REDCLIFFE
Musical Theatre rendered the Gilbert & Sullivan musical ThePirates
of Penzance as if it were carried on an invigorating ocean breeze.
The
large cast of many ages was obviously having fun and it was contagious for the audience.
Pirates,
along with The Mikado and H.M.S. Pinafore, is the most popular of
the 14 collaborations of Gilbert and Sullivan.
Although
the play is often called a comic opera, it is far more accessible to a general
audience than continental opera which Gilbert and Sullivan sent up.
Gilbert
and Sullivan were English and their Shakespearean heritage shines through
plentiful plays on words, accompanied by musical spoofs.
Directing
duo Madeleine Johns and Gordon Ball work seamlessly with choreographer Meredith
Johns and musical director Sheree Drummond to create a delightful musical
comedy.
Each
act was rendered virtually without set changes with actors hiding behind parts
of the set and, to much amusement, plant foliage.
Female
lead Annika Hinricks as Mabel was in fine voice and readily accepted the
challenge of the occasional musical trick in the play.
Her
love interest Frederic was played by Jonathon Sweeper whose clear vocals and
expressive visage carried the part well.
Thomas
Armstong-Robley stole the show with his Deppesque movements as the sometimes ruthless,
sometimes befuddled Pirate King.
Barry
Haworth brought out the full humour embedded in his character Major General, of
the much parodied song which is a highlight of the play.
Johnathan
Johnson as the Sergeant of Police led his officers around the stage with
beguiling walks and puppet-like head popping.
Young costume
designer/ producer Kara Fisher has done a fabulous job with the clobber. It all
looked wonderful with colourful pirates, pristine maidens and quintessential
bobbies. Fisher aims to design for stage and screen and this play is a big early tick in her portfolio.
Sullivan once described
his music for Pirates as 'tunier' than that of H.M.S. Pinafore.
Tuny is a good a word
as any for a score that ranges from the sprightly to the boisterous.
The RMT orchestra, assuredly
conducted by Sheree Drummond, who seemed to be enjoying the exercise
immensely, was always buoyant but never over-bearing.
The
Redcliffe Musical Theatre version of the Pirates
of Penzance is based on the award-winning New York Public Theater adaptation.
All
in all, The Pirates of Penzance is a joyous musical.
THE Bolt v
Lewis drug brouhaha was a classic media beat-up. It raced across international television
screens and newspaper front pages with a speed worthy of the central characters.
Carl Lewis points the finger
only to have it bitten off
There
was little to the yarn and it was hardly news but, by the time the egg-beater
had a mish-mash, it came out thicker and messier than chocolate pudding.
A
London Sun journo had the most measured report on the story and it is not often
you can say that.
Steven Howard wrote in The Sun
‘Usain Bolt talked about Muhammad Ali, Michael Jordan and
Bob Marley. And those Swedish handball players.
And sex. And drugs. And rock ’n roll.
And how Manchester United should sign
Robin van Persie.
And how he thought that the 2016
Olympic Games in Rio would be Mission Impossible.
He even talked about cricket and the
IPL.
And he put the boot in on Carl Lewis,
which he probably shouldn’t have done.’
Yes,
Bolt could have left out the bit about the Swedish handball players and should
have swallowed the lines about Carl Lewis when they popped up his throat.
The wordy Bolt had come to speak on many things. He felt
provoked by Carl Lewis’s assertion that Bolt’s incredible feats might be drug
induced.
Wiki
says Lewis made his remarks during the London Games. Someone bettere tell them
it’s dead wrong. I tried correcting a Wiki article once but getting accreditation
to do so baffled me.
Other
reports had Lewis makibg the veiled accusations ‘pre-game’. That was more
accurate, as I guess 2008, or 45BC, for that matter, is pre-game. Bolt
had obviously been stewing over the insults for four years and fired back.
Carl
Lewis made his assertions in a Sports Illustrated article after Bolt’s 100m and 200m
victories at the 2008 Beijing Olympics.
‘Countries like Jamaica do not have a random program, so they
can go months without being tested. I'm not saying anyone is on anything, but
everyone needs to be on a level playing field.
…he's not going to have me saying he's great and then two
years later he gets popped.’
It
was all a misunderstanding. Lewis did not say Bolt was on drugs. It was just
that Bolt and upwards of 10 million readers thought Lewis was saying just that.
Bolt silently did his years of stewing. At London 2012, with back-to-back golds in the 100m and
200m and totally unpopped, he hit back.
Four years down the athletics track, should
have left Lewis alone. It was unfair of Bolt to bring it up as if it
were yesterday Lewis said it. Some articles
mentioned Lewis had tested positive three
times before the 1988 Olympics. No article that I read added Lewis was exonerated on
the grounds the drugs, pseudoephedrine,ephedrine, andphenylpropanolamine were in
prescription medication.
Whatever you think of that decision, no drug suspensions are against Lewis’s
name.
@CharlesRobinson Nobody under 30 knows who Carl Lewis is. They know who Usain Bolt
is.
Actually, Lewis’s Sports Illistrated interview finished with a
musical analogy which he should have been spruiking earlier insyead od f drugs
in reference to Bolt.
Lewis said:
‘We get
caught up in comparing all the time. I have this discussion with young people.
They'll tell me Beyonceis better than so-and-so. Why can't we just say
that Beyonce is amazing and so-and-so is amazing? I mean Ella
Fitzgeraldis amazing. Sarah Vaughanis amazing. Whitney
Houstonis amazing. Why do you have to say that Beyonce is better?
Let's just be happy that we had a chance to celebrate all of them.’
Well said Carl. Why could you have stuck to such a line, throughout? When Black
women and men become role models, it is unseemly to see them fighting among
themselves. Also you have mentioned Billie Holiday .
For his part, Bolt was at his best in
victory interviews when he talked about Bob Marley.
‘And who was the greatest Jamaican — him or Bob Marley?
Bolt said: “When it comes to Bob
Marley, he is one of the greatest ever out of Jamaica.
“He really did wonderful things for the
country before me.
“So I’m just carrying out his duty.
“We’re the same, we have the same goal to make Jamaica one of the most loved and finest countries in the world.’
OLYMPIC
coverage by the U.K. newspaper the Daily Mail is ranging from traditional
adolescent-male nonsense to the downright weird. Extremely talented GB cyclist
Victoria Pendleton is physically attractive and this
has not passed across the Mail eagle eyes without notice.
The Mail loves pedalling Vicky
Condoms in the athlete’s village were gold for newspapers throughout the
world but the Mail brought to the yarn its personal touch – horny adolescent
male meets Monty Python.
The
story should have been a few pars in length: 150, 000 complimentary condoms are
available to 10,000 athletes. But of course, the Mail banged on and on, mainly in pics but with a few choice words, with the
stamina born of erecting thousands of innuendoes to their mastheads.
'
The oh, oh, Ohhh-lympics! As record 150,000 condoms are handed out to a
host of super-attractive athletes, could London 2012 be the raunchiest games
ever?
·Athletes will receive 15 condoms
each for the 17-day festival
·Victoria Pendleton among the
glamorous female stars offered condoms
The phenomenal outpouring of
prophylactics means there will be 50 per cent more available to athletes in
London than the 100,000 handed out at the last Olympics in Beijing in 2008.
'
The Mail loves to re-work information
already supplied as simple equations such as 150,000 is 50 per cent more than
100,000. It certainly pads out the story and maybe, for some readers, adds
gravitas.
On the internet edition of the paper
we next have two sexy pictures of Ms Pendleton and four pictures of coloured
condoms.
Then more basic maths which readers apparently cannot get enough of:
'It works out at nearly
15 each for the 10,500 competitors taking part in the Games, with Durex ready
to deliver more if the sports stars exhaust their ration.
'
A bit of an interview
with an athlete describing randiness in the village.
Then another sexy image of
Victoria Pendleton, this time in
evening wear beside with a cycle. The caption reads: Racy: Sprint cyclist
Victoria Pendleton is one of the most glamorous of the British athletes. She
has even posed nude in the past.
Now a photo of cyclist Jess
Varnish beside pic #4 of Pendleton. This time the caption is: Bicycle babes:
Cyclist Jess Varnish said she would pose naked if she was as glamorous as her
gold medal champion colleague Victoria Pendleton, right.
A barrage of photos from various sports including what look
like two young-teenage synchronised swimmers and a playful photo of two young
women which the Mail tagged: Intimate: Jenna
Randall, 22, right, tweeted a photo of herself sitting by the pool, with her
legs wrapped around teammate Katie Skelton, left.
The readers have not seen any numbers
for a while so the next photo is captioned: Splashing:
Team GB divers Tonia Couch, left, and Tom Daley, right, are dating. Perhaps
they will make use of the 30 condoms they'll have between them.
Four buff lads attract the caption: Macho:
Australian male swimmers Eamon Sullivan, James Roberts, James Magnussen and
Matt Targett on Manley beach in Sydney.
How ironic the macho men from the Mail
spelt Manly Beach wrongly.
Four Swedish athletes would be the
appropriate way to finish this fantastic report and the Mail does not disappoint.
Caption: A recipe for romance: The Swedish
women's swimming team will be staying in the same block as Team GB footballers.
Let's hope they all behave themselves.
That was good light-hearted entertainment if you ignore
the sinister overtones.
But
let’s move on…to Victoria Pendleton.
'
Victoria Pendleton rode tearfully into
the sunset last night with her dream of a golden goodbye indelibly tainted by a
final clash with her biggest rival.
'
From the first par, the reader can sense a
poetic effort rising from the Mail
'She failed to trounce her Australian arch enemy Anna
Meares – a win that would finally have laid to rest the controversy,
competition and cat-fighting between them.
'
Ah, cat-fighting the last of the three Cs.
'she was beaten to gold in the next race by a powerhouse performance
from the 28-year-old Australian.
Whatever the result, the crowd still adored Vicky, Vicky, Vicky!
'
And so to the big finish
'This was Last Night of the Velodrome, a Land of Hope and Glory for the
people and one last hurrah for Queen Victoria.
' An Australian ran first against Vicky, Vicky, Vicky but Britain did dominate the cycling. The Velodrome had morphed into a Jewel in the Crown of Empire. Well I’ll be a Dutchman.
The Mail totally lost it in the euphoria of
counting almost 40 GB medals before the Games were half over.
I have the feeling this report must go down in
the history books of journalism. I am just not sure why.
Here
is an edited version because the whole is too much.
'Kings (and queens) of the sitting-down sports:
Two thirds of first 37
medals came from 'sitting down sports
With gold medal contenders including Victoria
Pendleton and Chris Hoy still to make individual quests for glory, Team GB
could well be on for its best Games performance in 100 years. '
There’s Queen Vic
again.
'Statistics revealed that of Team GB's
first 37 medals, 66 per cent were in sitting down sports.
Star performances in equestrian,
sailing, rowing and cycling have all contributed to Team GB's impressive third
place standing in the overall medals table.
By contrast, the two leading nations,
China and the USA, both excel in non-sitting down sports.
At the same stage the two nations had
over 121 medals - with a sitting down element of just 7 per cent. '
Has anyone out there a clue WTF the
Mail is on about?
Got to be good readin’ because it’s so
hard to see.
Olympic Rant #15 Third-rate Stuporpowers declare war
THE rivalry for Olympic medals
between Great Britain and Australia is difficult to understand if you are not
from one of the two countries. It is impossible for the surprisingly large
number of Americans who think Australia is a European country near Germany.
Jessica Ennis helps GB leap over Oz
Australia
which is my home country was invaded by England in the 18th century
to establish a penal colony. Much if not all of the lingering hostility of a
nation of guards versus a country of prisoners is a concoction of the countries' respective media (many owned in the same interests) and is fought over sport.
The most
genteel of the British media refers to Australians as colonials when an insult
is required. The more brash English papers call us convicts.
In Australia
the war is fanned by our media reprising an insult by an English tabloid,
preferably on its front page.
For variety,
Aussie media relished the rather restrained earlier front page from the Sun: Wanted.
Gold Medal. Australia’s Sydney Morning Herald
decided that headline was a screamer but it was tepid because Sun journos knew
the gold medals would come for Britain.
Hell, even
the Mad Mayor of London went out on a wire to declare Britain could win more
medals than Australia. In what passes for a pep talk in Tory circles, Boris
Johnson told British athletes before a pool lap had been swum in anger, ‘Can we beat Australia? Yes, I think we can.’
You can see how classical studies have sharpened Johnson’s
analytical mind to allow him to predict the host nation would accumulate more
goodies than a team of athletes which had travelled across the entire world to
compete.
Still it was relief for both countries to win their first
individual gold. It seems individual gold is worth more than a team one. That’s
capitalism for you.
The feats of both medal winners were insipring.
British heptathlete
Jessica Ennis was robbed
of a chance for Gold at Beijing 2008 by injury.
By contrast,
Australian laser sailor Tom Slingsby went into the Beijing Games as world champion.
He finished 22nd at the Chinese Games.
Another
contrast was the relative celebrations. In typical Aussie style, Slingsby went
to the pub with family and friends.
Ennisand
cycling gold medallist Bradley
Wiggins were special guests
at a boutique gig by the Stone Roses. Led Zep’s Jimmy Page was in the audience.
Wiggins even got to party with
legendary British muso Paul Weller formerly of The Jam, The Style Council and
individual projects. Who knew Wiggins wore an mp3 player when he won the Gold?
Let’s all
share in the great win by Ennis by playing the Officially Unofficial Great
Britain National Games Anthem.
And let us not
forget the phony enemy. Here is the Aussie Games Anthem:
While we are in the mood for
congratulations, let us hand out to three outstanding achievements. First
Officially Designated Naughty Nation Iran collected its first ever Olympic Gold
in Greco-Roman wrassling through Hamid Soryan’s gold in the 55-kilogram class.
Iran had collected a swag of Olympic medal in freestyle wrassling but none in
Greco-Roman. On Monday, Omid
Noroozi made it a double for Iran with the gold in men's 60-kilogram Greco-Roman wrassling
at the London Olympics. Reports by Tea Party members that Iran wrasslers threatened their
opponents with nuclear weapons proved unfounded.
Kirani James, 19, of Grenada won the Olympic 400m in
43.94sec. He is the first athlete from outside the USA to break the 44-second
barrier. His gold was also Grenada’s first ever Olympic medal.
Pavlos Kontides won Cyprus's first medal at an Olympics when
he took the silver on Monday in sailing`s Laser class.
OLYMPIC athletes Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce, Veronica
Campbell-Brown, Usain Bolt and Yohan Blake
provided a thrilling prelude to today’s
Jamaican Independence Day with a combined four medals in the marquee 100m
sprints.
Fraser-Pryce and Bolt completed back-to-back golds, an uncommon
feat in the 100m dash. Campbell-Brown took the bronze and Blake the silver
behind their illustrious team-mates.
Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce: Four names in one:
no wonder she is so quick
A couple of anomalies turn up
when we look at the fastest woman alive compared to the men.
Usain Bolt is the fastest man
alive and the world record holder.
Carmelita Jeter
of the United States is the fastest woman alive (10.64s) but the deceased Florence
Griffith-Joyner of the U.S. holds the world record.(10.49)
Shelly-Ann Fraser is the fourth
faster woman alive and not the holder of the Olympic record either, That also
goes to the deceased Flo-Jo (10.62)
Sprinters - Women’s
100 Metres (World
Record: 10.49 by
Griffith-Joyner at the ’88 Olympic Trials)
1.
Florence Griffith-Joyner (United States) – Fastest
Time: 10.49 seconds
The 100m Olympic record (10.62)
was set by Flo Jo at the 1988 Summer Games in Seoul.
2.
Carmelita Jeter (United States) – Fastest
Time: 10.64 seconds
Jeter ran a 10.67 at the 2009 World Athletics Final and a 10.64 at the 2009
Shanghai Golden Grand Prix.
3.
Marion Jones (United States) – Fastest
Time: 10.65 seconds
Jones won the 100 metre at the 1998 IAAF World Cup in South Africa with a time
of 10.65.
4.
Shelly-Ann Fraser (Jamaica) – Fastest Time:
10.73 seconds
Fraser, along with her Jamaican teammates, dominated the women’s 100m at the
2008 Olympics in Beijing.
5.
Christine Arron (France) – Fastest Time:
10.73 seconds
Arron placed third in the 100m and 200m sprints at the 2005 World Championships
in Paris.
6.
Merlene Ottey (Jamaica) – Fastest Time:
10.74 seconds
Ottey has won more World Championships medals (14) than any other female
sprinter in history.
7.
Kerron Stewart (Jamaica) – Fastest Time:
10.75 seconds
Stewart won the silver medal in the women’s 100m at the 2008 Olympic Games and
the 2009 Worlds.
8.
Evelyn Ashford (United States) – Fastest
Time: 10.76 seconds
A U.S. Track Hall of Fame athlete, Ashford set a later broken Olympic record at
the 1984 Olympics.
9.
Irina Privalova (Russia) – Fastest Time:
10.77 seconds
Privalova is a World Champion in numerous indoor events, and holds the indoor
records for the 50m and 60m sprints.
10.
Ivet Lalova (Bulgaria) – Fastest
Time: 10.77 seconds
Lalova’s best 100 metre time was set in Plovdiv, Bulgaria in 2004 when she ran
a 10.77.
INDEPENDENCE from
Great Britain came to Jamaica in 1962, not long before the rise of the trio Bob
Marley and the Wailers, with various backing musicians.
Teenager Millie Small paved the way for the success
of the Wailers with her surprise 1964 international hit with a cover of My Boy
Lollipop.
In the mid-1990s I
wrote my plat Tosh, a dramatisation of the history of the Wailers: Peter
Tosh, Bob Marley and Bunny Wailer.
The play is still to
be performed.
With the success of
self-publishing over the past decade has put the destiny of novels in the
hands of authors. But getting a play up is still in the hands of Jah.
If you drop me an
email at bentbananabooks@gmail.com,
I will send you a copy of Tosh as soon as I retrieve the disk from Strathpine
Library. Don’t ask; it is safe.
In the meantime, let’s
hear another song from the play which these days would be called a jukebox
musical.
