"I know my way around here..."
Apr. 16th, 2016 06:33 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
teylaminhRight. This is mostly a placeholder entry, or a precursor, I suppose, to a much longer entry (or more likely entries) because I won't have time to get down everything I want to before Paul and I go out for a meal later. (Our table is booked at 9.00pm and it's just gone 5.00 as I type this; yes, there is a lot to say!)
Anyway, to explain: on Thursday night, Paul,commoncomitatus and I went to see Sunset Boulevard at the London Coliseum. This would be an exciting enough event, but what made this doubly and especially special was the fact that Glenn Close was reprising her role as Norma Desmond in her West End debut, for a very limited five-week run. The only reason I knew this was happening at all was thanks to Eni tweeting it at me about a week before the tickets went on sale in September, which happened to be the day after payday.
When I heard about it, I was in simultaneous states of "We will never ever be able to see this, LIFE IS WOE" and "This is non-negotiable and we are seeing this no matter the cost". Thankfully the latter won out, because the seats weren't as pricey as expected. We were Row K in the dress circle, which was a little further back than I'm used to, but stalls were far too expensive. To be honest, barring being up in the Gods, the location of the seats wasn't particularly important given that this was quite possibly one of the biggest London theatre experiences in any of our lifetimes. It's up there on a level with seeing Michael Crawford in The Woman in White all those years ago, and indeed seeing the Actual Cast Who Are On The Soundtrack thanks to getting seats so early into the run.
So, Paul and I bought Eni a ticket for her birthday (in February), as well as it being my birthday present, because if there's ever a reason for someone to come back to the UK, it's to see Glenn Close as Norma Desmond in the West End, right? Exactly.
Needless to say, it was EPIC, so my impending write-up will be ridiculous - as they always are, but particularly so this time. Throughout the entire show I was having to make little mental notes - "I'm going to remember that, it's important!" - so they didn't fall out of my head, and honestly I think the only way I'm going to be able to approach said write-up is to literally break it down scene by scene, so I don't forget anything. Just, so many little nuances and differences and references, it was almost impossible to keep up!
Before that, though, I need to mention something else which is perhaps not quite so monumentally exciting but equally as important, which is this:
Eni and I have not met face-to-face / IRL in just over three years - she moved to Sweden shortly after I started in my CP job. Before that, we only ever really met IRL every few months or so around the time of our respective birthdays, and generally communicate through email / Twitter, occasional LJ comment tennises and even rarer IM sessions. On Thursday we were basically only in the same room for about three hours, if that, but the three-year gap did not even seem like ten minutes. (Though possibly the Underground shenanigans and rush to find the theatre meant that we kind of met in London and immediately started navigating rather than engaging in pleasantries! And TBF the majority of our email conversations begin in the manner of capslock'd flailing anyway.)
In particular, the interval of the show stands out for me because we spent the entire thing discussing headcanons and interpreting what we'd just watched, and basically just having a massive fangirl geek-out over Sunset. I feel very, very sorry for anyone sitting in our vicinity at that point, as they must have thought we were completely insane - particularly anyone who came along purely to see Glenn Close without any prior knowledge of the show / movie.
I also find it hilarious that within those said three hours of being in the same room, we managed to create a meme, namely #JewishMotherNorma. This came out of a discussion about the potential movie version of the musical, which seems to have gone quiet again (thank goodness) and an old rumour that Barbra Streisand was in the running to play Norma at one point - and whilst Barbra Streisand is awesome, neither of us can quite see her playing Norma, and if it were to happen then Norma would be a Jewish Mother. We then immediately came up with two examples of #JewishMotherNorma, namely, "Are you married? A nice boy like you should be married...", and making sure Joe is eating enough even though she's starving herself to prepare for Salome.
There will be more coming, believe me. :P
(This meme is a companion to our #SunsetBlvdExhibition meme, which was a series of terrible, terrible puns that arose out of my dreaming about a Sunset Boulevard exhibition, where we took SB quotes and made them vaguely relevant to exhibition-type words. When I say terrible, I mean terrible. "You know what you can do with your vi-queue-na" levels of terrible. Basically, we are awful people who should not be allowed near anything, or each other.)
The crux of this is that it really demonstrates the longevity of internet friendships and throws mud in the face of all those people who think they're not valid or not real or not "proper" friendships. It's always been the case that when I meet online friends IRL, even for the first time, it's like we've known each other for years - because ironcally, we probably have.
So yeah. I wanted to mention that in case it got lost in my latter write-ups, which I will now make a start on. Hoping to get at least one up on Sunday, if not both, as I think I may have to do one for each Act, unless it devolves into Yet Another Shipper Analysis and churns out a third. :P
Watch this space!
PS: In honour of the occasion I have switched back to the glorious SB mood theme that Eni made me. :)
Anyway, to explain: on Thursday night, Paul,
commoncomitatus and I went to see Sunset Boulevard at the London Coliseum. This would be an exciting enough event, but what made this doubly and especially special was the fact that Glenn Close was reprising her role as Norma Desmond in her West End debut, for a very limited five-week run. The only reason I knew this was happening at all was thanks to Eni tweeting it at me about a week before the tickets went on sale in September, which happened to be the day after payday. When I heard about it, I was in simultaneous states of "We will never ever be able to see this, LIFE IS WOE" and "This is non-negotiable and we are seeing this no matter the cost". Thankfully the latter won out, because the seats weren't as pricey as expected. We were Row K in the dress circle, which was a little further back than I'm used to, but stalls were far too expensive. To be honest, barring being up in the Gods, the location of the seats wasn't particularly important given that this was quite possibly one of the biggest London theatre experiences in any of our lifetimes. It's up there on a level with seeing Michael Crawford in The Woman in White all those years ago, and indeed seeing the Actual Cast Who Are On The Soundtrack thanks to getting seats so early into the run.
So, Paul and I bought Eni a ticket for her birthday (in February), as well as it being my birthday present, because if there's ever a reason for someone to come back to the UK, it's to see Glenn Close as Norma Desmond in the West End, right? Exactly.
Needless to say, it was EPIC, so my impending write-up will be ridiculous - as they always are, but particularly so this time. Throughout the entire show I was having to make little mental notes - "I'm going to remember that, it's important!" - so they didn't fall out of my head, and honestly I think the only way I'm going to be able to approach said write-up is to literally break it down scene by scene, so I don't forget anything. Just, so many little nuances and differences and references, it was almost impossible to keep up!
Before that, though, I need to mention something else which is perhaps not quite so monumentally exciting but equally as important, which is this:
Eni and I have not met face-to-face / IRL in just over three years - she moved to Sweden shortly after I started in my CP job. Before that, we only ever really met IRL every few months or so around the time of our respective birthdays, and generally communicate through email / Twitter, occasional LJ comment tennises and even rarer IM sessions. On Thursday we were basically only in the same room for about three hours, if that, but the three-year gap did not even seem like ten minutes. (Though possibly the Underground shenanigans and rush to find the theatre meant that we kind of met in London and immediately started navigating rather than engaging in pleasantries! And TBF the majority of our email conversations begin in the manner of capslock'd flailing anyway.)
In particular, the interval of the show stands out for me because we spent the entire thing discussing headcanons and interpreting what we'd just watched, and basically just having a massive fangirl geek-out over Sunset. I feel very, very sorry for anyone sitting in our vicinity at that point, as they must have thought we were completely insane - particularly anyone who came along purely to see Glenn Close without any prior knowledge of the show / movie.
I also find it hilarious that within those said three hours of being in the same room, we managed to create a meme, namely #JewishMotherNorma. This came out of a discussion about the potential movie version of the musical, which seems to have gone quiet again (thank goodness) and an old rumour that Barbra Streisand was in the running to play Norma at one point - and whilst Barbra Streisand is awesome, neither of us can quite see her playing Norma, and if it were to happen then Norma would be a Jewish Mother. We then immediately came up with two examples of #JewishMotherNorma, namely, "Are you married? A nice boy like you should be married...", and making sure Joe is eating enough even though she's starving herself to prepare for Salome.
There will be more coming, believe me. :P
(This meme is a companion to our #SunsetBlvdExhibition meme, which was a series of terrible, terrible puns that arose out of my dreaming about a Sunset Boulevard exhibition, where we took SB quotes and made them vaguely relevant to exhibition-type words. When I say terrible, I mean terrible. "You know what you can do with your vi-queue-na" levels of terrible. Basically, we are awful people who should not be allowed near anything, or each other.)
The crux of this is that it really demonstrates the longevity of internet friendships and throws mud in the face of all those people who think they're not valid or not real or not "proper" friendships. It's always been the case that when I meet online friends IRL, even for the first time, it's like we've known each other for years - because ironcally, we probably have.
So yeah. I wanted to mention that in case it got lost in my latter write-ups, which I will now make a start on. Hoping to get at least one up on Sunday, if not both, as I think I may have to do one for each Act, unless it devolves into Yet Another Shipper Analysis and churns out a third. :P
Watch this space!
PS: In honour of the occasion I have switched back to the glorious SB mood theme that Eni made me. :)
