Reviews of splendour

The public were clambering over themselves to praise the opera... in a way.

Here is one take on it

http://www.dailyinfo.co.uk/reviews/feature/2476/The%2BGondoliers/

And another

http://www.oxfordtheatrereview.co.uk/?q=node/290


There was a third, but it began with 'Opera is not very good', and went down hill from there - classic neutral reporting. I think that was done by the Student rag, and doesn't need to be resurrected here.

Oh yes, the next post should be of my transfer dissertation once my supervisor finishes with his brace of comments.

And lastly a picture of the birds and lads from Act I.

And of everyone in the nearby squash court, where the smell of victory hung over us all like a large smelly hangy thing.

The Gondoliers

The term's Gilbert and Sullivan Operetta rolled around once more: this time it was the sparkling Venice-set Gondoliers. And as this was Michaelmas Term, we were in the king of all theatres - the Moser Theatre/Badminton Court at Wadham College. Well in a way the court markings became useful as areas such as the 'dialogue square' and 'lines of sight' were clearly delineated. 3 nights of fun filled excitement. The first night had about a 2/3 crowd who were a little slow to get going but seemed to warm to us by the end; the second evening was a full house who must have taken some E^C (a post written almost a year ago now) snuff, or perhaps they were just swept away by our majesty, but they laughed at anything and everything and the applause was raucous in the least. Thus it was tough to improve for the final night, but with a full house + some extra chairs dragged out to accommodate the punters who wanted to catch a glimpse of history, it was always going to be a high-octane performance.

I made the remark that we are better than Covent Garden or even, the Sydney Opera House in that they NEVER sell more tickets than they have seats, or at least, they never need to drag out extra chairs. When I extended this notion to us getting a slice of the juicy profits, support waned from those in charge.

First: a plot

Roughly: Barataria, a ficticious dominion near(?) Spain had a king, the king died, his son was smuggled to Venice, but the son was mixed up with a gondolier's son. Now no one knows who is the king, good times ensue, and it is all resolved with much happiness (and unlike recent Bible readings, without 'weeping and gnashing of teeth'.)

Thither:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Gondoliers

for more details.


I was Don Alhambra del Bolero - the Grand Inquisitor of Spain. With a beretta (the hat, not the pistol type) and a £5 Cornmarket Street Pashmina which passed as a cincture, along with a maverick cassock, I brought good times hither and yon.

And of course, there are pictures:

The Don - keeping the inquisition real and scoring 309 in one day at Headingley.

My line was... 'distinctly jimp'... and then I got my hand slapped.

Here was were we made transcendent comedy with the line, 'we didn't expect the Spanish Inquisition'.


A moment of Catholic empathy.

Here was when I regailed them with tales of how I stole the prince: in my mind, the greatest bass-baritone song in the Gilbert and Sullivan canon. Or cannon, if you prefer.
The finale. I will prop up some colourful ones of the chorus and our after party delights in due course. But now, it is time to return to the hard man's working game.

Pi cubed and Mr Gladstone

Before a Saturday Gondoliers rehearsal (ante-practice, you might say) I stopped in at the Eagle and Child pub for some lunch. This is the CS Lewis, and JR^2 Tolkien hangout of yesteryear - they had an omnipresent wit and ability to crack all sorts of humorous jibes, evident in their colloquial expression of this pub as the 'Bird and Baby'... clever... oh yes.

Anyway, the last time I went there I ordered the famous (in a way) steak and ale pie. It was served in cylindrical form - a disc of diameter, say 10 cms, and height of 1.5 inches (note the ease of transition between imperial and metric measurements, subtle, yet elegant.) This time I was greeted with one of the Platonic solids - a pie in the shape of a cube. Naturally my mathematical streak (or steak, as I typed) ran wild with all sorts of knavish jokes and hi-jinx and indeed several mouthfulls were interrupted by a chortle here and there.

I took a bath yesterday - that's all.

On Monday was the first meeting in several years of the Balliol College Arnold and Brackenbury Society, which historically is the debating and dining society. Due to some rehearsal tomfoolery I missed the dinner, but ran home, turned my room upside down in order to find a black tie, but settled on an Irish equivalent. Eventually I managed to make the tail end of the dining, with an eclectic 'British and Continental' cheese board, followed by Balliol mints and coffee. As I don't drink that poisonous nectar of Lucifer, I took great delight in asking for a cup of tea, and saw one waiting for me, not more than 2 minutes afterwards.

The debate was about whether one would want to be SENT DOWN, or GO DOWN. The former being Oxonian parlance for a suspension (or even expulsion) and the latter being of the same genus, but an expression for graduation and leaving the university on 'good' terms. As such, much hilarity ensued with the perhaps low level punning techniques of the interpretation of these two terms. Afterwards the floor was open to mavericks who just wanted to a add a thing or two. Well, St Paul's Debating captain 2001.... stand up and be counted.



The tradition is to address the Ladies, Gentlemen, guests etc., and also the ashes of Mr Gladstone, who is a stuffed owl. That's right... he was the mascot of the society, and back before the Federation of the Commonwealth of Australia, the owl got singed and is now crematus. Just another one of those maverick tales from the land of Ox. Anyway, I took a leaf out of Jonathan 'The Dean' Swift's MODEST PROPOSAL, to say that I would rather be sent down for turning philosophy students into food in the hall to supplement dinner. I can't exactly remember the cogency of the argument, but it was lambasted with Swiftian satire in the style of Juvenal and Horace, particularly when MOUSSAKA could be replaced by students who studied Marx- Kafka... in a way...

Good times were had, and the seeds of gout were certainly sown with consumption of port beyond the recommended daily dietary intake.

Isaiah and 99.94

Thence to a Sunday evening Bible reading - the first appearance of the 'Dream Team' - the two basses delivering old testament and epistle good times. I had to talk about Sodom and Gomorahh, ram's blood and the fat of bullocks... (which, each time I practised it, I almost always said 'bollocks'... which would have gone down like a sack of... bullocks?) so there was only one way to play this game. I had to bring out the voice of the hellfire puritan preachers of yesteryear, and with rumbling of tone, I almost frothed at the mouth for sections like, 'my soul hateth'. It certainly woke up a few people. Fortunately I managed to pull it all together on the day and not say, 'the fat of bollocks', which may have been comic gold, but not for what I was contracted.

Naturally every self-respecting Australian or cricketer should latch onto the significance of such a number as 99.94 (and apparently, if you don't know you don't get let into the country? Or is that just a flight of fancy from the c...c...crazy characters back home?) Regardless - in homage to Sir Donald Bradman, I have been referring to my character in 'The Gondoliers' http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Gondoliers
(Don Alhambra del Bolero) as 'The Don', and have been making textbook cover drives in between sections of dialogue. Some, particular those of an American persuasion, do not get the reference, but then, that is how they roll, and the wonders of a delicate late cut, or maverick moving away to the leg side to combat bullying bodyline bowling will fall on their deaf ears (not bullocks, or any variant of that.) Nevertheless, rehearsals still go on, and I tend to have a glass or two of Glenmorangie beforehand, just to keep it real.


Sadly there is little else to report. The dissertation will be handed in by the end of term, on that I am assured, and likely I will have my oral exam (open wide and say ahhh [I've been getting good mileage out of that vehicle]) should be early in January. Thus I will have time for research in the interim, and, perhaps in a more exciting vein, the ultimate Scottish experience or drinking billy tea and cooking porridge over a fire when the rain, she come a'tumblin' down.

Di is due to arrive in Blighty in the middle of December, and a hunt for a house is on. I am mustard keen on a place with a study and a shelf for whisky, and other materials such as heating and numbers of bedrooms will surely sort themselves out after the main priority. Still, but only just, the Oxford autumn is reminiscent of a Canberra winter, and I am finding that with a glove (or preferably two) a jacket, a packet of fisherman's friends (designed to combat the harsh fishing conditions off the Icelandic coast, or so the packet tells me, and I in turn, tell others) and a bit of JS on the old Ipod, it is just like old times.

Except that there are English people here.

Spoons and Meat

And so, on Sunday past, I became acquainted with another of Balliol's quaint customs - the banging of the spoons. When the big man (the master of the college) comes a'dinin' at the Hall, everyone grabs his spoon and bangs it against the table... just for kicks I guessed. Apparently it a vestige of the days of Jowett, when he had recuperated from illness and came back the lads (for they were all lads in those days) banged the nearest table implement (it would appear that they were eating soup at the time) and went crazy.

The master didn't quite dine in Hall, his retinue was too large to fit on the High Table, and thus, the elite would have to mix with hoi polloi, which would never do. So they dined in the Senior Common Room, but the choir has spoons thrust into their arms with a stirring speech to go and make banging noises as they (the retinue) walked from one room to the other. We were handed spoons, we lucky few, we band of brothers...

Which made for fun times. Not really a sentence there, but never mind.

The other day I had a run in with some mince. It was an even numbered day, which meant I was eating spaghetti, but I had forgot to put my mince in the freezer. Thus it had been slowly stewing in its own juices in the fridge for a little while too long (the actual timescale will not be recalled.) When I got it out for frying times, I smelled that it was a little different to your av-er-age bear - but I thought some cunning spices (paprika and lashings of zesty Italian herbs) would do the trick. Rather - the mince gave me some spice... and it wasn't anything nice. Thus an era came to an end... even numbered evenings are no longer the sacred stalking ground of the spaghetthi. And thus, another chapter closes...