Today, Up in the Cheap Seats watched the last in that series of online, read plays - Barbecue, tickets from TodayTix again, with a minimum donation of $5. Mind you, with nothing on telly last night - I watched it then!
And OMG, I was blown away! Starts off with a (white - that's relevant) family, planning a fake barbecue during which they're going to stage an intervention, to try to persuade their addict sister to go to rehab. Perfect Zoom coordination, as usual. It then switches to a black family - you'll start to notice, although the dialogue is different, that they have the same names, and are doing much the same thing. Hmm..
Plenty of familiar faces here. The brothers are played by Colman Domingo and David Morse, the various sisters by S. Epatha Merkerson, Laurie Metcalf, Kristine Nielsen, and Carrie Coon, among others. Sounds predictable enough at the start - even when it switches to the black family, telling the same story in a different way, it sounds pretty normal. Except when you start to wonder about the names.
There's a (very) short interval - and after that, you fall right down the rabbit hole. As you get the backstory to what's gone before, you slowly come to realise that these two stories are indeed the same, dialogue changed for the black family, to reflect what black people would be expected to say. And in a perfectly delicious sequence, we see interaction between members of the families for the first time - it's no spoiler to say that what's happening is, they're making a film of the white family's story, but decided to cast a black family, for "authenticity".
Beautifully acted, perfectly coordinated, cleverly edited. Lots to say about how black people are perceived, and how you should never trust the movies' version of reality. Hilarious, too - and I just love having my expectations confounded. I was riveted for the whole second half.. right down to the abrupt ending. Highly recommended, showing till a minute to midnight, tomorrow (Monday) - in this time zone. Best I've seen in months.
So - with that watched, and nothing on tv this afternoon that I hadn't seen (again) - it was back to my film list. And good old Sands Films' latest offering was the highest rated on my list - just this week, they showed Hitchcock's Foreign Correspondent. They're doing a tribute to the late, great Robert Fisk, you see, and this was apparently the film that inspired him to become a journalist. Mind you, with buffering issues, I had to resort to my work laptop again.
The broadcast starts about 8 minutes in, then there's an introduction that might be worth a look. The film itself - well, Hitchcock is always worth watching, for his terrific direction: the Master of Suspense, truly. Made and set in 1939, it concerns a journo sent to Europe to investigate rumours of impending war. And for sure, his acts of derring-do - as he witnesses an assassination, confronts spies, evades murder attempts, and gets the girl - would entice many into the profession. Very enjoyable. Tune into the Sands Film site from Tuesday to see a film about Fisk himself, This Is Not a Movie.
That finished just in time for me to join the chat about the play, which was entertaining and lively - pity it was cut off before we got all our talking done. As abrupt an ending as in the play we were discussing, in fact! But as usual, it was great to see everyone.
Finally, I'm taking my Christmas holidays on Friday - and London Social Detours recently announced another talk for that day, in their British Heroes and Villains series. We get to vote at the end, apparently - whether for the greatest hero, or the greatest villain, I don't know. Still, isn't it great that Meetup has so much stuff on again that I can go to?
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