North of the Stupid Line

I’d like to introduce y’all to my namesake, Mr Robert Wilks, born in or around 1665.  According to Wikipedia:

He was a British actor and theatrical manager who was one of the leading managers of Theatre Royal, Drury Lane in its hey day of the 1710′s.

It also appears that he was denounced by Alexander Pope, and was satirised by him in The Dunciad.  I studied Pope’s works for A Level English Literature.  He was an “attractive male lead” and had a “vain and tempestuous personality”.

Looks like I have a lot to live up to!

An old Malaysian pen-pal of mine, Leon Lim, has created an online portfolio called Knowing You, which can only be described as a collection of photographs that Leon Lim himself has taken over the years, in which he demonstrates how he remembers the individuals he has met through his childhood, school, at college, from his travels etc. They are very clever pictures; they tend to capture an essence of the subject; their character, their personality.

Leon Lim took one of me when he came to stay at my parents’ house in August 2003, during his European travels. You can see it here. Do you think that picture reflects my personality? Discuss!

Rachel and I went to see an opera this evening entitled Io Passion at the Almeida Theatre in Islington. It was errm… rather bizarre, but interesting nonetheless. Here is a synopsis:

This opera, composed by Harrison Birtwhistle, completely baffled me at first but then it clicked. The depictions of Zeus, Hera and Io were actually on a myth from Greek Mythology. I’ve found a basic premise of the story on the Encyclopedia of Greek Mythology. Basically, Zeus had an affair with Io, and to prevent Hera from finding out, he turned Io into a cow every time she was near.

The whole performance was very clever – the stage was split into two so that one side was the front of a house with a view inside the house, and other side was the same scene but in reverse, so that you saw the room inside the house and the front of the house through the window. The whole performance was depicted in duplication i.e. if you saw a man outside the house, you would see the man through the window on the other side as well (they used different actors for the same characters to achieve this).

Although it was somewhat “weird”, it was rather compelling – you were required to look at the whole stage to see what was happening – and it was very entertaining too. The copulation scene had Rachel in fits of hysterics – I could feel her shaking as she was trying to contain her laughter next to me – it was rather funny.

Compared to the other operas I’ve seen i.e. Madama Butterfly, La Traviata, La Boheme and Katya Kabanova, this was decidedly different but Rachel and I actually enjoyed it. It was sung in English (and a bit of Greek) so we felt able to relate to it more. The Stagetext was well staged and wasn’t overwhelming. It helped that most of the lines were paced and not hurried, which gave you time to read the text and then lipread the actors. Rachel and I sat in the very front row, so we were very close to the stage and to the actors. This gave it a rather more intimate feel than the other operas which were staged in big theatres.

The only complaint we had about the evening was that the Almeida Theatre duplicated some of the Deafies’ tickets – they had to bring out another set of seats so that we all had somewhere to sit in the front where the captions were (they were in front of the stage, underneath, rather than on either side).

I’ve posted some reviews of the Io Passion below, mostly favourable.

Guardian Unlimited | Arts reviews | The Io Passion

Telegraph | Arts | A work of vivid strangeness stirs into life

Saw “Katya Kabanova” last night, an opera composed by Jan?cek. The Welsh National Opera performed a production of it last night at the New Theatre in Cardiff. You can read a full synopsis here. Basically, miserable in her marriage, harried by her mother-in-law, and suffocated by small town life in provincial Russia, Katya begs her husband Tichon not to leave on a business trip. But he goes and she commits adultery with young Boris. Racked by guilt and unnerved by a storm, Katya confesses…..’I am in such dire sin. If I love another man what shall become of me?’

I thought it was a very polished performance, but unfortunately, although it was moving, I didn’t find it all that powerful. I much preferred “La Boheme”. The end where Mim? is overwhelmed by a coughing fit and she dies unnoticed while they are preparing her medicine. And then you see Rodolfo pouring out his grief upon learning she has died. The fact that no one realises she has passed away and the anticipation of the moment when they do find out killed me. I was literally choking back the tears.

Rachel and I get really annoyed with people who diss opera. Most of them have never seen an opera, so what gives them the right to? I think opera is one of the most stunning pieces of art ever produced; the way they can entertain you, make you laugh and yet make you feel as if the world has ended. In other words, they take you through all the human emotions. Not many mediums do that. Opera deserves more respect.

Well well. I had the pleasure of going to my first BSL-terped art talk this afternoon. Yes. Cy Twombly: Fifty Years of Works on Paper.

Bringing together approximately sixty drawings and paintings on paper from the artist?s personal archive, the exhibition spans his career from the 1950s to the present. Many of the works have never been seen or exhibited before. Considered to be one of the greatest living American artists, Cy Twombly has received widespread admiration and critical acclaim internationally throughout his fifty-year career. Subverting traditional distinctions between painting and drawing, brush and pencil-work, poetry and image, he has made a highly individual contribution to the history of painterly abstraction.

It was at the Serpentine Gallery in Kensington Park Gardens at 3pm, terped by Karen Newby.

What did I think of? I enjoyed it, but the problem is, I’m not sure why. Was it simply because I had full access to a mainstream event? Or was it playing to my artistic side (I do have one thank you)? Or was the subject itself of particular fascination for me? I think it was the second. I do have an artistic side to me; my Grandad was a fantastic oil on canvas painter. He didn’t do original works, just copied prints and pictures from books. But he was interested in art. I am too. I’ve done a few paintings myself; they’re up in the attic at home in Newport.

During the talk today, I was even interpreting some of the paintings myself. That was a new thing for me.

Looks like these talks are gonna be a regular thing for me. Is that good or bad?