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Finding myself at a loose end in the West End I naturally went to the theatre. I ran into the Noël Coward 30 seconds before curtain up and had a ticket for Deathtrap thrust into my hand. Free theatre. Hurrah!

It's a very good play, very gay and meta-theatrical. Well worth seeing. And Johnathan Groff is very pretty.

I've just been asked to be a soloist for a concert at St Martin in the Fields (This concert in fact)

It's on Tuesday.

I've never sung the piece before.

There is only one rehearsal to go.

I'm flattered, exited and scared, all at the same time.

If anyone is free this Saturday night, and can drag themselves away from the Eurovision Song Contest, then I will be singing a cabaret set at South Hall Park in sunny Bracknell. I'm doing a short 40 minute-ish set of some of my favourite songs as a support act for some rather starry West-end stars. So please come and see me sing, with some professional talent thrown in for free.

It's probably the biggest solo concert I've done so lots of friendly faces would be very welcome!

More details at the South Hill Park website.

Ah using my LJ for blatant advertising again, and with amazingly short notice, but I've either ill or snowed under with rehearsals or concerts, or all three at once...

THE MIKADO at the Kenton Theatre in leafy Henley (http://www.kentontheatre.co.uk) starts tonight (help!) at 7.45 and runs until Saturday.

I am starring as the outrageously haughty Pooh-Bah and have great fun hamming up all my lines.

Tickets available on the door (still available for all nights) or enquire here: http://www.wlos.co.uk/shop

Now I meant to update after Masquerade, really I did, but life and excessive busyness got in the way. For I am acting again, and not just Shakespeare:

For verily in the dim distant past of 2005 there were auditions for a play, and that play featured a mathematician, yea even a Cambridge mathematician, yea even a gay Cambridge mathematician, and the director in his wisdom decided who better to play such a part than, well, a gay Cambridge mathematician, namely, me.

And so it came to pass that I was cast as Alan Turing in the play Breaking the Code about the life mathematical, sexual and tragical of that mathematician featuring his breaking of the German Enigma code, his invention of the computer, and his relationships with unsuitable young men. Indeed, the ideal part.

There followed much rehearsing and line learning and such, and all of a sudden I realise the the play opens a week tomorrow, and the nerves begin to set in. This is by far my largest part ever. I hardly leave the stage during the play, and have roughly half of the lines, including some megalithic speeches. This has made rehearsing it exhausting, exhilarating, but at times frustrating, but soon it will be on, and soon it will be over.

So if you happen to be free over the next two weeks come and see it. It runs Thursday 9th - Saturday 18th at the Progress Theatre here in sunny Reading. All details at their website.

Evil, evil British Rail!

There are, as always, engineering works on all the lines south of Edinburgh next Sunday, which means a nightmarish journey home, or taking another day of work to come back on Monday. Am very annoyed.

My PhD viva has crept up on me all of a sudden, and somehow it seems it is actually this Monday. This means I need to reread my thesis. However I have a concert of Elijah taking up all day Saturday and Refreshment Sunday and play rehearsal taking up much of Sunday. So I'm not sure when the thesis will get read. This is not good.

On a lighter note: I will be in Cambridge on Monday and intend to go out for dinner to celebrate me becoming a doctor, or commiserate my failure, as appropriate. I was thinking Sala Thong at 7.30 or so. (Does anyone have their number?).
It would be good to see all you Cambridge people (and anyone else who might be around!).

Must get on with some work... no really.

Well, first I should apologise for not having updated for six months.

Personally I blame my thesis, but that is probably just an excuse. Having been writing up for most of the last six months, I've never really felt like starting to write something else when I get home.

But that time is, thankfully, almost over. I'm left with little more than some minor revisions and some tidying up to do before I submit. Helpfully, my supervisor is now away for two weeks, so it looks like I'll have literally nothing to do next week.

So what to do? I' m bemused. I can't really do anything dramatic in case I suddenly find something urgent that needs doing, but I don't want to sit round twiddling my thumbs either. I need inspiration, but I'm feeling deeply uninspired. Any suggestions?

Not only do I have a week off, but I wont have much to do between submitting and hopefully leaving Cambridge, not that it is easy to see beyond the horizon of a submission date at the moment, so I need to fill my time.

I could work on my new, and fledging , website. (Be warned: it's very fledgling, and so almost empty!). Or do something creative, write something? Something artistic? I'm not sure. But I'll have to decide or else I will die of boredom.

evil_nick's recent post reminded me that:

I am performing in Yeomen of the Guard at the Cambridge Arts Theatre all next week from Tuesday at 7.45. I'm playing Wilfred the lovesick torturer (really!).

It's looking really good, even if I do say so myself, and the orchestra were very good at the sitzprobe this morning.

Come and see it: please!

Thank you to

fluffymark for organising his party on Saturday. Sorry I could't make all of the Peter Pan readthrough, but what I heard was fantastic (particularly

the_alchemist's costume!

Since I guess I had to do it sometime - the Shakespeare meme:

List your top five Shakespeare plays, no particular order, and then your all-time hated one. You may *not* add a couple of sentences on why. Keep it as an ambiguous list.

Love:
King Lear
Hamlet
Much Ado About Nothing
Twelfth Night
Henry V

Honorable mention: The Tempest

Hate:
Well none of them really but I suppose
Coriolanus
Comedy of Errors

Play I used to dislike, but now like: Love's Labour's Lost
Most overrated play: Macbeth (it just isn't in the Lear/Hamlet league)
Most underrated play: Measure, for Measure (comma very intentional)
Play I'd probably love if I knew it better: Richard III
I know it's terrible, but I love it to bits anyway: Taming of the Shrew

Well I have but 5 hours left of being 24. By the time I wake up (bright and early to go to London) tomorrow I will have lived for (just) over a quarter of a century.

This seems very strange, but perhaps not as strange as it should. I feel like I should perform some great unburdening exercise of the "What have I done? And where am I going?" type, but right now I can't be bothered.

Might try to get to the El Greco exhibition in the morning; looking forward to seeing many of you chez

fluffymark tomorrow!

I've visited the counties in yellow.
Which counties have you visited?

made by marnanel
map reproduced from Ordnance Survey map data
by permission of the Ordnance Survey.
© Crown copyright 2001.

Well that's nicely yellow. I always thought I had some kind of aversion to the Midlands, and now I know that it's true. Is this the oddest counties map ever? It is happy to split Herefordshire from Worcestershire, but not Cumberland from Westmoreland (grr), and leaves a single, vast Yorkshire, but splits Sussex in two. And what happened to Peeblesshire, Berwickshire, Nairnshire, Caithness et. al. ?

Well, I'm stuck here in my office wondering if the snow we've had is going to prevent us all getting to our departmental Burn's supper tonight.
While I wait, and to avoid working, I thought I'd do this meme, here goes:

1. Which dead British monarch would you like to make out with?
James VI - the randy bisexual
2. What is the meaning of life?
Does it have one? Does it need one? We should do whatever we chose to do.
3. Which Asian alphabet is your favorite?
Punjabi
4. Which fictional character are you most like?
I'd like to be Scudder but i'm probably more Maurice!
6. Why is fake booze so much better than real booze?
It isn't. (and what is fake booze anyway? Synthetic alcohol?)
7. If you could live anywhere in the world, where would you live?
Edinburgh or Florence
8. What is your favorite book?
Great Expectations or Howards End (I'm being indecisive)
9. In musical terms, what does happiness sound like?
Copland's Appalachian Spring
10. Describe the ideal man.
Witty, charming, handsome, Celtic
11. What is your favorite foreign movie?
Hmm. Eat Drink Man Woman, Y Tu Mama Tambien or Todo Sobre mi Madre
12. And your favorite foreign movie director?
Ang Lee or Pedro Almodovar
13. Who is Shakespeare's best heroine?
Best in what sense? Perhaps Beatrice or Rosaline (in LLL)
14. What do you want to do with your life?
Live it, enjoy it
15. Who is your poet?
Shelley, I keep him locked up in a cupboard, you know.
16. Why aren't you a vegetarian?
because i like meat and have no moral qualms about eating dead animals.
17. Which is your favorite European capital?
Edinburgh or Den Haag (I count them both as capitals)
18. Which Chinese dish best describes your personality?
Rijsttafel - a bit of everything (OK so technically it's Dutch-indonesian)
19. Which historical figure were you in a past life?
No idea right now
20. What are your preferred ancient texts?
Mark's gospel and the song of songs
22. Which is your favorite ancient civilization?
Macedonian or Etruscan
23. What is love?
This needs more thought than a one line answer.
24. What is your favorite song to sing?
Nice work if you can get it
25. What is your preferred cuisine?
Indonesian
26. What is your favorite French novel?
Haven't read many; maybe Bonjour Tristesse
27. What role in a Shakespearean play would you like to perform?
King Lear of course!
28. What painting would you put up in your living room?
Something by Stanley Spenser or Miro
29. If you could drown in any body of water on the planet, which would you choose?
Wastwater in the Lakes
30. What is the most aesthetically pleasing geographical name on the planet?
Nether Wasdale (down the valley from above) or Achiltibuie.
31. Which fair animal is best?
Animals in circuses? Tut Tut!
32. Which African country is coolest?
No idea, South Africa logically speaking
33. Japan or China?
Japan
34. Which is your favorite non-Christian religion?
Can you have a favourite religion? Taoism
35. Which of Henry VIII's six wives do you like best?
Catherine Parr is the most intersting and most underrated
36. What is your favorite bad movie?
She's all that is terrible but I love it
37. What is your preferred literary movement?
Bloomsbury
38. Who is your favorite artist?
From various periods: El Greco, Van Dyck, Picasso
39. Who is your favorite composer?
John Adams
40. Which is your favorite European revolution?
Strange question. How about the "Glorious".
41. Cleopatra, Hatshepsut, or Queen Elizabeth I?
Nefertiti!
42. Which fictional character would you like to marry?
Scudder again, or Antonio from 12th night
43. What is your favorite brand of soap?
Who cares?
44. Who is your favorite British actor or actress?
No contest - Serena
45. Pick one: Spain, France, Italy, or Greece?
Italy
46. Which is your favorite desert?
well the Scottish highlands are fairly deserted...
47. Tea: herbal, green, or black?
green Japanese
48. What is your favorite poem?
Love song of J Alfred Prufrock or Whitsun Weddings
49. Where would you rather have lived: Babylon or Nineveh?
Babylon
50. Which is the best Scandinavian country?
Denmark, but Iceland sounds very trendy.

leonato was
A Graceful Actor
in a past life.

Discover your past lives @ Quiz Me

I'd rather hoped I was one in THIS life :-)

The Doll's House starts tonight at Queens'.

We had a seemingly never-ending dress run yesterday,but it went well, so if we all remember our lines (the play is nearly 3 hours long with intervals, so there's a lot of them) it should be pretty good.
As term drags to a close I am typically busy what with this, carol services, presentations and LLL rehearsals next week, I'll have to spend my time backstage this week learning my lines, which could get confusing.

Looking forward to getting some sleep, sometime, hopefully before Christmas.

Probably entirley inaccurate, but yay!

Elizabeth Bennet

You are Eliza Bennett from Pride and
Prejudice! Yay, you! Perhaps the
brightest and best character in all of English
literature, you are intelligent, lively,
lovely-- in short, you are the best of company.
Your only foibles are that you stick with your
first impressions... and your family is quite
intolerable.

Which Jane Austen Character Are You?
brought to you by Quizilla

Oh its been a very busy week. Julia C went down very well and I got my first ever honourable mention in a review! Strange that it should be for what was my smalest role in a long time. On the whole I enjoyed it far more than I was expecting to, perhaps because the cast and director was so good ( I'm starting to go all luvvie). its rather a shame that, since I did barely a week's worth of rehearsal, and couldn't attend the tech run, that I never really got to know the cast very well, I'll just have to wait til the reunion. Scarily enough we had the cast party in my old room in Old Court (which some of you may remember), so I had a troubling deja vu experience, particularly as college haven't changed the furniture in four years..

Have sung in three services over the weekend, which was probably too much, finishing with the Requiem Mass for All Souls at LSM yesterday, the peace of which was disturbed by the never ending fireworks.

Not content with one play I have now started rehearsing for Love's Labour's Lost, with one of those strange "movement" rehearsals which some directors are so fond of. We did however manage one interesting exercise which involved everyone trying to move at the same time, which is difficult to describe and harder to do, but strangely satisfying.

I'm not sure that any of this has made much sense, must go and sleep..

Well Julia C got off to a good start last night. I sit in the audience for the whole show so I got a good impression of things generally going well, no first night hitches thankfully. Plenty of laughs too, particularly when I explained I was from the "University of the Central Midlands", we're such intellectual snobs at Cambridge aren't we?

Oooh we're so good!!!

As always when I do plays I can't work up any enthusiasm to do any work today, and have spent the day staring blankly at the computer screen. Have 3 hours of supervising to do tomorrow with my all-new students so I must get home and mark their work, if they've handed any in, half the time the mathmos just don't bother, which is frustrating. I'm sure I wasn't that bad as an undergrad, but perhaps that explains why I'm still here.

Am still nowhere near learning my lines for Loves Labours Lost, let alone Doll's House, oh well..

Oh help me, I'm doing far too much drama this term.
I'm now in three plays (three! Why?) having added Boyet in Love's Labour's Lost to my list.

When I first agreed to do this I was expecting a short rehearsal period at the end of term after Doll's House, but no! We are apparently doing a radio version in 3 weeks, so now I have to learn the script, and that for Doll's House both while performing in Julia C.
I'm already developing a horrible thespian schizophrenia, God only knows what I'll be like in a few weeks time.

I really, really shouldn't be doing this much, but its my last year of student drama so I keep thinking, what the hell, I may as well go mad, but deep down I know this is probably a bad idea.

Time to go and learn more lines...

PS A big WELL DONE to

randomchris,

medieval_bunny, Adrain, Tina, Nick and the rest in Twelfth Night on Saturday.

Current Mood: busy

I've just been offered the part of Doctor Rank in The Doll's House, which from what little I know of Ibsen sounds like a very good part, so I'm a happy boy.

Itr makes up for my unusually high rejection rate this term (5 from 11 so far). Some seem to have gone missing without trace (Loves Labours Lost? Troilus? Guys and Dolls?) Ho hum. But with two parts so far I shouldn't complain.

Current Mood: bouncy

Well, like

the_alchemist I've been whoreing my way round the termly auditions circuit. Some good auditions, some merely indifferent - I never really got into the Under Milk Wood piece. But hopefully some parts will come up, I got an "almost certainly" from The Doll's House this morning, and I've been offered a part in Julia C - a strange mix of Julius Caesar and Big Brother apparently.

Oddly all my best auditions, and probable parts were for directors I already knew, Cambridge drama really is cliquey, but at least it looks like I'll be busy this term.

..And very busy all year judging by my PhD review on Friday. At least I was told I will have a phd by next autumn, which is a relief, but it's going to be a long hard slog writing all the papers and chapters for my thesis. Well, everyone enjoyed my talk which is no bad thing.

Back to Pembroke choir this evening - Ayleward responses and Howells Jubilate, I feel a strange sense of musical deja vu.

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