A Knight in Harman Hall

Let me tell you how this came about. Yesterday I was supposed to have back to back meetings all afternoon. One by one they were canceled (this happens with great regularity in DEVO for whatever reason). I was crabby, crabby, crabby already and having my time wasted made me crabbier. So I decided to surf the internet and not do anything else productive. But of course I didn't want to mindlessly surf the net, this is the Kennedy Center after all, so I was reading the Washington Post (radical I know). What does the Post have, but an interview with Ian McKellen. Why? Because he's in town and doing a one night benefit for the Shakespeare Theatre Company - tonight. Wow.

Okay, google the event and discover that tickets are going for upwards of $500. That's a bit steep on a fellow's salary, but they were still available...and good seats in the centre orchestra were still available so I think to myself hmmmm this event isn't selling. Next I do what any good theatre practitioner would do in my position when in a city with no connections - you flirt with the box office staff. I'm not ashamed, you would have done the same thing.

I am offered, after being put on hold a couple of times and talking about Church Street in Toronto for awhile - this was a pretty lengthy conversation but I was on a mission- $40 standing room tickets. Done, I say, I'll take two. (a fellow fellow came along). We get to the theatre not knowing exactly what their version of standing room would be - I did ask and was told I'd be fine. I figured as long as there was something to lean on. He also said my last name should be awesome (I said it was my middle name) (seriously, this was our conversation...) So what's standing room? Front row of the balcony on the centre aisle. Seriously - AWESOME.

So Joe in the box office of the Shakespeare Theatre Company, thank you.

Okay, so Ian basically chatted and performed monologues and read his favorite poems for 90 minutes (he too was awesome - awesomeness all round!). Favourite moments - he did his preacher speech from Cold Comfort Farm "there is no butter in Hell!" - he did a soliloquy from Hamlet and dried in the middle and asked if anyone remembered the next bit and someone did. It wasn't an unknown passage certainly, but I didn't remember the next line - Michael and my mother would have but it was none the less impressive for dude in the balcony to call it out so clearly. He told how he and other actors saved the original site of the Rose Theatre in London from being bulldozed by developers (Dames Judi and Peggy sat on lawn chairs and told them to "go away" - awesome). To prove he could make anything sound amazing he recited Help by the Beatles so it sounded like the most beautiful thing you've ever heard, and the Beaufort Wind Scale - my favourites 7 through 9:

7 Near Gale        Whole trees in motion;                    inconvenience felt when walking against the wind.

8  Gale             Breaks twigs off trees; 

          
generally impedes progress.

9 Severe Gale      Slight structural damage occurs                   (chimney-pots and slates removed).

Tee hee - generally impedes progress :-)  

Anyway, I'm sure I'll have more to reflect on him in the coming days, but for now once more into the breach.