Saturday, August 18, 2012

Summertime 2012


What with travel, parties, birthdays, art shows, theater, films, music, and lovemaking, who has time to update a Blog? Right?


What the Butler Saw, Photograph from our bus.





When I left off last, I was about to take flight to Merry Olde England, and I do mean Stratford-Upon-Avon. There, with life-long friend Joseph Mydell on stage, I saw the amazing Julius Caesar at the RSC Theatre:

http://www.rsc.org.uk/whats-on/julius-caesar/C

Here are some photographs I took of Stratford and London where we went next to see the stunning Timon of Athens.

ENGLAND


See a review of Timon at the bottom of this page...

After the delightful stay with Joe in London, dining with his friends and family, and having cocktails at   The Green Carnation       (http://www.greencarnationlondon.com/)  with his lovely daughter Effie, I returned reluctantly to Atlanta, then promptly drove up to the Blue Ridge Mountains with Dar to meet with the Killians and visit my mother's resting place in its gorgeous setting.


Alex's Party

Rather than go on with the details of parties, art, love, and adventures here in Atlanta, or the details of fascinating FB exchanges, thanks to the likes of poet Alfred Corn, I think it best just to leave you with my recent music lists, to be heard only by means of excellent headphones or sound system:

Jazz

Songs

And Classical

Hope you too have had a rewarding Summertime...


Review of Timon:

THE THEATRE

FOOLS OF FORTUNE

The prescient “Timon of Athens.”

by AUGUST 6, 2012

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ABSTRACT: THE THEATRE review of “Timon of Athens.” Nicholas Hytner’s splendid, modern-dress production of “Timon of Athens” (at London’s National Theatre) is a ferocious fable about money and its corrupting power. Simon Russell Beale plays Timon, a saturnine, white-haired, deep-pocketed sugar daddy. “Timon of Athens” was written around 1607 but never performed in Shakespeare’s lifetime. The play, in which the well-heeled Timon gives away so much money to his so-called friends that he ruins himself, can’t decide if it’s a comedy or a tragedy. Timon is unique among Shakespeare’s characters in having no origins—no parents, no wife, no children, but only his chosen family of friends, whom he binds to himself with the power of his sensational generosity. With his brilliant choices, Beale, who is one of the outstanding Shakespearean actors of his era, takes Timon well beyond the parameters of a “vivid cartoon.” Beale’s Timon is a prissy bundle of sexless congeniality. For all his palaver about “true friendship” and the heroics of largesse, the gifts that he hands out like nuts at Christmas are how he seduces, possesses, and controls the world. When Timon has a mortgage crisis of his own and his beloved friends won’t lend money back to him, his loss is an existential as well as a fiscal one. The violent innocence of Act I flips, in Act II, to innocent violence. Hytner’s limpid, exhilarating show about financial corruption hits a real and raw nerve. In its gaudy shadows, Timon’s tale of collapse catches not only the fragility of the British economy but the unnerving immanence of the collapse of its ruling elite. Also stars Stavros Demetraki, Tom Robertson, Penny Layden, Hilton McRae, and Ciarian McMenamin.
read the full text...
read the full text...


Read more http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/theatre/2012/08/06/120806crth_theatre_lahr#ixzz23w3M81xN


Jameson, 8/18/12