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Dec. 21st, 2009 06:32 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shadowkatCan't quite decide what is more headach inducing - shopping or setting up my parents new DTV. Probably the later. DTV's just aren't made with the over-60 set in mind and lets leave it at that.
Saw My Fair Lady last night - quite a lovely production at the local Repertory Theater. Was rather impressed by it. Particularly by the actor portraying Professor Henry Higgins - who managed to make me forget Rex Harrison completely - a mean feat that.
Forgotten what a deft social satirist Shaw, and to a degree Lerner and Lowe who adapted Shaw's play into a musical - truly were. There are a few songs that skewer the English caste system or rather the English attitude towards it. Specifically: Why Can't The English Teach Their Children To Speak, Wouldn't It Be Loverly, and A Little Bit of Luck. As Higgins states to Eliza at the end - the trick is to treat everyone the same regardless of their station, race, creed what have you. For Higgins that is to treat everyone as if they are idiots are several rows beneath him, for Pickering that is to treat everyone as if they are his equal.
In some respects, Lerner and Lowe were more romantically inclined than Shaw, and a bit less heavy handed. Terry Prachett tries his hand at satire, but I'm not sure he pulls it off quite as astutely as George Bernard Shaw, Jonathan Swift,
et al. But then, my difficulty with Prachett is the constant, non-stop, overly invasive punnery - complete with footnotes explaining the puns, just in case you were dense and did not spot them. Bernard Shaw while preachy seemed to be a bit more subtle. Course it's been a while since I've read Shaw...or Prachett for that matter..and my memory being what it is...[ETA: Having just watched the 1930's Gabriel Pascale, film Pygmallion starring Leslie Howard and Wendy Hiller, and written by George Bernard Shaw, based on Shaw's own play of the same name, I can state that the musical's dialogue is word for word the same as the play. The endings are the same. The only differences are time period (early 1900s vs. 1930s), actors, musical numbers and a few minor changes ...that's it. In some respects, the musical is funnier, and far more entertaining, but that may just be because by the time I watched the film again - I knew the dialogue by heart.]
Weather is mild, clear, and lovely down here. No complaints. Rather dreading going back to the icy snow-bound north...apparently Long Island had white out conditions last week? Lovely.
Saw My Fair Lady last night - quite a lovely production at the local Repertory Theater. Was rather impressed by it. Particularly by the actor portraying Professor Henry Higgins - who managed to make me forget Rex Harrison completely - a mean feat that.
Forgotten what a deft social satirist Shaw, and to a degree Lerner and Lowe who adapted Shaw's play into a musical - truly were. There are a few songs that skewer the English caste system or rather the English attitude towards it. Specifically: Why Can't The English Teach Their Children To Speak, Wouldn't It Be Loverly, and A Little Bit of Luck. As Higgins states to Eliza at the end - the trick is to treat everyone the same regardless of their station, race, creed what have you. For Higgins that is to treat everyone as if they are idiots are several rows beneath him, for Pickering that is to treat everyone as if they are his equal.
In some respects, Lerner and Lowe were more romantically inclined than Shaw, and a bit less heavy handed. Terry Prachett tries his hand at satire, but I'm not sure he pulls it off quite as astutely as George Bernard Shaw, Jonathan Swift,
et al. But then, my difficulty with Prachett is the constant, non-stop, overly invasive punnery - complete with footnotes explaining the puns, just in case you were dense and did not spot them. Bernard Shaw while preachy seemed to be a bit more subtle. Course it's been a while since I've read Shaw...or Prachett for that matter..and my memory being what it is...[ETA: Having just watched the 1930's Gabriel Pascale, film Pygmallion starring Leslie Howard and Wendy Hiller, and written by George Bernard Shaw, based on Shaw's own play of the same name, I can state that the musical's dialogue is word for word the same as the play. The endings are the same. The only differences are time period (early 1900s vs. 1930s), actors, musical numbers and a few minor changes ...that's it. In some respects, the musical is funnier, and far more entertaining, but that may just be because by the time I watched the film again - I knew the dialogue by heart.]
Weather is mild, clear, and lovely down here. No complaints. Rather dreading going back to the icy snow-bound north...apparently Long Island had white out conditions last week? Lovely.
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Date: 2009-12-21 11:35 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-12-22 04:05 pm (UTC)I agree with your opinions - was always amazed how people could not see the satire in My Fair Lady. Just looked at it as a romantic costume drama.
Me too. But then thinking about it...I recalled a story my aunt told me a few months back - how people think differently. Some people just can't see the metaphors behind words or visualize words. They can't see context or subtext - that's lost on them. But they can explain in detail how a car is put together or the batting average of all the baseball players last year.
It boggles my mind how differently people think. That it is possible for two people to watch the same tv show or play and see completely different things.