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Last night was the premiere of the special S.F. engagement of "Richard III," starring Kevin Spacey and directed by Sam Mendes. (The pair worked together on the Academy Award winning film, "American Beauty.") Put on by SHN, it is only around for 12 performances.
Here are 11 thoughts after attending the three-hour-plus long affair:
1. Kevin Spacey makes a great villian. Murderous and petty, ill-tempered, sarcastic and downright bitchy. His fairly high-pitched voice makes him an unusual choice, though, for such a part: film, with its close-ups and boom mikes, can magnify his signature snarl but in the torrent of speech, that feature sometimes gets lost on the stage.
2. Going into the play with a passing familiarity with the plot and/or the gnarled family tree would be helpful. The interactions between the various characters are fast-moving, nuanced, and, of course, rendered in Shakespearan prose. (The play is not known for being amongst the Bard's best work -- it can be a little dry in parts.) But the actors, Spacey in particular, spice up the dialogue with arch physical comedy.
3. It was impressive that most of the cast doubled as drummers, providing both vivid aural counterpoints to the action and acting as alarm clock to theatergoers who may, just once, have been overtaken by the warm theater air and the darkness to nod off slightly towards the end of the first half.
5. Richard III's leg brace was weirdly stylish. Amazon Wish List?
6. The abrupt transitions — the play began with a loud "boom," catching the chattering class unaware, and then Kevin Spacey launched into a soliloquy — went far in establishing the production's overwhelmingly modern aesthetic. Also, the set design was super: nothing clunky or out of place, just exactly the amount of staging needed to show off the performances.
7. Get the Red Vines at intermission. Delicious!
8.The cast was uniformly excellent. Chuk Iwuji as Duke of Buckingham, Richard's smooth-talking ally, is in real danger of stealing the show.
9. A rather shocking number of seats were empty after the two-hour first half, considering the insane crush of people running in for the curtain call at 7:30 p.m. (It seemed less a comment on the play's quality than the endurance needed to last until the 11 p.m. finish.)
10. The two seduction scenes, between Richard and Lady Anne (Annabel Scholey), whose husband he has just killed, and between Richard and Queen Elizabeth (Haydn Gwynne), whose children he has just murdered, are worth the price of admission alone. The skin crawls.
11. Spoiler alert: the final scene involves a giant hook and induced gasps in audience. If you follow advice from #7, you'll have a sugar rush that will render you alert, but not jittery, as the play rounds the third hour. Now good luck getting tickets!
© The Bay Citizen, 2012
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Its time for a new Bond film in San Francisco. An appointed mayor with ties to the Chinese Communist Party? Come ON Michael and Barbara!!!!!!! Nowhere else........
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With Kevin Spacey. And organ harvesting. And the PLA active in SF.
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OMG. Plus I forgot. Trannies. LOTS!!!! CUTE ONES!!! ... the first Bond girl trannie" ... (ellipsis) and I know who and she'd make history. Just picture about a dozen of the most glamorous, fashionable cross dressers, super super super hot. OH MY GOD PLUS VANESSA GETTY!!!!
I can make it happen...
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Plus Anna Chapman.
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Plus I just want to throw this name out. George Schultz. He's still alive, Nixon's treasury secretary. I bet all it would take is "please."
Wiki "Nixon Shock"
Oh and be thinking about Blofeld in his castle in japan, surrounded by his garden of poisonous plants.
Plus, know who else for cheap? Julian Assuage. Don't laugh...
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And google "horse meat disco" with "vauxhall."
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And someone with the codename "aunt charlie."
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Sorry I'm going on and on, coffee buzz.... I'm just sorry I missed Michael Wilson. If I could have gotten wasted on martinis at John's Grill (Dashiell Hammett) and then cornered him at the Curran theater and got all loud a screamed my James Bond ideas at him my life would have been complete?
And I just want to say that in the opening chase scene from "Quantum of Solace" if Bond could have flicked a switch and the bullet proof shield had raised up on the back of the Ashton Martin it would have turned a mediocre chase scene into a classic?
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OK plus just one more thing...it is kind of obvious to everybody now that a super criminal organization would take over the world through the banking system so why you haven't focused your franchise squarely on this guy is almost a kind of Hollywood negligence...
"Mr. Gramm has not been involved in the Internal Revenue Service’s tax investigation of UBS. Still, Mr. Gramm is a controversial figure in the economic debate right now, since it was under his leadership as chairman of the powerful Senate Banking Committee from 1995 to 2003 that a bevy of laws were passed that deregulated many parts of the banking sector.
For example, the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act allowed commercial banks, investment banks, securities firms and insurance companies to consolidate, creating behemoths like Citigroup that later became “too big to fail.” Mr. Gramm also pushed through the Commodity Futures Modernization Act, which led to a proliferation of complicated derivatives that gummed up the Wall Street money machine, sending the economic crisis into overdrive...
...Mr. Gramm had blocked legislation that would have made it easier “to crack down on offshore tax havens” and “would have expanded rules that require banks to find out more about individuals and foreign jurisdictions they are dealing with."
http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2009/08/20/phil-gramm-and-the-ubs-tax-case/
Plus the cherry on top is his wife was placed as head of the Enron audit committee...you've heard of them?
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Phil Gramm may not be Blofeld but he is definitely agent number 3 or 4 in Spectre, or Quantum or whatever its called now.
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Ha ha that scene where Blofeld presses the button at the crime meeting and the guy is fried in his office chair....
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dW9-llaIS-g