances I’ve seen (aside from Spacey/Goldblum), this show definitely ranks as a favourite. However, I saw it more than a month ago, so my memory is a bit fuzzy. I’ll let the Guardian and Independent reviews tell you more. The reason I took so long to post about it was that when we saw it, Mr. Fiennes had a ‘previous engagement’ and did not do the ‘meet and greet’ at the stage door. Not to be deterred, my friend Lynne and I went back to the stage door before the show closed last week and were successful. Unfortunately “Mr. Fiennes” is tightly managed by theatre staff and he does not pose with people for photos. We could only take pics “of Mr. Fiennes.” More pics are online here. And Fiennes he is indeed in person, albeit much shorter! And also very, very shy! Not shy? The charming and funny (and taller than I) Janet McTeer who came right up to me first on the autograph queue: “Wow, how lovely! Another nice tall woman! There aren’t too many of us around, are there?”Know what else is not around? “Gone with the Wind” the musical! It’s gone baby gone and OMG, I’m not surprised. You know that this is hands-down one of my favourite movies and I was not looking forward to seeing the musical, especially after it got eviscerated by the critics. However, when your good friend Sarah calls up and says she’s got FREE tickets to go see it, well then, as God as my witness, I’m a goin! Insert any and all manner of puns on ‘not giving a damn’ here..lol. The music was a mish-mash of styles and the acting, and more importantly, accents, were all over the map, not to mention horrible casting of Ashley (too old) and Melanie (too, um, plain and harpy, rather than meek and mild).
It started out strong with a spiritual song by the slaves and I thought if they’d maybe taken that perspective, it might have worked, but then it returned to the main characters who were given horrible lyrics such as this one from Gerald O’Hara: “From County Meath to Connemara, there is no land as fine as Tara.” Seriously! The writer (who is like a psychologist from California or something) sure don’t know nothin’ bout writin’ no showtunes! Bright spots were that the Rhett was terrific (good strong voice and looks, very charismatic), as was the nice white wine we had before show and at interval as well as Sarah and my similar sense of humour when it came to our take on the show, so we turned it into a ‘so bad it was actually entertaining’ evening!
