deralte | Dr. Faust and Liverpool

First things, first -

I met Jamie Bamber!

*big happy grin* Details and pic beyond cut:D

lucyjin and I left rather early from Edinburgh and took about four hours to get down to Liverpool, with gorgeous weather and scenery the whole way, though there was a surprisingly amount of snow in the beginning. We got settled in our hotel, then headed into the city.

Liverpool wasn't very... impressive. I'm sort of scared by how many rememberance flowers there were everywhere. Some places had lovely architecture, but were in such bad parts of town you could never see anyone living there to maintain them. We found the local geek shop (ie comics, manga etc.) and entertained ourselves with their very impressive selection, then headed to the Liverpool museum, which was rather pathetic, but entertained us for an hour. Then we got lost trying to find the Playhouse, but eventually found it and picked up our tickets, and asked about meeting the actors afterwards. We were told they often went to the bar afterwards, which we confirmed later. (Cue lots of wibbling about actually meeting Jamie Bamber...) Dinner was some traditional food at a nearby pub, then it was time for the play.

The play: (I'm assuming a general knowledge of the play.) Dr. Faust was a lot of fun. The set design was really well done, which was good since the majority of the play was set in that one set (a floor to cieling, old style library). The atmosphere was nicely set up with sound and lighting and staging. The sound in particular was good with clocks ticking at awkward times. There was a lot of subtle humour, most of it rather morbid, which had me snickering for a lot of the show. I hadn't realized Faust had shoulder angels *g* I really liked that the chorus in the beginning was done as if only Faust could hear it, and then was dropped for the rest of the play.

The introduction of Mephistopheles was very well done. He just nonchalantly appeared on stage (after the first summoning... and is certainly not dressed as a friar...), and Faust was obviously fascinated. Jamie was wearing a very nice blue suit, red trainers and a tight white shirt with jewelry and jeans (not to mention eyeliner). Very nice, very distracting and it was even worse when he took the coat off... When it comes to it, the play is rather slashy and having Jamie as Mephistopheles really didn't help. Every time he's on stage, Mephistopheles was posing provacatively from drapping himself on tables, to standing with arms and legs out stretched on the edge of the stage. And, oh boy, was he having fun. Faust did a very good job with his role, but it was very difficult to pull your eyes off of Mephistopheles whenever he was on the stage. I might be slightly biased about this though *g*

The parade of the seven deadly sins was perfectly done, and how amusing was it that Lucifer had a Glaswegian accent? Many of the comedy scenes in the original play were cut out of what we saw, but it didn't really suffer without them. I would have liked a longer Pope scene personally, but that's just cause I like historical jokes. It was quite fun as is. Benvolio's small part (cut down from a much larger part) was excellently done, especially the removal of the horns. I liked the way the ending was done. Very good imagery, and the cast did an excellent job with all the characters considering there were only six players.

Bamber's portrayal of Mephistopheles strongly makes me want to see him play Crowley now...

Afterwards, waiting in the bar had its rewards, and I think Jamie realized what we were doing since he came right up to us (considering we heard him mention later how two girls had come all the way from Japan to see the play the day before, I suspect this is true...). He was very friendly, though he seemed rather disbelieving we'd come down from Edinburgh to see him. We chatted as he signed our playbills, and I took a picture with him.

I mentioned Battlestar Galactica and he said he'd be going to film again soon, and that he'd only heard it was being renewed ten days ago. He said he took the role of Mephistophenes because he liked what had been done with the script, and that it was the acting itself that drew him to it.

There were others waiting so we headed off, and managed to remain quite composed until we were out of the theatre. We then proceeded to spend the rest of the night in the happy dazed state of having had a very very wonderful day.

The drive home was uneventful. We had a lovely lunch in Moffat and took some very nice pics of the scenery.

I'm still grinning.

Current Mood: ecstatic
Current Music: Azumanga Diaoh - Raspberry Heaven