It was Fanarakia last night. The festival of little lanterns is celebrated every year on March 24th, the eve of the Annunciation of the Virgin Mary. Today is an important day in the Greek calendar, being both the Anunciation and Independence Day. There will be a parade later, special church services and so on, and a bank holiday for shops and services that take such holidays. I’ve seen some great short videos of last night on Symi TV, and on their Facebook page. As always, they are well worth a look.
As for us? We were at home watching the National Theatre at Home, and the production of Inter Alia with Rosamund Pike. I wasn’t sure what to expect, but it’s one of those performances that leaves the jaw dropped. Well worth the subscription fee on its own, and we’ve got The Importance of Being Ernest tomorrow night. I also started on Macbeth, but had to go to bed before the murders started… Oh no. Tell a lie. I think Ralph Fiennes had just gone running to Indira Varma with blood all over him after doing in Duncan. Then I had to go to bed as it was gone ten.
We ‘did’ Macbeth for O Level English back in 1978/79 along with Arthur Miller’s The Crucible, and Dickens’ Great Expectations.* I have to say, I was fine with the plays, and I used to enjoy reading them aloud in class. I was particularly fond of my John Proctor, such as it was at 16, “Because it is my name! Because I cannot have another in my life!” I hope I wasn’t too over the top. I don’t think I was, and my classmate, Madeline, was just as dramatic with her Elizabeth. In fact, at one point, our English teacher suggested we put on a play ourselves (the school had a large stage and a certain amount of theatre stuff; not exactly ‘Glee’ but good enough). We put our heads together and thought of what would be a good vehicle for a few friends and us – nothing too big, because the head of music put on a musical once a year, using as many kids as he could scrape off the playground benches, usually girls. He once did The Wizard of Oz with over 300 children in it. Blimey. Anyway, his wife, the head of English, suggested we find something and do a basic staged version of it. Anything we thought might be suitable… perhaps something safe like Billy Liar (too big a cast), or the 39 Steps for all the slapstick and adventure. Hmm… We thought about it and came back with ‘Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf,’ because Madelaine wanted to walk on stage, stare at the headmaster in the audience and say, ‘Jesus…What a dump.’ I was quite keen to deliver some of Richard Burton’s lines, particularly the nasty ones and the one where he talks about Martha’s great t*ts. Not because I was interested in them or anything, I just wanted to smoke and swear on stage. We never did it. Not allowed. So we wrote and put on a review instead, and that was so satirical, we made a short paragraph in the Sun. (Another story. Another day.)
How on earth I got to that from where I started today, I have no idea. What that has to do with the photos, I also have no idea. It’s just what comes out of my head first thing in the morning.
* I think I read a couple of chapters of this doorstopper of a novel, but luckily, the 1946 David Lean film version with John Mills was on TV the night before, so I watched that, and got an A in the exam.
