Auf Wiedersehn Blogger (kind of)

I'm moving my my blog to Wordpress to make it a bit neater - or at least my reviews and theatrey shizzle (so eloquent)

My new site is here:

http://melissarynn.wordpress.com/

I've done nothing to it but have one post so far - eventually it will hopefully be as full as rubbish as this ugly page!

xx

Fuehrer of revision!

I've an exam on fascism on Thursday and I've done no revision. I spent the day in the library yesterday trying to do it: I've learnt nothing but instead did this




This would all be well were the notes I've made during the lectures not decidedly similar:











HOWEVER - I do not just draw Hitler! I also draw lions




And my lecturer. As Miffy.





I won't bore you with the rest of the drawings, I think you now see I am going to do well in this exam.

One Page More...Les Mis review (kind of)

On this blog, I write my last confession. Read it now, while I at last am typing. It's the story of Victor Hugo's original that got turned into a musical that everybody l...oves.

Ok, enough of that. Basically I'm a bit of a shrewd business woman (not that this makes me any money) but thought I'd save my plug of Victor Hugo's original novel Les Miserables (translated by Norman Denny) for the morning after the night before. In the sense of the huge 02 concert and subsequent end to the 25th anniversary tour.

Just as a disclaimer, I'm always slightly loathed to use the original author's name when it's a translation, however it just makes life easier so I'll be referring to Hugo when I really mean 'Denny's translation of Hugo'. Simples.

Unfortunately I'm a complete Sauer Kraut as I didn't have enough money to make the tour and by the time I had enough for the cheapest seats, they had only the £125 + ones left. Bitter to the bone.

However, I am going to try and make some notable comparisons between the 'original' Queen's production (combined with my own experience of a NODA winning school production) which we all know and love and the novel itself.

I've always been a huge fan of the show - there's just something about it and I've been meaning to read the novel for a few years. At 1200 pages it seemed somewhat daunting (especially as I'm a literature student so always have about 5 other novels on the go that I should be reading instead). Furthermore I'd been told that a stupid amount of the beginning of the novel is on the Bishop who, in the show, has a couple of lines and a dress and not much more.

However, I was amazed at just how captivating Hugo's exploration of 19th century France was. The text is long and is indeed sometimes arduous but that's part of the appeal. Many readers of the novel note the 'digressions' from the plot which, at the time, I initially willed to go faster. These 'digressions' however are so subtly integral to the plot and so essential to gain the full array of emotions that span across the book. I'm trying to avoid mentioning too much on the novel but I really just needed somewhere to sit here and shout PLEASE READ THIS BOOK.

It's clever in a way that many works of Literature in this age of the novella fail to achieve. Thought provoking and insanely moving, it even achieves what the show fails to do and makes me like little Cosette (I can't stand her in the show, I still hate older Cosette in the book). The characterisation is simply perfect; Valjean is more complex and less 'saintly' than the Schönberg & Boubill masterpiece as is the rest of the characters. Eponine isn't a whining, strangely attractive (for someone who the revolutionaries think is a 'boy climbing the barricade') teenage girl who you're quite glad to see shot (I am a tad heartless for an example of a theatre lover). She's a streetwise, hardnered criminal who takes a liking to Marius.]

If there's something that is ever so slightly irritating about the novel (shoot me now), it has to be Hugo's perhaps too blatant patriotism. As an English person, there's only so many times I enjoy being told that I'm not quite as amazing as the French and I have to admit I rolled my eyes once or twice (the shame, the shame). But once again (in a strange way?) this is part of the charm. I got the impression of Hugo sitting there digressing away and pouring his soul in to the novel. With his little beard and everything. I always think he looks a tad like Father Christmas.

Maybe he is and he gets out all his anger on the world through his art and is then happy for one evening in December...or not. Yes.

Back to what I was saying, um...

There's a darkness (that comes without a warning...to sing Les Mis...I'll shut up now) that is simply not captured in the show. The complexity of the relationship and chase between Javert and Valjean, for example, and the grotty underworld of the slums. I physically felt my heart racing during some of the descriptions. The syntax and flow of the language is absolutely beautiful - however similar it is to the original French, Denny's translation has to be commended for its ability to move.

This is such a self-satisfied, subjectively moved comment on the novel but words cannot describe how beautiful it is. Read it, read it, read it. Please!

Thinking about the production, my love for the Schönberg & Boubill musical too has increased. There's no way even the most prolific stage writer could capture the complete picture of Hugo's 19th century France. But these two do a ruddy good job - there's absolutely no way you appreciate any adaption until you've read the original. The tiniest throw away lines and symbols from the show are so embedded as an integral part of the novel. "But the tigers come at night" for example is so beautifully taken from Hugo's metaphor and Javert's stars is an utter masterpiece when taken from the context of the book. I couldn't possibly list even some of the subtle metaphors that a viewer who hasn't read the original is missing because it would ruin reading the book and the discovery of those subtitles for yourself.

Basically, just read the book. Please. I don't often say this but it really is a work of genius.

I am so awesome I do not need an ugly person like you

OK. We've all done it. Fallen head over heels in loarve with someone who just isn't interested back while we've lovely people elsewhere we just ignore.

Humankind is of an idiotic disposition.

At the moment I've not one of those situations (praise the lord) but really I just wanted an excuse to post the above picture. I love it. It reminds me of when I was about fourteen; fat, ugly and wondering why I wasn't overwhelmed with offers from men like my better looking peers.

Fortunately they all had about four kids by the time they were an ancient fifteen years old. Karma's a bitch.

I'd really rather like a job.

Auditions, auditions everywhere. But not a job in sight.

Why did I decide to talk a Literature/History degree. Someone please explain my logic.

I want to act, I like to act. I like directing, writing, designing. I don't like watching other people have the fun while I write about Charles bloody Dickens's use of onomatopoeia.

I just stumbled upon a film I was in a few months ago that I'd practically forgotten about and now I wish I was treading the boards rather than treading on the verge of what's acceptable in terms of university attendance.

I'd really rather like some advice on where to go and what to do and where there's some acting jobs for me. Really, really rather.

See, I can even smoke without dying. That has to be worth a job...

(just for disclaimer purposes, I don't smoke. Hence why I'm proud of the fact I could look cool with a cigarette for five minutes of my pointless existence).

Hello stress...

And thus I welcome back my old buddy, Mr I'm-so-stressed-pulling-my-hair-out-seems-a-good-idea. The third.

I've come to a surprise conclusion this week. Despite my long bouts of procrastination whenever I have an essay due in, I've realised I'm actually a work-a-holic. A worker rather than a partier. I love working. I love being stressed. I love doing anything that promotes that little egotistical monster inside me called achievement. Speaking of monsters inside of me, I'm currently still suffering from the worst throat and chest infection I've ever had despite my lungs first informing me I was leaving the world of the living well over three weeks ago. And this nice little illness has been whilst all my exams for university are going on meaning one had to be missed and two others have been written whilst sucking on a boiled sweet filled to the brim with anaesthetic for my red-raw throat. I have one more on Friday that I've yet to revise for but I have a many more things I need to do before that sensible option is approached.

I literally take on everything I can in the vain hope it'll one day mean I have a good job but it's driving me to the point where I can't even concentrate anymore and 'marrying well' (the type of woman who I'd rather cut my hair off than be) seems the best option to save me from falling into a pit of disappointment after trying to jump over hurdles I've set for myself that are just too high for my little legs to get over.

Oh, and the hurdles made of solid concrete due to the British wind knocking the normal ones over. This means I can't even cheat and run under the hurdles. It's the weather's fault. Every failure in life is due to the weather I've thus decided. I can't even remember what this extended metaphor was about.

I'm off to down my sorrows in a lemsip and the poetry of a one William Blake.

Well, well, well...

I'm finally going to try this blogging malarcy! Having made several idle accounts in the past, this time it's for real...for now...maybe. I've had a rather productive week, so no time like the better and all that jazz?



Now, I'm not really sure what I should do here. Share my deepest, darkest emotions? Make a few witty remarks? Bore anyone who reads this (i.e. myself) with the meticulous details of my mundane life?



Well why not all three, with the witty remarks perhaps replaced by pure ignorance.



Well, I guess on with the mediocre moanings of my day. For those who don't know me I go to university in London and I study English Literature and History. My hobbies mainly revolve around the arts; theatre, reading, poetry, drawing, art blah blah. One of those lovey dovey fools with passions that revolve around pure subjectivity as they require much less thought


This week I started my second year at university having spent well over five months rotting infront of Jeremy Kyle with nothing to do but wallow in my own self pity. However, not content with the increasing work load, I decided to make myself extra busy which I (and my writing as you can tell) are badly suffering from with exhaustion. I've interned for varying periods of time at What's On Stage over the past few years and went back over the past week when I had a spare moment away from university. However, alongside that I had to secretly audition for the univeristy play, Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream. I say 'secretly' because, convinced I would fall down the bottomless pit of failure and embarassment, I refused to tell anyone I had even thought about auditioning, let alone done it.

Amazingly I managed to a call back for both Titania and Hermia and was given the role of Hermia (I just re-read this 8 months later and clicked I played Titania, not Hermia - what brains!) which I'm really excited for.

Ahh I can't be bothered to make this a real blog at the moment as a grand total of fifteen hours sleep over the past five days has left me quite exhausted!
Toodles for now!