I know I'm in my own world... it's okay, they know me here

Sooooo... I really want to go to see Ian McKellen doing a play in September but I have no money for tickets. And then I thought, 'Daddy will want to see this too.'

And then I thought, 'DADDY HAS A CREDIT CARD.'

So I stealthily texted him and asked if he wanted to come too and he is going to book tickets! Whee!

SO. NINJA. RIGHT NOW. Totes conning my Dad into paying for me to do things, but I buried the guilt under the bikeshed with the rest of my feelings.


In an interesting aside, this icon was originally intended to be used for when someone was being a total drama queen, but now seems to be my icon for posts relating to theatre. RECYCLING PRIZE, HERE I COME.

So today I went to see Matthew Bourne's Swan Lake at the local theatre (by myself, because I only found out it was on here on Friday, and it finishes today, and then when I called up I got quite literally the only ticket remaining. I was very impressed with my luck.) In case you haven't heard of it, this particular production is famous because rather than the swans being female and the love interest being a transformed princess, in this version all the swans are MALE. And the Prince falls in love with a Swan Prince.





It's a really drastic re-imagining compared to the original story, if I'm honest (though I didn't actually know the story when I went - I read it online afterwards! Badly prepared!) BUT. But. It was so, so beautiful. All the dancers were amazing, but the Prince and the Swan Prince had such wonderful line and grace to their dancing, and unusually wonderful acting, too - their expressions held such yearning! And when the Swan Prince protected the Prince from the other swans, the look on his face just made me ache.

Of course, it helped that the guy playing the Swan Prince was TOTALLY SMOKING HOT. Just sayin'.

On top of their technical proficiency as dancers, one of the things I thought was really interesting about the production was the way in which the man cast as the Prince was very young-looking and slender compared to the heavier, more muscular and older-looking Swan Prince, subverting the traditional male/female roles of the piece. In addition to this, the male/female roles in their dances together ebbed and flowed between them so that neither was exclusively in the more submissive role; this made it more equal between the two and avoided feminising one of them, which would effectively cancel out the impact of the swans' gender change. It was like the very best slash - keeping both of them male without sacrificing the romantic elements between them.

The swans in general were very well done, and in fact very sinister as a group at times. Partly this was the stark black eye make-up against a general whitening of their skin, but the choreography really contributed to making them menacing, and the Swan Prince was at turns menacing or seductive. It felt at times more like it was really telling the story of a straight man falling in love with another man.

I don't know how much longer it's on tour, but if you get a chance to, really, really do take it. It's got me all fired up and imagining.

It's my Dad's 50th birthday today and I am in paaaaain.

It's been going on for a few days, actually. My wisdom teeth are to fault, I believe, because I think what is happening is that they are shifting around under my gums but have no space to come out and this makes the inside of my ear swell up and wake me up really early in the morning and not let me lie on my left side because of the pain in my ear, which sucks. So I'm going to the doctor in approx. half an hour to see if there's anything that can be done. It's never lasted this long before, and ibuprofen always used to take care of it. Argh.

Anyway, this evening we are going to see Evita in London, which promises to be very good (if I can hear it through my FUCKING INFLAMED EAR.)

ionaonie wins the super secret special prize for giving me a line for John to be saying in the icon! This means, Iona, that you get to choose a fandom and maybe a pairing and I'll make you a lovely icon using my l33t skillz. If you want to choose a picture, that's fine too :) (Or you can opt out and choose chocolate, but it would probably get stolen in the post.)

The icon with Iona's slogan:



Went to see Little Britain Live last night - it was funnier than I expected, actually, really good. It was funniest, of course, when they wandered away from the script and randomly riffed off each other - Matt Lucas is really bad, apparently, at not laughing during the show. Also, when they were doing the 'Margaret! Margaret!' shopkeeper sketch, someone in the audience waited for a moment and then shouted 'Yes?', in a really good impression, and made everyone laugh. A guy who was apparently 15 but looked much older got molested by David Walliams (which was really funny, and he was laughing too, and they gave him goodies, so it was okay.) Also David Walliams was basically naked on stage at one point, which was rather surprising!

Jasper is still away at the Carter's house (who looked after him for the night) and I miss him. He was really confused and upset when we left him there and I feel bad TT-TT