Frankenstein – Encores

Image from NT Live Gallery

I can see from the Cineplex Theatres in Calgary that this is the week with the Frankenstein Encores.  

I went tonight to see Johnny Lee Miller as the creature even though I saw this performance before. 

Tomorrow night I am going to see Benedict Cumberbatch as the creature. You know that opening scene that seems to take so long when the creature finds its way out of the womb-like circle and makes his way flopping around the stage and finally to his feet?  Well, before that part was over, the man in front of me got up and left.  I guess he was finished his popcorn and drink and there wasn’t enough action.  I love that part, and especially the scene where the creature finally gets to a cottage where a blind man gives the creature words and teaches him to read.  So many wonderful metaphors in this play.  

The play is savage in some respects.  And yet, there are some lines so wonderful.  I can hear myself laughing and the whole audience at the theatre is laughing as well.  The writer (Nick Dear) knows how to give those lines, and the performers deliver with aplomb.  Sometimes the final line is only one word, but it is like a gold nugget delivered on a silver platter.

Image from NT Live Gallery

Probably less than 10 people in the theatre.  

Maybe 12 or so if I can count the guy who left.  

From the way people were dressed and where they sat, my guess was 2 gay couples, one lesbian couple, one heterosexual couple, the married woman who chatted with me after the show, and a disabled woman at the back in a wheelchair.  Oh yes, and one widow. That's me.   

And the guy who left.

I usually stay to watch all of the credits, as did the other woman who spoke with me.  On the way out of the theatre she told me that she had just come back from London for a week's stay there.  She likes National Theatre so by going to the afternoon and night performances she managed to squeak out 12 shows.  

Not Julie, since it was sold out and she knew she could see it through NT Live when she got home, she said.  Then she told me that she had seen all of the films at the film festival this month as well as The Wife and Collette.  

I think I have finally found the woman who is me.  She stopped on the way out to confirm when we can see the performers switch roles, and I rechecked the date of Funny Girl which is Friday and not Wednesday as advertised.  But as the programmes say, not all performances are in every city on the dates advertised.  Hoping you find time to see both performers.  The cost was $13.95.  The woman who just came back from London said one of the seats she looked at was 99 pounds, so less that a 20 dollar bill seems like a bargain here.

I don’t think I would have pushed myself to get to the theatre tonight, had I not known that Wyona is in London having a lot of fun without me.  All the way down to the theatre on the C-train I was thinking about her taking the tube and going to some entertainment tonight.  I like trying to match her, event for event, even though we are separated by thousands of miles.  My ride down to the theatre, counting 10 minutes waiting for the c-train, was only 41 minutes.

If anyone has the time and the money, do join me in watching both of these performances this week.  I can guarantee a good time, ... but not for the guy who got up and left before the play's introductory scene came to an end.

Arta