34 years old. Me, that is, not the blog
Yes, this morning I am flopping about my apartment after an evening of theatre and booze to celebrate another birthday. The play, incidentally, was an amusing show called Edward Gant's Amazing Feats Of Lonliness...
In 1881, one of the Victorian theatres most enigmatic impresarios, Mr Edward Gant, presented his famed travelling show for the very last time. In 2009, Anthony Neilson and Headlong Theatre are proud to present a reconstruction of this historic and extraordinary evening of mystery and magic, spectacle and strangeness. Behold . . . The Amazing Feats Of Loneliness!And jolly good fun it was too, a sort of mix of Terry Gilliam, David Lynch, The Mighty Boosh and The League Of Gentlemen. I mean, any play that contains the line, "A woman so ugly I would not have shat in her mouth if she were hungry," has got to be good for a giggle.
Anthony Neilson is one of Britain's most acclaimed playwrights, creating pioneering, taboo-breaking new work in a bold and compassionate way. Edward Gant's Amazing Feats of Loneliness is a beautiful and very funny exploration of performance and performers, of sadness, mortality and wonder.
Contains strong language and scenes of a wonderfully freakish nature.
Tuesday night - St. Patrick's Day, as it happens - I went to see a band called Stinking Lizaveta. I was meant to meet some acquaintances at an Irish bar but, oddly enough, the place was rammed with St. Paddy revellers and I couldn't find my chums so I went to the gig instead.
Turned out to be a most curious night. The venue was a small bar called Bloc. It's a tiny place that has no stage area; the three bands performing that night were all crammed into a corner with barely any room to move.I was sitting at the bar nursing a pint of Guinness (what else?) when a tall, skinny woman approached me and asked if I was there to see the band. I said yes. She then asked if I was on Last.fm and was I the guy who's been listening to Tom Waits this weeks. Mad, isn't it, how you can be recognised by your online social networking profiles? I can't decide if this is a good thing or not. On the one hand I got to meet and chat with a really cool girl at a gig who might have never spoken to me if she hadn't recognised me (although maybe she would have - she was happily going around chatting to anybody who happened to be in front of her. I wish I had that kind of confidence); on the other hand, it could end up like this...
(Before you ask, the tall, skinny, cool, pretty girl was quick to mention she had a partner so nothing like that was on the cards. No, I ended up leaving the gig with someone entirely different but... no... not going to tell you about that. It wasn't good.)
And work has been sucking the big one too. My "productivity" came under an unusual amount of scrutiny so basically I've been working my nuts off so as to ensure I don't get sacked. But fuck it, I won't bore you with that: it's my fault for working for an evil cunty bank. Suffice to say I've been putting in lots of overtime for some extra cash and going slightly crazy with stress over what's happening.
Interesting month. Been getting into lots of Tom Waits, something I've been meaning to do for years, and rediscovering Yello and Art Of Noise, the two bands who really got me into electronic music when I was a kid.
Let's finish on a song, shall we?
posted by Steve Kane at 11:28 AM
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