A Moon for the Misbegotten

Wow. Babagenouche and I went down to The Old Vic Theatre in Waterloo on Saturday and took in a little play by Eugene O'Neill called A Moon for the Misbegotten staring Kevin Spacey and Colm Meany. Damn it was great! I took a couple of snaps of the theatre which I will upload to Flickr shortly.

For those of you who don't know Colm Meany he's this guy:

That's right. Star Trek the Next Generation's chief engineer. Chief O'Brien himself. He's done a lot of other great work actually including The Commitments, Layercake and some other stuff. Anyway he actually stole the show in my opinion. He was AMAZING.

The performances all around were fantastic but Eve Best was a force in her role as well. My room mate (who saw the play earlier in the month) though she was the best. There wasn't much to choose from between the three actors. All were great but when Kevin Spacey is not the brightest star on stage you know you're seeing something special. No knock on Spacey whatsoever. He was great he was just in great company.

What a play this is. It's a play of huge unending dialogue which could get boring if not for the skill of these actors. The characters are constantly lying and saying the opposite of what they mean which injects a lot of humour into a really heavy play.

But enough raving about the play.

After the play Babagenouche and I then went down to the Tate Museum of Modern Art and poked around there for awhile. Neither of us get modern art much. Best I can say is that everyone in awhile you think: "That's pretty cool".

Then we walked down the Thames, past The Globe Theatre (the reconstruction of Shakespeare's old haunt) and around Southbank. Southbank might just be one of the greatest arts areas in the world. It's chock full 'o' art. We ended up at The Chocolate Factory Theatre Cafe where we had a drink and a cheese plate. Fine times indeed.

Things seem to be coming together a bit better at school. I felt relaxed again today, although I didn't teach. I'm getting used to the power struggles with students. I've figured out that you have to win them all...just not right away. You have to log stuff and come back at students with a consequence later a lot of the time.

We have a production we're mounting next week and it's been a real struggle. It's an updated version of A Christmas Carol but students here are very challenging to work with in a Drama situation. They like to sabotage things, or just take advantage of being able to move around and get at each other. Trust is low between the students but I think we've actually got a show!

Well I have to go prepare. It's almost 10 pm so maybe I'll get to bed before midnight!