I liked the Seagull a good deal less than I did King Lear, mostly because of its modernism and fragmented narrative, making it an extended character study. The same points apply here as for European vs American movies and the use of the passive and active voices. This being a Russian play, it also has a tendency to depress, since all Russians do is sit inside hiding from the snow and drinking vodka. As such, I found King Lear much more accessible, even with the archaic language (perhaps because my verbosity lends me some familiarity to it). This play requires a lot more reading to get something out of it, humorous asides and one-liners notwithstanding (then again, maybe the whole play is an aside since it lacks a strong plot).

Once again, the Royal Shakespeare Company made some changes to the play. The only one I am certain of is that here, Constantine's first, non-fatal suicide attempt is shown onstage at the end of Act 2 (interestingly, a melodramatic point that is not in keeping with Chekhov's style). I suppose this makes it harder to miss the fact that there *was* a suicide attempt, since one might otherwise miss the dialogue referring to it in Act 3, and is also a convenient way to end the first half of the play with a dramatic climax (as was the Fool's hanging in Lear, cheap though that was).

The only prop I recognised from Lear was the wheelchair. As for the acting, Frances Barber was exceptional.


I was getting mobile phone reception most of the time in Circle 3, so I suppose the machine the Esplanade has to interfere with mobile reception wasn't working so well today.

Though I was in the cheapest seats today (2nd last row of Circle 3), the view was not significantly worse than on Thursday (somewhere in the middle of Circle 2), even though the ticket cost half as much. As such, I conclude that it's not worth the money to splurge on tickets as long as they're not restricted view. In fact you can get negative externalities if you shell out for front row tickets - like spittle landing on you.

There were a lot of Caucasian men with local Chinese women (naturally the reverse were noticeable by their absence), and a lot less ginna (kids) than on Thursday.


After the play, some of us went to wait for Ian McKellen by the stage door. In a pink shirt (I think it was the Asian Boys one), he was too busy to pose for pictures, but he was obliging enough to do autographs (about 15!) I asked if he'd found any gay bars in Singapore, and he replied: "twenty".

Liquid Nitrogen: my friend took photos with him at Mox :)
he looked really happy

he was at mox on saturday night
v late
stayed until 3+ talking to a big crowd

Me: no wonder cannot play sorin at 2pm on sunday