#same thing happened with the pillowman

[astralpenguin]

i love my mother dearly but she does not think very hard about 99.9% of the media she consumes and generally if it has Dark Themes of some description she will enjoy herself whereas my brain will not be disengaging unless i've already seen the thing a million times which is where our biggest media disagreements stem from. i love a dark theme too but if a story is poorly constructed and fails to achieve the thing it's setting out to achieve than i'm probably not gonna like it and it really doesn't matter how many serial killers are present

[red-archivist]

finally caught up on tmagp!

eps 11-15 thots below

ep 11:

celia? again?? jack???

"Besides, I’m sweet enough already" is such a dad joke. As in, literally a joke my own dad has made several times

Ink5oul cameo!

lollll the change to stuffy business language

ah, ink5oul you can't be stealing corpses now, behave

GWEN Thank you, Alice. ALICE I… Sure. Whatever. Don’t get used to it.

tsun tsun~

"he's one of our externals" what a way to phrase it. also tells us that the oiar/the government works with several monsters

ep 12:

omg he's actually asking her out? fair play

"I think I'm done with Magnus stuff" buddy boy, its episode 12- magnus stuff isn't done with you, i can tell you that much

"Date of Incident: 9 March 2024" ooh v recent huh

stags are the worst, jordan, ty

oh. bonzo is back. lena meant it when she said to keep an eye out

the groom's was the name gwen handed over i assume

HE RIPPED HIS HEAD APART?? jesussssss

gwen. gwendolyn. you are not okay.

GWEN Thanks, Alice. Utterly useless as always. ALICE Anytime.

okay but purposely useless. purposely joking and irritating bc if you cant take it seriously it cant hurt you- that attitude is going to bite Alice sooner rather then later

ep 13:

ooh date night (morning)

A BABY???? CELIA WHAT

"it all went downhill" > proceeds to describe being generally successful- oh sammy we got to work on this hang-up

oh alice's parents are both dead? so just her and the little brother she is always looking after and giving money to anytime he is mentioned? bet that hasn't given her a complex

oh celia, you know the cases are real you're just trying to sound him out

"is it my fault?" GWENNNNNNN 😭

"we are... managing... the bad guys" oh boy

crypto bro, betting against your own life is a crazy idea what is wrong with you?

it reminds me of the dice case, a luck/circumstances based thing where you try to beat a rigged game

oof. sam. you hit a sore point there "professional"

"Stop trying to make an impact" is alice's motto tbh

ep 14:

"i went through the same thing when i started" i knew Alice had gone snooping, you dont get that avoidant without having tried first. of course, raises the question of what scared her off?

alice stop running away from your feelings challenge level: impossible

where the hell is there a marsh near Newcastle-Under-Lyme?

ooohhh boy hello sudden tone change

snake mannnnn, mannnn full of snakkeeessss

rejection notes from an institute....

ep 15:

sam. sam this is not smoother flirting than before

The Pillowman... we are making a note in case that's important

awww Alice loves her brother so much... shame that she's pitching him in such an awkward, intrusive way

"babies... are cool..." same, Alice

the fucking harpsichord? in the bg of the case reading is making me sooooo tense. i know what's going to happen and they're just drawing it out 10/10

oh. oh no. this is not what i thought was going to happen. i thought sure okay, rich assholes hunting ppl through the woods not... making them hunt each other oh this is so much more fucked up

"none of them got far" JESUS oh its not even all of them, just him

and now he is being hunted, okay

FUCK, the gunshot

oh. why is she in the office

STOP SNIFFING YOU CREEP

mowbray... is she one of the 'externals'...

LADY MOWBRAY Catch you next time, dearie. CELIA No, you won't.

oh that's vicious, celia knows she's a threat and won't give her a single inch, her hackles are raised sky-high

ah! sudden rock music!

And we finally meet Luke, hello

TAPE RECORDER

ummmm and another new voice??

UMMM

this is... the presence alice thought was following her? the thing she and sam set loose from the institute?

well. fuck.

[norton-addiction]

About the play “Bug”, review of the Russian spectator

Original language of the text is Russian. Translation to English made by fan community “Norton-addiction”.

In this article you can read about the play “Bug” starring James Norton which took place in a tiny event hall Found111. 

James Norton and Kate Fleetwood, Bug performance

London, April 22, evening

Complete lack of sense of direction and total absence of the Internet (sure, addiction to it becomes critical) made me exit on Charing Cross station of any reason. The theater (pretty tiny studio) was located on Charing Cross street, abut the street is extremely expanded. When I realized how short time I had and how long would be my way no matter how – on foot or by the underground – I caught a cab, again. And I was in time (in 20 minutes before start) even though I hardly raced past an unnoticeable door at full steam.

I've never been in such a little theater in London. First, you should do a long climb upstairs to a theater bar. When you finally say to yourself “huh, now I can lead forward to the main hall” (there was an encouraging poster on the wall, something like “Nearly here!” on it) but you find out that you should walk up another couple of stairwells. And only after all of that stairs you get into the “Hall”. In quotes because it is a itty-bitty room with a low ceiling and tightly set mismatching chairs and benches round about the “platform”. It's very suitable for fans but not for those who want to get a perfect vision of a performance, so you'd better take your place as far as possible from the platform.

However suddenly I found myself too close to the platform. I stumbled into the bar and ordered a glass of wine at once, then found a place for myself near the broken grand piano and put a rose on it (yes, as you could remember, I wandered around the town with the rose all the time). The whole picture could be seen in a rather off-hand way but I didn't care a curse and set down to get dry. Faster than a flash in the pan a huge crowd of Norton's fans got into and made a thick checkout line in the enter of the hall. Those fans were pleasant but unshakeable english lineups always scare me: it is a perfect monumental formation which leaves no chance to anybody to bore way through the crowd.

For some unfathomable reason I found myself in the hall on the second row - smack up against the bedside table with plates and dishes, bottles and radio on it. This extemporary bar and space near it as it turned out was recruited into the performance. So I, with my rose, felt out of place there. Someone from the crowd catched sight of the rose even joked on me during the intermission: “Oh, lady did fundamental preparation!” I must have dumped Norton with NOT presenting him the rose. Sorry, James, the rose left for Moscow with me, after travel to Stratford and back. And no, I did not wait for James, who, by hearsay, simply hanging around the bar. Sorry, no photos of the prince's autograph there.

The performance

Do you know the feeling when you need some time to grow into the book, movie or show, but it seems a little bit strange and tough in the beginning? This little hall intensified such emotions in me. I even needed to make an effort to overcome the conventionality and get lost in the story. It gets on you nerves when actors over and over again runs up to your bedside table (every item in the 5 cm distance is automatically included in my private space) and then they do something with it. It would be a different matter when it was women (Kate Fleetwood was awesome!) but when beautiful, bare-chested James Norton runs up again and again too close to you... God bless me I'm not a real fan of him))

It is a very strong play established under all principles of good thriller with creepy, growing in pressure suspense and increasing degree of absurd which seems in common with McDonagh's plays (or maybe even Shakespeare's). In the tensest moments comic relief happens to be, and spectators nervously giggle and can't stand laughing in contradiction to puzzleheaded mess in front of them. And could it be that all good plays (plots, books, pictures and movies, and whatever) should have such a mad combination of humor and horror, as... as it appears in the real life?

Similar to McDonagh, it's difficult to review this performance without spoilers. In fact, even trying to translate ambiguous title will be a spoiler (so, our local content “Glitches” fits more or less). So if you haven't read the play or watched the American movie (pretty trashy, IMHO) yet, please, read the following text at your own risk.

With all James Norton's strong points and the key-role of his character, there is a woman in the center of the story. It's great because of the deep dipping into atmosphere of contemplation of the vulnerable paranoiac mind. All this vulnerability due to the desperate lust for love, and it makes all things more dreadful.

Entirely young woman, with marks of the stormy past and everydayness on her face, lives on borrowed time in abandoned motel. The bed, the “bar” (that same old bedside table closer to me), the kitchen, the radio and strategic reserves of all-type relaxants – that's all she needs. In the parlance of medicine, the girl is in state of chronic depression, but, of course, she doesn't know about it. She has unlucky marriage with domestic violence and lost son in her past, and now and there she has only a bottle, a cigarette, a bong, a line of cocaine, a single randy female friend, loneliness and fear.

All the facts which I've shoot out in the previous sentences, brings to the audience slowly and ropy like sticky flypaper. The ceiling will be all covered with such papers in the end of the narration. And for now... now the phone is ringing. Nobody answers on the other end of the line whatever and no matter how frightened Agnes shout into the phone handset. She thoughts she talks with her ex-husband. Speaking of, we won't know who was calling all that times.

And here, in all that very... unfortunately, common little world, Peter (Norton) appears. He is absurdly nice, prudish duffer. Many funny situations based on his clumsiness. He is literally disarmingly plainspoken guy: it's hard to resist such words as “I like you” told in the face (and lately “I could make love with you” - oh, who can resist it). So Agnes can not. And there they already crawls together on the flour in search for the invisible bugs (the first alarm signal was when “the bug” turned out to be a broken fire-safe). So there the mysterious stranger modestly stays overnight on the flour, which causes wave of adoration in the audience. And then, in the morning, he disappears. Instead of Peter Agnes meets her husband Jerry in the bathroom. The dreadful plot starts to spin around in thick and fast tempo.

Jerry. It was a hilariously funny scene of his second entrance which ends pretty scary as every scene in the play.

Peter lures Agnes into the mounting paranoia which begins from very innocent and funny searching for invisible bugs (“bug” as in the main title) in the bed after sex-scene, and then materializes into complete terrifying conspiracy theory in the end. The point is that by this time all that schizoid but consistent delirium is said by Agnes not Peter. Spiritual affinity and human warmth with at least someone near her are more important then real world for Agnes (“I'd better talk to you about bugs than stay silence alone by myself”).

It's painful to watch towards the end of the performance (and that's the difference between this play and McDonagh's ones) because the consistent delirium takes place in full of your view. It is unavoidable and unstoppable like a upcoming trucker. There is nothing left to help characters. McDonagh always leaves some penetrative tiny flash of hope, humanistic points in his works always sounds in high tone upon the most frightening low pitch. On the contrary, Tracy Letts drops to an all-time low of loathsome naturalism. Every more or less empathic person literally wants to close his eyes when after several attempts Peter in highly authentic manner takes out a tooth with pliers by himself (cause the capsule with bugs is hidden in it).

Norton in the dressing room. There are more and more "bites" of non-existing bugs toward the end until the whole body comes to an open wound.

One more difference from McDonagh's – Tracy hasn't such virtuosity ability to write when important sense appears ABOVE text absurd. He makes a request on global topics: Peter is not only unblest paranoid, he is a veteran of Gulf War. Reasonably it should add more tragic in the story, should make watchers thought over (and in one moment you are really think: “For God's sake, maybe he is right with all of his microscopes and rage assurance what he sees things that other people can't”. But Tracy fails in clearing this height as distinct from McDonagh and his The Pillowman and Hangmen.

Speaking through thoughts face to face – that's not how good text works (“There was a time when people though the safety exists, but not now. Today nobody can feel safe”).

Nevertheless the actors were brilliant and took everything they could from the play. They perfectly hold out a hysterical rising pitch with the help of great light and sound work. And once again... God damn, why have I set on the second row! I could see Norton's play only when he was in the other side of the platform; just he appeared near the bedside table, there was only his... waist in my eyesight))) Or I was in need to crane my neck but in this case it looked like I was starring at him face to face, and that was... spooky.

The murder happens in all-сovered in foil paper room. The expected end takes place – main heroes suicide with “I love you” phrase on their lips. But there is no catharsis, only relief that you can finally run out from this self-absorbed world of despair, loneliness and – bugs.

 * * *

... And the more beautiful contrast was on the curtain call when stage staff put bathrobes on half-naked and wet head-to-toe Kate and James, and they “came” on bend (they didn't went away in fact). I swear I've never seen such look of pleasure on the actor's face during the bend, never! Norton truly beaming, he squinted, and even my cheeks tired from toothy smile. It seems if he had a tail that tail would fawn upon in the fullness of his happiness. Kate was smiling too, but it was a sheepish smile, while James... oh, he has such a great charisma I know what his fans feels like!

 This photo provides guidance on what they look like during curtain calls.

And one for the road: lunch break on the roof of Found111 — so cute))

For finding photos thanks goes to blog: norton-addiction.tumblr.com

The End.

Original text in Russian: http://www.dtbooks.net/2016/04/shakespearlives_28.html