The world will always welcome lovers?


…or ‘Torchwood and the gay agenda’.

The first series of Torchwood came to an end this week in the British Isles, managing to bring many of its threads to a close while still hanging a huge ‘to be continued’ sign on the final scene.  I have greatly enjoyed this series, even during times when it seemed there was more hole than plot and the all-too-frequent occasions when the best character (quiet young Ianto) was relegated to the tiniest of supporting roles.  Good, quirky fun.  Less entertaining, often, is the rather unpleasant reaction it gets in various corners of the internet which object to the show’s ‘gay agenda’.  It has not shied away from showing sexuality in many manifestations and has thus probably made an enemy of the Daily Mail and similar British institutions.  And, it would seem, a large number of the internet’s denizens.

Watch out if you haven’t seen all of Torchwood.  Some spoilers will follow.

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2007
01/04
CATEGORY
Television
TAGS




15 comments

Whose High School Musical?


Over the festive season, the BBC decided to screen the phenomenon of 2006 – High School Musical, a Disney production that took the teenage world (or perhaps just the female portion of it) by storm.  I sat down to watch it, not entirely sure what to expect, and found it to mildly entertaining with one annoyingly catchy song and a couple of fairly clever set pieces set in the school canteen and gym.  I can see why teenage girls love it, and thus being neither a teen nor a female, it’s hardly surprising that I didn’t find it quite so thrilling.  I am pleased it exists, though.  It has a better moral message than that other teen favourite, Grease (the opposite message in fact – Grease says ‘conform to get the guy’, High School Musical says ‘be yourself’).  And the inevitable, very swift release of a stage version for amateur performance should hopefully encourage more youngsters to get involved in live theatre.  I dread to think how many productions of the show will spring up in America this year.  It’s also nice to see a musical do so well in the music charts, even getting a top 10 single in both the US and the UK with ‘Breaking Free’.

Having watched the film, and decided that I have no need to buy the soundtrack or the DVD, I was interested to discover that the success of High School Musical is causing a bit of a stir with regard to intellectual property.  A man named Paul Cozby has filed a lawsuit against the Disney Corporation (which is terribly brave of him), as he feels they stole his idea.  He wrote a stage show called High School Musical a few years ago, which received a number of productions in Texas, and he feels that as well as the title being identical, the film shows a striking resemblance to his own work.

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2007
01/02
CATEGORY
Musicals
Television
Theatre
TAGS




16 comments

The Singing Librarian’s 2006


Well, that’s it.  Just a few more hours of this year left to go, so it must be time to sum it all up, take a look back and prepare for 2007, whatever it may bring. This has been quite a year for the Singing Librarian, so I thought I’d share ten of the things that have made the last twelve months so interesting for me.

Changing the library.  During the year, the Library of Doom has gone through a number of changes in the way we work, meaning changes of responsibility, working hours and working relationships.  Some of it has been good, some of it bad, but it has been most interesting.  The changes will continue as we look towards a new building in 2009 with many further challenges to offer, not least moving several hundred thousand books to a new place.

Being Gerald in Me and My Girl.  2006 brought me my first principal role in a show since I left school in 1997, and it was a corker.  I achieved more with my performance than I believed I could.  I pushed myself in acting, singing, dancing and general stagecraft.  I made some friends.  I lost a lot of weight.  I showed everyone how to panic, and I covered up my extreme nerves every second I was up there on the stage.  I felt anxious, excited, nervous, elated and numb in no particular order.  And I finally managed to enjoy a performance just in time for it to come to an end.

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2006
12/31
CATEGORY
Meta - about this blog
Ramblings
TAGS


6 comments

Dancing penguins cause a stir


Just before Christmas, I trundled off to the cinema to see Happy Feet, drawn by the concept of tap-dancing penguins – what could possibly be better than penguins doing a bit of shuffle-hop-step?  Well, having one of them sing with the wonderful tones of Hugh Jackman certainly didn’t do any harm.  It wasn’t one of the best films I’ve ever seen, and it wasn’t the best I’ve seen this year, but it was certainly entertaining with amusing characters, catchy music and wonderful choreographed penguins.  Some aspects of the ending are rather credulity-stretching, which is quite a feat when suspension of disbelief has managed to cope with flightless birds singing and dancing their hearts out.  But overall a most pleasant viewing experience, and I’m quite tempted to buy the soundtrack.

However, the film seems to have caused a bit of a stir on the other side of the Atlantic, as I discovered when wandering around the internet looking for various views on the penguins.  The environmental theme of some of the movie has irritated certain columnists, and it has even been labelled as propaganda by some.  The most bile-filed reaction to it would seem to be the words of Michael Medved.  I hadn’t heard his name before, and will be sure that I don’t return to his little patch of cyberspace in a hurry.  His main bone of contention is that the film’s trailers do not indicate that there is any environmental message, which means that it is stealth indoctrination.  It is true, of course, that the trailers don’t go in to this aspect, but trailers always go for the flashiest aspects of a movie rather than any political or social content (unless that is itself a selling point), as that will ensure more bums on seats.  I suppose I can give him, and other detractors, that point, but the other objections to the film just make me cross.

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2006
12/30
CATEGORY
Christianity
Cinema
TAGS





6 comments

Now abiding


‘God with us’, that is, from the lyrics of ‘Angels From the Realms of Glory’, one of my favourite carols (with a tiny bit of poetic licence, since abiding is a much nicer word than residing).  This Christmas, I have been struck many times by the word Emmanuel, one of the names applied to Jesus, which means (or so I’m told, not speaking any of the languages that were spoken at the time of His life) ‘God with us’.  For me, this is the central mystery and magic of Christmas, generally a magical and wonderful time anyway.

Christmas seems to be a time when the important things get overwhelmed by the details and the window dressing, for Christian believers and secular celebrants alike.  Making sure we have the right number of sprouts, the right type of crackers and decorations that fit a colour scheme becomes more important than spending time with the people we love.  People send cards to people they don’t like because they feel they ought to, and buy presents at the last minute for Fred in the office who got them a gift, without putting any thought into it. 

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2006
12/28
CATEGORY
Christianity
Ramblings
TAGS





5 comments

Singing Librarian flashback: S Club Library


Last weekend’s charity concert of The Pirates of Penzance put me in mind of another charity singing event, and one that was much stranger than dressing up as a pirate and a policeman.  I was, however briefly, a pop star.  With screaming fans, signed photos, farewell performances and everything else that goes with great fame.

When I joined the merry staff of the Library of Doom, men were few and far between on the front line, and young men even more of a scarce commodity.  But after a while, a number of young men were recruited almost simultaneously and someone remarked that we now had enough to form a boy band.  The seeds of a very silly idea were sown.  As the annual fund-raising opportunity of  the BBC’s Children in Need appeal approached, I decided to attempt transforming this ridiculous idea into a reality.  Why not, for one performance only, form a library boy band to raise some cash for this very worthy cause?  Unfortunately, one of my colleagues chickened out after initially agreeing to take part, and we were left with a trio, including one chap who just can’t sing (much like many members of real boy bands, then).  The obvious solution was to invite a couple of carefully selected young lady library staff members and form S Club Library, a take-off of a group who were very popular at the time (November 2002).

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2006
12/22
CATEGORY
Library
Singing
Singing Librarian flashback
TAGS




7 comments

Weill, not vile


Last week, I had the joyous task of creating a subject bibliography, my first assignment for my distance-learning MSc in Library and Information Studies.  The bibliography could be on any subject we chose, but could only cover material from the last five years and had to be arranged with a particular audience in mind.  Of course, I absolutely had to do this on a musical theatre subject, but the options are rather limited in this regard, as the only musical theatre people who tend to receive more than cursory academic attention are Leonard Bernstein, Kurt Weill and Stephen Sondheim.  I chose to compile a bibliography on the American theatre works of Kurt Weill, most famous for his German piece Die Dreigroschenoper (The Threepenny Opera), source of ‘Mack the Knife’.  Why the American works?  Well, I don’t speak German, so I’ve always found it harder to connect with the works in that language.  Must try harder, I suppose.

This exercise was simultaneously fascinating and boring.  Searching for information can be interesting, and the hunt becomes a sort of game, but it can also be very frustrating to spend an age wrestling with a particularly high-profile data source only to find absolutely nothing of value.  I also discovered things about Kurt Weill that I never knew before, largely through use of the Kurt Weill Foundation‘s website, but also through reading extracts from some of the books and articles which I discovered.  I hadn’t known, for instance, that he provided music for a number of political pageants while in America, generally connected to his Jewish roots.  And I had forgotten that he’d been working on a musical version of Huckleberry Finn when he died, a concept that truly makes the mind boggle.

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2006
12/20
CATEGORY
Library
Musicals
TAGS



6 comments

Vocal cords as bus stops


Well, you go for months without singing in public, then three very different sings arrive at once, within 24 hours of each other.  Like busses, only on a more extreme scale.  Or bad things, though I can’t honestly say I’ve ever noticed them coming in threes.

I’m certainly rehearsing a lot at the moment.  Kiss Me, Kate went a bit strange for a while, but is back on.  I’m playing the role of Ralph the stage manager, a small and fun role which also means that I get to double as a chorus member and generally keep busy for most of the evening.  But that performance isn’t until March.  This coming weekend, my vocal cords are going to be in almost constant use.

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2006
12/14
CATEGORY
Christianity
Singing
TAGS



5 comments

Protected: Good librarian, bad librarian


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2006
12/05
CATEGORY
Education
Library
TAGS




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Can someone strike the stage left flat?


Every profession and hobby has its own language, the words that make sense to those in the know, but sound like gibberish to everyone else.  Social groupings have them as well, of course, but these seem to serve a different purpose.  Professional jargon is what I’m talking about here, and specifically the jargon of the theatre.  Every production I’ve done as an adult has been in a professional theatre of some size or other, so I’m becoming a fairly fluent speaker, and every production has involved at least one first-time performer who had to get up to speed on theatre talk very quickly.

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2006
12/03
CATEGORY
Language
Theatre
TAGS



9 comments