Hi Ginny, and sorry for the late reply - I wasn't avoiding answering your questions, I'm just so tied up with the festivals at the moment; I fight my way through the Old Town, see shows or visit exhibitions that range fro the 5* to the total rubbish, then fight my way back onto a crowded, damp and humid bus (if I'm lucky! ended up walking home yesterday) and as soon as I get in it's reviewing time. I really don't know how people like Broadway Baby do it (though I've met the woman behind that and she is truly terrifying).
Yesterday I went to a very interesting panel discussion organised by the Network of Independent Critics - one of the speakers was none other than Lyn Gardner, longtime theatre critic of The Guardian. She was nothing like I had expected - very down to earth and self-deprecating, but also full of ideas and knowledge. She said - 'why do we do it?' Because we are filled with enthusiasm for something and we want to share it' - I found this so true. I hate giving anyone a bad review, so if (as happened this afternoon) I see a terrible production I tend not to review it at all. I know that's a cop-out, but I always feel - and especially with the Fringe - that these poor people have worked so hard, and often spent so much money to get here and stay here, that it would be mean to lay into them.
The awful thing about the panel session was that only about ten of us turned up. What a colossal waste - as well as Lyn Gardner, there was the former theatre critic, now turned director, of The Times, a lady who works in circus and holds several academic posts in performance arts, an actress who has become a critic, and a critic who has written a book about how to review theatre. I don't review much theatre, I prefer books and art, but it was all still so interesting. This was a FREE session put on by the Fringe itself, but they are such a shambles that they never advertise things properly. If the same session had been run at the Book Festival (which opens tomorrow) they would have charged £12 per ticket and it would have been sold out. There is a second session next week - I hope they market that a bit better.
Anyway - you asked about Mad Men. Both Madeleine and I thought it was absolutely fantastic - great story, with lots of little subplots, but more importantly so much about social and political history of the US, about sexism, homophobia, racism, the Kennedy years, religion, women's gradual rise in the workplace. It is so nuanced and clever, and the acting is just outstanding. Elisabeth Moss and Christina Hendricks are fabulous, but so is just about everyone, there are no duds in the entire series. I do recommend it.
As for the Royals, I will probably be shot down in flames for this, as I know Americans are said to love them, but to me (and to my family, including my 90 year old mother) they are a bunch of over-priviliged, overpaid freeloaders. They cost the country a fortune, they contribuute very little, they don't even pay tax. There! Now I will go and hide in the basement (or would if I had one...)
There has just been a controversial programme on TV here about Diana, with a lot of video footage taken by a voice coach she employed to improve her public speaking after she was divorced. She seems to have been exceedingly frank with this man and told him all sorts of very intimate things about her marriage. She attracts a great deal of sympathy in the UK, but by then she was an expert in playing the media, she knew exactly how to work the victim image. It is of course very sad indeed that she died as she did, but that marriage was a disaster on both sides. I believe that Charles is so weird because of his upbringing - my mother says he was a sensitive child who was deprived of love, and who was sent away to an extremely harsh boarding school at a young age. And imagine having anything less than the hide of a rhinocerus and having Philip as a father! He was told he had to find a virgin to marry so that he could produce an heir. Mrs Parker Bowles was completely off limits. If he had just married her in the first place none of this would have happened. I think the court establishment has a lot to answer for; it is an unstoppabe juggernaut of tradition - though it does seem to have loosened up a bit in the younger generation. It will be interesting to see if Harry is allowed to marry Meghan whatever her name is.
Anyway - those are my thoughts!
Madeleine has a bar job for the festival which involves her being out very late at night, so I have been watching TV on my own. I didn't want to continue with the series we are both watcing so I dug out the DVD of Murder One, which I found in a charity shop. We had watched this when it first came out many years ago but we missed the last episode and never found out what happened! I must say that so far it is every bot as good as I remembered it - though it's hard to accept that Stanley Tucci is one of the baddies when we are all still madly in love with him from The Devil Wears Prada and Julie & Julia!
And now I'd better actually do a review...
Rosemary
