Lords and Ladies
Aug. 17th, 2002 10:35 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
chrisvenusWent to see Lords and Ladies last night and it was fantastic. Left work slightly later than intended (only 10 mins) due to offering martin a lift on his last day and him faffing saying goobye to people. Fair enough really. Get a phone call from krys as I turn off ontot he A34 saying any chance of a lift. At this point it is about 6 and I need to be home, showered, find my DJ and have driven to botley hire place within 45 minutes. I had to guilty tell her no with great apologies (some still owing since I was driving at the time so didn't stop for too many apologies). :)
Got home and found the bits of my DJ, had a minor panic about cufflinks and bow tie, neither of which have been word for about a year probably. Luckily I found them (and this proves to people who think my room is too messy to find anything that I can in fact find things since both items were where I thought they were).
I ended up leaving the house at about 6:40 and drove to botley. Probably didn't take the best route but fortunately I wasn't the last so it didn't matter too much. :) I parked the car and went and chatted to people. There were lots of people I don't see that much of including Mo (with fiancee), Liz and Ralph, Jon (walgate), Sarah and Paul, Josh and Becky, Mark of course, Matt Nesbitt... I'm trying to do this from memory and my memopry sucks so bear with me... BEn and Laura (I should have remembered them since I was next to them on the minibus). After a while Natalie and her friend Vicky (IIRC) turned up and that was it. We were ready to go.
We all piled into the bus and headed up to the rollrights, Mark driving. Chats went on including the inevitable but brief Cam discussion since the place we were going to (the Rollright stones) is the heart of the main oxford Caern. I'd never been there before but it was a really cool place. Might have to go back there at some point. Maybe even organise some soft roleplay. There was discussion of booking the place for a game but since the DC is now in london I'm guessing she will be a bit busy to try to organise anything like that. :)
Anyway... on with the plot. We got there and for some reason everybody we talked to (official wise) seemed to think we were the morris dancing group. That is the *Fetish* morris dancing group. This amused us all quite a lot and to a certain extent worried us (as you can imagine).
Anyway after telling the people who tried to usher us in to the stones to get ready that we weren't in fact morris dancers we joiend the queue. We had been told that the friday night was gala performance night and that people should put on either Fantasy costume or evening wear. Our party all made the effort (20 odd total when you factor in those travelling separately) with mostly fantasy style clothing and a few (such as myself) doing the evening wear thing. I don't think anybody else really made the effort. A few people had pointy hats and that sort of thing but nobody else that I can recall was fully dressed up. We rule. :)
I was expecting the orris dancers before the play a bit but I vaguely gather they were late so they went straight into the play. I really enjoyed the play. I have read the book but not for a while and I think familiarity with the book was possibly necessary since I think it might have been a bit confusing otherwise. That having been said I had read the book so I loved it. :) The main three witches I liked a lot and King Verence did very well, appearing to be a very wet person. Him and Magrat talking was often amusing. :)
The fight scenes were a little odd as they often are in this sort of thing. I think that the elves running across the stage (it was a round stage that people sat all around since I forgot to mention that already) with little arrow on stick type things was meant to represent firing of arrows. Maybe. I only thought this afterwards though proving that it was a little confusing. :) None-the-less you got the impression of a fight going on which is hte main thing. :)
The half time break came as they gave the imps a rest and we were plunged into darkness. One of the rather comic front of stage people announced the pending darkness due to RSPCA regulations with respect to imps and was generally quite an amusing impromptu stand up comic in a way. :) The half time act was the Prince Albert morris dancers. I thoroughly enjoyed them though it was a rather unusual experience. They seemed a little disorganised as somebody else said but I don't think that particularly distracted from what they were doing. Given what they were doing I think it was *very* hard to be distracted from it. :)
The second half of the play came and went and there was much applause. The last scenes were a bit confusing also if you hadn't read the book. A lot of mental battles going on that it was not really clear were happening. That and the bees were strangely enough hard to do. A sound effect which I initially attributed to a mental blast from the elf queen turned out to be the buzzing of bees. I'm glad I have read the book sometimes. :)
Hometime happened not long after that. We packed up all our stuff and after some faffing we were on route home. Good natured joking as they tried to leave me behind... I hope they were joking about offering mark money to go without me... :) We got back to oxford quite late and I drove to bab van for dinner before heading home to sleep.
General verdict: Bloody good night. The play was good and the company was excellent too. I am in a happy glowy mood at the moment, a much better mood than I have been for quite some time.
Anyway, time to wander off now. I'm running a game later and I need to go do some final prep. Mainly getting together my books and things. I am slightly worried now as I always am since I have a cast of characters, none of whom are hugely fleshed out at the moment and none of whom (bar about three) actually have names. Still at least they have to finish character creation before I am expected to start (after alunch probably).
Got home and found the bits of my DJ, had a minor panic about cufflinks and bow tie, neither of which have been word for about a year probably. Luckily I found them (and this proves to people who think my room is too messy to find anything that I can in fact find things since both items were where I thought they were).
I ended up leaving the house at about 6:40 and drove to botley. Probably didn't take the best route but fortunately I wasn't the last so it didn't matter too much. :) I parked the car and went and chatted to people. There were lots of people I don't see that much of including Mo (with fiancee), Liz and Ralph, Jon (walgate), Sarah and Paul, Josh and Becky, Mark of course, Matt Nesbitt... I'm trying to do this from memory and my memopry sucks so bear with me... BEn and Laura (I should have remembered them since I was next to them on the minibus). After a while Natalie and her friend Vicky (IIRC) turned up and that was it. We were ready to go.
We all piled into the bus and headed up to the rollrights, Mark driving. Chats went on including the inevitable but brief Cam discussion since the place we were going to (the Rollright stones) is the heart of the main oxford Caern. I'd never been there before but it was a really cool place. Might have to go back there at some point. Maybe even organise some soft roleplay. There was discussion of booking the place for a game but since the DC is now in london I'm guessing she will be a bit busy to try to organise anything like that. :)
Anyway... on with the plot. We got there and for some reason everybody we talked to (official wise) seemed to think we were the morris dancing group. That is the *Fetish* morris dancing group. This amused us all quite a lot and to a certain extent worried us (as you can imagine).
Anyway after telling the people who tried to usher us in to the stones to get ready that we weren't in fact morris dancers we joiend the queue. We had been told that the friday night was gala performance night and that people should put on either Fantasy costume or evening wear. Our party all made the effort (20 odd total when you factor in those travelling separately) with mostly fantasy style clothing and a few (such as myself) doing the evening wear thing. I don't think anybody else really made the effort. A few people had pointy hats and that sort of thing but nobody else that I can recall was fully dressed up. We rule. :)
I was expecting the orris dancers before the play a bit but I vaguely gather they were late so they went straight into the play. I really enjoyed the play. I have read the book but not for a while and I think familiarity with the book was possibly necessary since I think it might have been a bit confusing otherwise. That having been said I had read the book so I loved it. :) The main three witches I liked a lot and King Verence did very well, appearing to be a very wet person. Him and Magrat talking was often amusing. :)
The fight scenes were a little odd as they often are in this sort of thing. I think that the elves running across the stage (it was a round stage that people sat all around since I forgot to mention that already) with little arrow on stick type things was meant to represent firing of arrows. Maybe. I only thought this afterwards though proving that it was a little confusing. :) None-the-less you got the impression of a fight going on which is hte main thing. :)
The half time break came as they gave the imps a rest and we were plunged into darkness. One of the rather comic front of stage people announced the pending darkness due to RSPCA regulations with respect to imps and was generally quite an amusing impromptu stand up comic in a way. :) The half time act was the Prince Albert morris dancers. I thoroughly enjoyed them though it was a rather unusual experience. They seemed a little disorganised as somebody else said but I don't think that particularly distracted from what they were doing. Given what they were doing I think it was *very* hard to be distracted from it. :)
The second half of the play came and went and there was much applause. The last scenes were a bit confusing also if you hadn't read the book. A lot of mental battles going on that it was not really clear were happening. That and the bees were strangely enough hard to do. A sound effect which I initially attributed to a mental blast from the elf queen turned out to be the buzzing of bees. I'm glad I have read the book sometimes. :)
Hometime happened not long after that. We packed up all our stuff and after some faffing we were on route home. Good natured joking as they tried to leave me behind... I hope they were joking about offering mark money to go without me... :) We got back to oxford quite late and I drove to bab van for dinner before heading home to sleep.
General verdict: Bloody good night. The play was good and the company was excellent too. I am in a happy glowy mood at the moment, a much better mood than I have been for quite some time.
Anyway, time to wander off now. I'm running a game later and I need to go do some final prep. Mainly getting together my books and things. I am slightly worried now as I always am since I have a cast of characters, none of whom are hugely fleshed out at the moment and none of whom (bar about three) actually have names. Still at least they have to finish character creation before I am expected to start (after alunch probably).