Jagged Edges

A promotional image from the play, Edges, performed at the National Arts Festival. The image was found on Google.

I was wary going to another musical performance after the disaster that was What's In A Name. Natasha even more so. And yet, I had heard good things about Edges, so I wanted to give musical theatre another chance.

The fact that there was a queue to get in was a good sign. The fact that it was in a fairly big theatre was another. The fact that it turned out the guy from What's In A Name was in it? Not so much. But it didn't turn out to be half bad.

I think that I can pinpoint where Edges went right and where What's In A Name went wrong. You see, What's In A Name tried so hard to pull together songs purely by the reference to people's names. It was the only connection between the songs, and I felt that the play was trying too hard to be something that it really wasn't. Edges did not make this mistake.

Watching Edges felt like reading a collection of short stories. Each song was a story in itself, and none of them fit into each other. It was not as though the show was trying to make sense as a whole – it was merely looking at clips of people's lives. There was a bit of a theme to the songs, I realised after the show had ended, but the theme was a subtle one – it was relationships. Each song looked at relationships, whether between friends, family members or colleagues. Each song granted you a glimpse of someone else's life, and together they provided a glimpse of different kinds of relationships that people have with each other – the strengths, the benefits and the drawbacks to entering into relationships and what they look like when they work and what they look like when they don't.

Once again, the voices were fantastic. There were only two small problems that I encountered, and that is that one of the guys (the one who performed in What's In A Name funnily enough) had a terrible American accent when the rest were great and that one of the songs that was performed had also been performed during What's In A Name. I do not know if the songs were written specifically for the musical (I certainly didn't recognise any of them aside from the one that I recognised in What's In A Name), but it certainly felt like they had been written just for the actors. Each actor slid into the roles so well, it felt incredibly natural, and this was another aspect of the show that separated it from What's In A Name. The natural flow and order of things rather than the broken discussion with the audience that came between numbers.

Edges will certainly not be up amongst my favourite shows from Fest, but there have certainly been worse plays. It has not entirely reconnected me with my love for musicals, but it has restored a little of the enjoyment that I get from watching them, and was enough to convince me that, should another musical opportunity present itself, I will not hide in my room, but might consider going to see it.

Dream, Brother

A promotional image of Dream, Brother that I found in the National Arts Festival programme.

So, if sold out shows mean amazing performances and empty shows mean shitty ones, what does it mean when a show only has a mediocre attendance? Should I take it that it's only a mediocre show? Should I assume that people were busy on that particular day at that particular time and weren't able to come?

Take Dream, Brother for example. It was being performed in a small venue, the same venue as Paperboy in fact (and I learned my lesson this time and drove around rather than parking at the top of VG) and there was a fair number of people waiting outside to file into the room. Not enough to fill the venue completely, but enough to reassure us that the play wouldn't be an utter disaster.

So how was the play? Was it mediocre? Brilliant, but under-appreciated? Terrible, but well advertised? Apparently that would depend on the person that you spoke to.

I find it amazing how different people have different views on plays. As Natasha and I walked to the car after the play was over, I overheard the woman in front of us complaining to her husband.

“Absolutely awful,” she announced. “There were so many loose ends. What the hell was happening? Just terrible.” I practically glared after her and fumed as I made my way to the car. Once the doors were shut and no one else could hear me, I vented about what I had overheard.

Natasha and I completely agreed – Dream, Brother was certainly not the best play that we had seen at Fest, but it was also far from the worst. It was done on budget and you could tell – from the small venue to the simplistic props. That isn't to say that shows that are done on budget can't be good – look at London Road! But they'd had a number of runs before Fest and at Fest itself over the years, and had grown to the point where they could sell out a big theatre. Dream, Brother was not yet at the point where they could sell out a small one.

The idea behind the play is a complex one. It looks at two relationships – one between a young man and woman that is acted out from their first date to their marriage and beyond; the other explained to the audience by a man, seen on the sidelines of the first relationship and an integral character in himself. As the relationships start coming together in a single story, as the man explaining his story starts popping up in more important roles in the other couple's life, the dynamic of the play changes completely. By the end of the play, the couple and the man's stories have been so delicately interwoven, that it is impossible to separate the two relationships.

I can see how the woman left the play feeling that there were loose ends. However, I appreciated the loose ends that were left – I liked that not everything fit neatly into a little box that could be packed away in the mind. I found that Dream, Brother left me questioning life, questioning relationships and questioning reality. I thought that it was a beautiful representation of madness, and I think that it is one of the plays that I would see again if I could.

But then again... that's just my opinion.

Love as a Drug

Romantic comedies - I can never seem to get enough of them. No matter how lame or stupid or overly cutesy they are, I will always come back for more, and when I hear about a new romantic comedy that has come out, I always tend to be one of the first in line to see it. When I heard about Love and Other Drugs a couple of months ago, I knew that I wanted to see it. Sure, there was bound to be a fair amount of drama in it - the movie is about a woman with early-onset Parkinsons after all - but I could also see where the comedy came into the mix - her getting into a relationship with a sex-obsessed Viagra-dealing drug rep. The fact that the movie starred Jake Gyllenhaal and Anne Hathaway only strengthened my resolve that I had to see it. And so, on one rather boring Sunday afternoon, I went to the CGV (yes, this was when I was back in Korea - the idea to review the movie for my blog only hit me now) with Jess and (I believe) Shaina and we sat down and prepared ourselves for a giggle- and sob-fest. We weren't disappointed.

From the moment that Jamie (Jake) meets Maggie (Anne) while pretending to be a doctor, you know that they are going to hook up, but you have no idea how since Maggie almost instantly realises the truth and seems repulsed by Jamie's audacity. And yet, even after Maggie practically beats him to within an inch of his life (OK, so I'm exaggerating, but only by a little), he still perseveres and they quickly end up together in a relationship based on lust and fueled by Maggie's scramble to live life to the fullest while she can.

The first half of the film is packed with one-liners that got me every time and had me in stitches for a large part of the movie. I thought that the writers were absolutely brilliant and played on the fragility and fun of the relationship very well. The fact that the movie had a large amount of nudity did surprise me quite a lot, as I had never really pictured Anne Hathaway as the type to go full-frontal for the camera, but as long as you go in there expecting it, it tends to add to the hilarity rather than take away from it, and the fact that a large part of the movie revolves around sex (what with Jamie's job being to sell Viagra and Maggie stipulating that their relationship should remain purely physical), it seems kind of appropriate. My favourite part of the movie was the list of puns that Maggie comes up with when Jake comes home to tell her about the new product that he is selling (Viagra). I wish that I could find a quote for this on the internet, but for some reason or another, there seems to be no account of it anywhere, If you watch the movie though, you will know exactly which part I am referring to.

The seriousness of the movie starts to set in around the halfway mark when Maggie's condition starts to deteriorate and their relationship starts becoming more serious, which is exactly what Maggie was trying to avoid. As she is forced to come to terms with the idea of living with Parkinsons and the idea of having to rely on someone else for the rest of her life, Jamie steps up to the plate and offers himself to her, just about giving up his job in order to help her find some kind of cure or preventative measure. This leads to their relationship falling to pieces, something that Maggie had predicted from the start. Of course, no romantic comedy would be complete without a happy ending, and this one is no exception. The happy ending is, in fact, what I believe keeps this movie classified as a romantic comedy, as without it, I think the movie could only be defined as a romance or a drama despite the comedic relief throughout the first half of the film.

I thoroughly enjoyed watching Love and Other Drugs and would certainly recommend it as a girls-night or a couples movie, as there is something in it for everyone. As I said earlier, do be prepared for a large amount of nudity (I, personally, had no issue with oggling a naked Jake Gyllenhaal and I am sure many men will say the same of Anne Hathaway) and a fair amount of crude humour, but also be prepared for a fun-filled movie with a large splash of drama spread throughout.

My question for today (just for fun): Which actor/actress would you want to see doing a nude scene?