#my first review
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investiray.com Reviews
Why does investiray.com have a low trust score?
investiray.com has a low trust score. The website may be a scam. Scamadviser gave a low review to investiray.com based on several data points we were able to find online (such as reviews on other sites, phishing reports and public data such as the address of the company and server). The rating of the website seems low. Our automatic analysis may however be wrong and investiray.com may be legit and safe. It is recommended to always do your own check as well.
Positive highlights:
The SSL certificate is valid
Negative highlights:
The owner of the website is using a service to hide their identity on WHOIS
According to Tranco this site has a low rank
This website has received negative reviews
This website is (very) young.
This website has been reported as Suspicious by IPQS
Full review investiray.com
Company Rating
We see that the owner of the website is using a service to hide his/her identity. This may be because the owner does not want to get spammed. However, it also makes it difficult to identify the real owner of the website. As a result, websites hiding their identity get a slightly lower score.
Cloudflare is a worldwide distributed Content Delivery Network (CDN) platform. Cloudflare does not provide web hosting services and is primarily concerned with web performance and security. It is also a Google Cloud Platform and IBM Cloud partner and therefore shares a lot of mutual reputable customers with both companies. One of Cloudflare's most popular services is its Domain Name Service (DNS) which comes with built-in security measures such as DDoS-blocker and DNSSEC, as well as a Web Application Firewall (WAF). The platform's reputation over the years made it the go-to for a lot of credible organizations and platforms, including ScamAdviser; but like with everything else on the internet, it is still prone to misuse by scammers.
Webshop Analysis
According to Tranco this site has a low Tranco rank. This means that the number of visitors to this website is quite low. You can expect this from a small, starting or niche website. A popular website however should have a higher ranking.
The domain has only been registered recently. We recommend you to be cautious when buying or using services from a website that is very young. You may like to check our blog: "How to recognize a scam". Websites of scammers often only last for a few months before they are taken offline. An old website is no guarantee that the site is safe. Some scam sites are even years old. Most scam sites however are taken down after a few months as the number of consumer complaints rises and the hosting company is getting tired of the many emails and phone calls.
Technical Analysis
A valid SSL certificate was found. Professional companies use an SSL certificate to encrypt communication between your computer and their website. However, there are different levels of certification and scammers also install a free SSL certificate. If you have to enter your data, never do this without checking if an SSL certificate protects your information.
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if you havent read my wife's gf fanfic WHAT ARE YOU DOING!!
(no sound)
#gravity falls#billford#gf theseus' guide#bill cipher#stanley pines#stanford pines#mabel pines#dipper pines#m.png#love having secret spoiler knowledge so i know whats on mabels sweater#4 hard years of learning storyboarding in college and the first animatic i make in the YEARS since i graduated....... is for a gf fic#who would have seen this coming... not me.... but then who would have thought my wife was a FUCKING GENIUS#if ur still not sold. my brother in laws review of the fic is 'it feels like im watching an episode of gravity falls'#and i gotta agree. the tone and characters are fucking nailed the whole way through#and chapter 7 makes me cry 👍
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#I find myself wishing the endgame was two boyfriends more and more these days#twisters#twisters 2024#daisy edgar jones#glen powell#anthony ramos#did challengers mess with my brain chemistry or was I always like this?#who could say#tornadoes#this ain’t my first tornado#kate cooper#tyler owens#Javi#if you feel it chase it#oh god realizing I misspelled tornadoes in the review and THEN spelled it correctly in the tags#pls forgive me#littlechocolatemilkshake
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NEW FEAR OF YOU CONTENT AHH
Not even written by me! @dahvampire wrote an entire fanfiction for Fear of you, check it out!! <3
Pretty much this dynamic:
#WOOPS wrong blog LMAO#omg i'm so happy#THIS#AHHHHHHHH#I'm so freaking blessed; they writing about my blorbos#HELLOO#LOOKIT THE FREAKING PROSE#@dahvampire I will leave THE review to ever exist prepare your inbox#I'm so freaking crazy about this#Like THE GRIN I have on my face HELLO#I haven't read “All In” yet (only the first paragraphs with OH BOY DO I LOVE THIS ALREADY) I want to save it for my travel home today!!#Man why did I stop writing about them i love this fucking bird#I think I'm back in the fandom baby#HIUWE>itrfsda#I need to finish editing the next chapter of Foy#It's Endeavor and Shinyo centric too#Let's see how it goes weeee#bnha#mha#mha foy#bnha fear of you#mha fear of you#my hero academia#boku no hero academia#mha shinyo takami#bnha shinyo takami#mha the takami thief#bnha shinyo#bnha oc#mha endeavor
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Grrrr mr gallagher... 😳
This drawing was made in collaboration with VEIKK Tablet who have kindly sent me to review their Creator VK1060 Pro. If you're interested, pls click this link for 21% OFF your purchase!
#hiiii its your baby's first review collab 🥹#i actually got this collab offer sometime back in january when wacom got into the ai promo scandal#which is fucking hilarious to me when you think about it#veikk knows what they were doing lol#honkai star rail#hsr#gallagher#gallagher hsr#my art
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This Week in BL - Lots of lovely kisses & an unwarranted upset in the standings
Organized, in each category, with ones I'm enjoying most at the top.
Oct 2024 Week 2
Ongoing Series - Thai
Fourever You (Thai Thurs YT) ep 2 of 16 - Yes yes J&J should be first but I am weak in the face of, well, frankly this man's face:
Pond = greatest piner in a dog’s age. The yearning in that boy’s eyes is obscene, it’s like the most explicit sex that only he can see and we’re just voyeurs.
Thus I continue to adore this stupid show and everything it stands for. No notes. May the fluff continue eternal.
Jack & Joker (Thai Mon IQIYI) ep 5 of 12 - Everyone is so skilled in this show, but War is truly glorious. Considering the pacing, I think we are probably in for some long periods of darkness, suffering, and pain soon. I’m not mad about that prospect, it’s earned and foreshadowed, I just thought I’d lay it out there.
Kidnap (Fri YT) ep 6 of 12 - More boys from GMMTV with good communication. Who knew? Min has SUCH a white knight complex. NO SINGING. Good demanding kiss, though. Well, Ohm can handle anything.
Meanwhile, this really is a bodyguard romance under another name. And I kinda wanna rewatch Never Let Me Go as a result.
Love Sick 2024 (Thai Sun iQIYI) ep 4 of 15 - Earn remains best boy and my favorite character. Phun is v jelly, as he should be. AND I like Ohm & N'Mik better in this version. I still prefer the original leads, but I’m enjoying this enough.
I had no idea how much I missed Gunsmile! It’s so nice to see him on my screen again.
Monster Next Door (Thai Thurs Gaga ) ep 12 fin - I hate Diew’s mom. Hate her. So much. She may be my least favorite mom ever in BL. That’s saying a lot. No I don’t think she was redeemed.
Conclusion
Adapted from the novel Godzilla Next Door by Jiwinil about an introvert who lives mostly in his room, until a loud annoying extrovert moves in next door. This was one of my top picks for 2024 and I’m delighted to say it satisfied expectations. A charmingly serene story of opposites attract, that featured good communication, patience, and genuine affection used to build a solid relationship.(I’m particularly delighted that our musician is a drummer and I don’t have to listen to him sing.) Yes it’s a tad slow but it’s very earnest and leans into the kind of sweetness that Thai BL does best. Doesn’t hurt that this starred an actor (Big) that many of us have been hoping would get a lead for years. I was pleased and comforted. This is not a kind of BL that suits everybody, but it suited me admirably. 8/10
Battle of the Writers (Sun YT) ep 10 of 12 - Ozone and the Ice Prince (name still unknown) did their little dance. What an earnest and romantic confession from our Icy man. I literally said “no no no just kiss, no foreheads.” And it was a great crying kiss, my favorite. Honestly, that amount of emotion hadn’t been earned by this pair, but I don’t mind. I could watch a whole show just about them. Also woah! Major nekid on YT?
Thailand......
Risking demonetization for arse…...
I guess we’ve all been there.
Where was I?
I’m happy with this episode since it was mostly my side couple. But the distribution of main couple and side couple and the focus of each episode is wildly erratic with this show. It’s very odd. (And let's be clear we ordered errotic not erratic.)
Every You Every Me (Thai Mon Gaga) ep 1 of 10 - Jade and Chin have lived over a thousand lifetimes. In each one they somehow manage to fall in love with each other. (This pair, TopMick was piloted in a My Universe ep, that was one of the only ones I liked.) Soulmate premise is a mix of Color Rush and La Pluie. Frankly, this isn’t as good as either, but it’s enjoyable in a slow cheerful way. Especially if you like this particular set of tropes. It’s quietly lovely and I like the leads. Sunshine is very very sunshine and our tsundere is a grumpy mysterious nerd. Trigger for domestic abuse. It looks like each episode is gonna be a completely different meet cute with the same pairing. It’s more linked vignettes than any overarching story. So if you don’t like this pair, you won’t like this series.
Addicted Heroin (Thai Tues WeTV) ep 9 of 10 - More sports day. (Everybody’s doing sports days right now.) Random sides kissing. Where did the glasses person come from? Was he introduced and I forgot about it? Oh that’s the evil cousin! Okay… anygay. Sides randomly flip-flop who they like and I don’t know what the fuck is going on. This show. I swear. Ooo caught kissing. And… killed? What a mind fuck of a soap opera. Honestly, I’m fine if he’s dead, I don’t care at this point I just feel jerked around.
For some reason no eng sub for me for the first half. So I watched with Spanish subs (which is about as good as my Thai, only for different words). What a wild experience.
Bad Guy My Boss (Thai Sun Gaga) ep 4 of 10 - Oh dear. I just can’t imagine ever rooting for this couple. Which means… Why am I watching this?
Ongoing Series - Not Thai
My Damn Business (Korea Sat YT) eps 1-2 of 7 - Oh I love it. Casual flirty westernized-style boss. Reserved reluctant cutie (yes we’ve seen the actor before). Is it disgusting workplace harassment? Oh most certainly. Do I enjoy it anyway? Yep, I’m warped. No defense, but at least it’s something from Korea.
Teenager Judge (Vietnam Sat YT) ep 3 of ? - I like the lead being bullied and pushed to his limit thus turning into a psychopath. It’s gonna be a fun ride if it really goes Devil Judge just teens and actually gay. I wonder if it has the strength of its convictions?
Our Golden Times (Hong Kong YT) 5 fin? - I guess that is the reunion? What an odd little piece. I’m not entirely sure what I feel about it except that this feels more BL than anything Hong Kong has given us so far (which isn't much). The subs are truly terrible. Since I speak absolutely zero Cantonese I can’t really fix them in my brain. I thought this was the final ep but then a teaser for ep 6 dropped so I we have at least one more.
First Note Of Love (Taiwan Mon Gaga) ep 10 of 12 - It was a nice, if entirely unearned reunion. And the leads do kiss beautifully. Trust Taiwan. I am so glad that Orca is back! There was even a little language play flip-flopping just for me. Very cute. Also GREAT kissing. How long have we been waiting for Thailand and Taiwan to kiss?
Eccentric Romance (Korea Weds Viki) eps 1-2 of 12 - Silkwood’s 2nd Thai/Korean colab. This has been in production since 2022 which is a LONG time in the BL world (worrying). But I like the concept: friends of 10 years who’ve been hiding feelings for each other enter the same university. Plus MURDER. Stars Yoon Jun Won (The Man BLK) and Thai actor Save Saisawat (Ai Long Nhai). I begin to think every The Man BLK member will eventually lead out a BL at this point.
It’s enjoyable in a weird way. Grumpy (hottie with a crush) + sunshine (captain oblivious). I gotta say, since this is the second relationship dual lingo style in our BL rn that it’s ALWAYS weird if the other half doesn't occasionally code switch languages, especially for specific words. In other words, the Korean dude is supposed to at least understand Thai, occasionally he’s should use a Thai world to get a point across. And the Thai dude is there to STUDY KOREAN, he should be slipping in and out of Korean regularly. Bah.
It's airing but...
Love is Like a Poison AKA Doku Koi: Doku mo Sugireba Koi to Naru (Japan Tues Netflix?) 5 of 10 eps - I never managed to get hold of ep 5. Frankly, it’s going to Netflix (I don’t subscribe) so I might not finish this out of sheer laziness.
The Hidden Moon (Sat WeTV) ep 1 of 10 - This is a supernatural romance (my ghost boyfriend trope) by Violet Rain (I Feel You Linger). A man is hired to write an article about an old mansion in Chiang Mai being converted into a café. He sees the ghosts of people who died at the mansion, falls in love with one of them. Was substantially recast. I loved IFYLITA except the ending so I think I'll let this one run it's course you can tell me if it's work tracking down... if they managed to land it. I have my doubts.
Gangster and His Boyfriend (Korea ????) 8 eps? - was supposed to air 10/10 Kim Dong Bin (famous trainee & idol reality competitor, yeah that happens) stars as a fallen idol who unexpectedly becomes entangled in a gangster family. Discovers that his friend’s father is responsible for the murder of his entire family years ago. I don't know much about this one, neither does anyone else and I'm not sure where I got that release date so……
Next Week Looks Like This:
Upcoming BLs for 2024 are listed here. This list is not kept updated, so please leave a comment if you know something new or RP with additions.
Still Coming Oct 2024:
10/17 Let Free the Curse of Taekwondo (Korea Thurs Gaga) 8 eps - High school student Do Hoe lives with his violent and brutal father who runs a Taekwondo gym in a rural area. One day, cheerful Ju Young arrives, he dreams of going to college for Taekwondo. Joy begins to fill Do Hoe's dark life. An unexpected incident forces them apart, they reunite ten years later.
10/21 Love in the Big City (Korea ????) 8 eps - Okay, this is both a movie (already out) and a series. Neither one is likely BL and I can't imagine it will end happily. I'm giving both a pass but here's your synopsis.
Cynical fun loving student Young pinballs from home, to class, to on night stands. He and Jaehee, his female besie and roommate, frequent nearby bars where they push away their worries about life, love, and money with soju and hookups.
10/23 See Your Love (Taiwan Weds Gaga & Viki) 10 eps? - Zi Xiong, a third-generation heir, attempting to flee from taking over their family business, meets and falls in love with Shao Peng, who works as a hearing-impaired nurse. From the same production house as Kiseki Dear To Me in partnership with Shinehouse Theatre, funded by Taiwan’s BIGART + Japan's Rakuten (Viki). Show includes Lin Chia Yo (Be Loved in House: I Do). Director Chiang Ping Chen’s childhood experiences with his deaf uncle have inspired the drama.
THIS WEEK’S BEST MOMENTS
Addicted Heroin
Incidentally he didn’t ask to “be with Ter” he asked if he could flirt/court him. jeeb doesn’t really have a direct translation, but it isn’t “be with.”
Fourever You
The tag BLigade: @doorajar @solitaryandwandering @my-rose-tinted-glasses @babymbbatinygirl @babymbbatinygirl @isisanna-blog @mmastertheone @pickletrip @aliceisathome @urikawa-miyuki @tokillamonger @sunflower-positiiivity @rocketturtle4 @blglplus @anythinggoesintheshire @everlightly @renafire @mestizashinrin @bl-bam-beyond @small-dark-and-delicious @saezurumurmurs
Sigh, Tumblr in its infinite wisdom doesn't like too many at-ings.
#this week in BL#BL updates#Jack & Joker#Jack and Joker#Addicted Heroin#fourever you#Battle of the Writers#Monster Next Door review#Eccentric Romance#First Note of Love#Teenage Judge#Kidnap the series#Love Sick 2024#Bad Guy My Boss#Every You Every Me#My Damn Business#Our Golden Times#upcoming BL#BL news#BL reviews#BL gossip#Thai BL#Vietnamese BL#Japanese BL#live action yaoi#Koren BL#BL starting soon#BL coming soon#new BL#hong kong BL
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CURE
i bring you the alien stage-ification of gempearl
close ups under
!! the original !!
#geminitay fanart#pearlesentmoon fanart#gempearl#hermitcraft#hermitblr#tw blood#mild eyestrain#the way this was the first thing i thought of doing once i was free from my project review#honeyd.m art
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gorgeous gorgeous boyfriends make lunch for each other
#this is the first time i‘ve ever drawn a comic esque thing like this#maybe this was funnier in my head!!! i dont care#this was obviously inspired by that one video of the guy making lunch for his gf#and also the so what if his boyfriend made it for him S P I D E R M A N review that someone made a gif out of lol#aftg#all for the game#neil josten#andrew minyard#andreil#aftg fanart#aftg art#my art
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i don't know if any show will ever gag me as hard as jaw's delivery in this scene or the al-anon monologue did
#that mix of hysteria pain and anger in his voice with the finger gun to his temple my fucking GOD he ate this scene up#had to post this just so i would always have a vid of this saved somewhere#i would give anything to watch fishes review and braciole for the first time again bc those eps absolutely destroyed me on the first watch#carmy berzatto#the bear fx#not art#sammi speaks
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new HRT just dropped
#drg#trans memes#blah#saw this review and this was the first thing that popped into my head#happy pride 🌈#deep rock galactic
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Does anyone else see the vision
#this has been rotting around in my head for multiple months now#it got the discord peer review so hopfully someone understands what im saying here#i feel like there has be some sort of venn diagram overlap of audiences#anyway enjoy#john doe#john doe malevolent#the entity#the entity malevolent#the king in yellow#the king in yellow malevolent#the king in yellow sucker for love#sucker for love estir#estir#sucker for love missy#sucker for love#sucker for love: first date#malevolent#malevolent podcast#also if its unclear the order is suposed to be john - the entity - the king - estir - missy
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shes pink!!
#total drama#total drama fanart#tdpi#total drama pahkitew island#total drama ella#ella total drama#td ella#ella td#i watched pi for the first time a few weeks ago believe it or not#i was putting it off bc of the bad reviews but honestly its a pretty solid season#ella and scarlett are my favs
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#one of my mutuals recently watched misfits and magic and i wanted to start it so i can make some gifsets for them#so here it is#just finished the first episode#shirt review post#19/5#d20#dimension 20#brennan lee mulligan#misfits and magic#evan kelmp
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𝑷𝒂𝒓𝒂𝒍𝒍𝒆𝒍𝒔 𝒃𝒆𝒕𝒘𝒆𝒆𝒏 𝒍𝒐𝒍𝒊𝒕𝒂 𝒂𝒏𝒅 𝒕𝒉𝒆 𝒗𝒊𝒓𝒈𝒊𝒏 𝒔𝒖𝒊𝒄𝒊𝒅𝒆𝒔 ‧₊ ☁️⋅♡ ࣪ ִֶָ☾.
People call Vladimir Nabokov a disgusting creep for writing from the perspective of a pedophile when in reality if you read the book, Humbert Humbert is not likeable in the slightest. He's an unreliable narrator that's so stuck in his own delusions that he can't see how miserable dolores is because of him. Nabokov is a great writer and lolita is really well written. It's a great satire in the sense that it's pathetic to see Humbert Humbert think he's sooo charming and these "nymphets" are soooo in love with him. Dolores' trauma is obvious to any competent reader, I don't know how people are so charmed by Humbert Humbert that they can't see how dolores' defiance which he refers to as "teenage rebellion" or "tantrums" is a very apparent cry for help. Lolita is a Gothic horror, a cautionary tale. It's a genius work of art and what's most horrific about it is how society reacted to it, how it's so normalised to sexualise little girls that blatant pedophilia is interpreted as a tragic love story. Nabokov himself referred to dolores as his "poor little girl". He had a lot of empathy for her and it must be so heartbreaking to see her getting sexualised.
When I first read the virgin suicides i thought it was a great work of satire. I adore the Lisbon girls with all my heart, I see a part of myself in all of them by varying degrees. The boys who claimed they loved these girls, only saw them as some fantasy. Even in death they never truly respected any of these girls. How when they found Cecelia's diary, instead of trying to make sense of why she killed herself, they selfishly searched for their own names. I loved the irony of the boys claiming they loved these girls when they didn't know anything about them. It showed how their "love" was really shallow and surface level. I thought Jeffrey Eugenides really understood me in that sense. But in reality he didn't mean any of the things the boys did to be interpreted as satire. According to him, peaking through windows, stealing used tampons, joking about groping dead girls, these grown men still picturing those little girls years later while they had sex with their wives etc was supposed to show that teenage boys are not disgusting horny dogs, but romantic softies (if anything this made me think teenage boys are much more repulsive than i thought). According to Eugenides the book is satire, but in the sense that you never know what was going through a person's head when they committed suicide and you can't make sense of it no matter how hard you try. Everything about how the boys viewed the girls was not satire and was to be taken at face value. This really broke my heart, an author who i thought really did get me and understood me, ended up making me feel watched instead of seen.
It's so interesting how lolita which is supposed to be from the perspective of an unreliable narrator was taken at face value and the virgin suicides which was to be taken at face value was perceived as satire.
The director of Lolita didn't get her at all, even he thought she was some kind of a seductress instead of a child that was abused repeatedly. While the virgin suicides movie was so much better than the book, Sofia Coppola, the director, understood the Lisbon girls so well and she did them justice.
#English is not my first language so please dont be mean#sorry for the long ass rant#I'm so tired i would make this pretty but i have 0 energy#lolita novel#lolita is not a love story#vladimir nabokov#lolita by Vladimir Nabokov#bookblr#book analysis#book rants#books and reading#the virgin suicides#lolita#the virgin suicides by Jeffrey Eugenides#sofia coppola#jeffery eugenides#book review#lisbon girls#cecelia lisbon#lisbon sister#humbert humbert#dolores haze
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"I am in fear - in awful fear - and there is no escape for me"
#johnathan harker#dracula#dracula daily#well this wasn't in the training manual#first the mirror thing and now this? That's it#I'm rewriting my yelp review of this place#my art
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This past week, I traveled to London to see Macbeth. Everything I had heard and seen about David, Cush Jumbo, and the overall production convinced me that it was not to be missed, and so I took the crazy chance of purchasing a ticket months ago, and it was the first time I've ever gone to another country just for a play.
Ever since I was a kid, I have been going to Broadway shows, and the experience of live theatre has always been something incomparable and incredibly meaningful to me. Seeing something beyond Broadway, however, never felt possible until now. This opportunity arose at a moment when I was finally able to seize it, and now that I have attended the play not once, but twice (thanks to a lovely person who was able to help me obtain a £25 day ticket), I can say that Macbeth was, without question, the most amazing thing that I have ever seen on stage.
What follows is my review/thoughts on the production, and I will try my best to avoid spoilers (though fair warning that one or two may arise, so proceed with caution).
In high school, Shakespeare was something we were taught. It was an assumed part of the curriculum, labeled as a classic. Yet it seemed to exist in a time capsule--a product of its era, and of an English language barely proximate to the one we speak today. We learned Macbeth on the page, in annotations and themes and meter, rather than something pulsing, beating, living. Something that makes us feel. And for nearly two hours in a beautiful Victorian theatre in a little corner of the West End, all I did was exactly that.
I felt. And after seeing this play, I am not the same person on a molecular level that I was before.
Everything about this play--from David's mesmerizing portrayal of Macbeth to Cush Jumbo's wrenching turn as Lady Macbeth to the entire ensemble cast to the staging choices (light, sound, and so on)--is extraordinary. It is breathtakingly ruinous. It is so fully immersive that by the end you somehow feel bruised, viscerally disgusted and wrung out in equally beautiful measure.
It's almost misleading to say that we the audience are simply watching the play, because thanks to the binaural audio design (headphones), we are in Macbeth and Lady Macbeth's minds, and become accomplices to the characters' wicked deeds. When the porter (Jatinder Singh Randhawa) comes on to provide comic relief at exactly the perfect moment, it soon becomes clear that it is a distraction from our own discomfort at what has just happened. But it is a short-lived respite, as we are soon plunged back into the action and the characters' spiraling descent into madness.
In terms of David specifically, seeing him on television or on any screen profoundly pales to seeing him on the stage. In much the same way that the stage is Michael's natural habitat, it is also David's. The way he moves, the way he holds himself when he's not even speaking--which I got to see up close when he knelt directly in front of me on several occasions--is meticulous. David becomes the character he is playing, down into the pit of his soul. He disappears so thoroughly that I very quickly forgot that I was even watching him.
So many people can recite Shakespeare, but there is a marked difference between recitation and what David does. Together, David and Cush make Macbeth and Lady Macbeth feel like the Bonnie and Clyde of the Elizabethan age (only hornier). And the themes the play invokes--greed, fear, jealousy, power--are shown to be themes not of a particular era, but of humanity. David especially is so preternaturally good at making all of that unbearably real. He not only makes Shakespeare accessible to the modern world--an already difficult feat on its own--he makes it timeless.
For the last ten minutes of the play, I felt like I stopped breathing. The evil that Macbeth perpetrates, and the realization that he has not become like this, but rather that this is who he has always been, hits full force. As much as this play is very definitely an ensemble piece, David is the standout. He commands the stage, and at no point is he more powerful than when Macbeth is falling apart near the end.
(On a purely aesthetic level, this is also when David looks most beautiful--the wild hair, the form-fitting shirt heaving with the rise and fall of his greyhound lean chest, and the majestic sweep of the kilt with every frenzied movement. The complete erosion of the line between sanity and insanity, but also showing us how tenuous that line was to begin with. And he is utterly gorgeous while doing so.)
It's also at this moment in the play that we see how skillfully David has manipulated the audience. Where Michael uses a character's emotions much more overtly and aggressively--sniffing the audience out, stalking around the stage, feeling as if he's about to pull you up with him--David is far more controlled. He draws you in slowly, carefully, and it's only when we see the depths of Macbeth's depravity (notably killing Young Siward) that we realize the truth:
He got us. He made us the witnesses to Macbeth's malice, made sure we couldn't look away. And now we are complicit.
If I had to pinpoint any negatives about the play (which is extremely difficult to do), it's that there is only a brief moment where the pacing lags just slightly, and it's because David is off stage for a considerable period of time. The cast is absolutely incredible, bar none, but the energy doesn't quite maintain that high level when he is not there.
Also, from a sensory standpoint, this is very much not a sensory-friendly production. There are several instances of sudden loud noises in the headphones (which I found especially jarring), as well as the use of flashing lights, and considerable use of smoke at multiple points. All of these were more acute because I was sitting in the Stalls (second row), so I can only speak to it from that vantage, rather than from other locations in the theatre. But for anyone who is autistic (as I am) or has sensory-processing challenges, be advised that this play is definitely inaccessible in those respects.
When I left the Harold Pinter Theatre that night, I felt as though my entire central nervous system had been rearranged. There genuinely is no way to be normal about this play, because it is not a normal play. It takes apart everything you know about Macbeth and puts it back together in the most unexpected, electrifying way. It is the beauty of destruction, and no one embodies that more perfectly than David. Even days later, I can still feel the buzzing of my skin, the blood rushing through me, fingertips tingling from some heady combination of arousal and fear. (Or as Dr. Frank N. Furter once put it: "A mental mind fuck can be quite nice...")
The moment the lights went to black, every single person in that theatre was on their feet in a standing ovation. The applause was thunderous, and seemed even louder in the wake of the complete silence that preceded it.
I had sat in that silence--awestruck, captivated--and thought to myself that I could watch this production forever. And I would go back and do it all over again right now if I could. If you have the means, the opportunity, it is an experience I cannot recommend highly enough.
David is truly a master of his craft, and yet performs without a hint of ego. He gives everything he has and leaves it all on the stage. And what he and this team of people have come together to give us is something I will remember for the rest of my life.
(Pictures taken on 10/12/2024.)
#david tennant#soft scottish hipster gigolo#cush jumbo#macbeth#harold pinter theatre#west end#i had the most incredible time on my trip#but even if i hadn't it would have been worth it for this alone#i am so very glad that this was my first west end play#this entire production is just living art#i really really hope it gets a transfer to Broadway too#fingers crossed#review#thoughts
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