When I get up for the second time I take Doggo and L for a run. L again opts for a shorter route. Doggo sticks to me like glue once L has split off from us. His confrontation with that dog the other day does seem to have shaken him up. We manage to avoid having any confrontations.
Then off to the match. Derby v Bolton. Everyone seems to be looking forward to it. Another near sell out crowd due. I think a lot of people are still in shock from us winning a game. What will the reaction be if we win another one? They'll be breaking out the open top bus and the commemorative mugs.
In the end we draw 1-1. The continued absence of record signing Robert Earnshaw is starting to annoy a lot of people. Steve Howard has now played all eight games and hasn’t scored but still Earnshaw doesn't even get to lift his bottom off the substitutes bench.
I spend half-time discussing Quidditch with my Dad. He's just read the first Harry Potter book. Harry is infiltrating us everywhere. I shall not succumb.
L and Daughter are at yet another film. A Gerard Depardieu, this time. At Nottingham's micro small 21 seat Screen Room which L describes as 'cute'. At least I think it's the cinema she's on about.
When I get back from the match it's a bit of a rush to get into town for tonight's spot of culture and our second play of the week. Whereas Tuesday's play promised to be 'Uplifting' and didn't deliver. Tonight's play 'The Changeling' promises us lust, lunacy, and murder. Which sounds all together more promising and totally my bag. Although once the play starts it is quickly difficult to see where the lunacy ends and the lust starts. As for the murder, there's plenty of that.
'The Changeling' is described as a dark Jacobean tragedy. Written in 1621, it comes from the same period as Shakespeare and has much in common with his work. A young woman called Joanna wants to marry Alsemero but the one thing that stands between her and her man is the bridegroom arranged for her by her father. She asks her deformed manservant De Flores, who she dislikes immensely, to dispose of him for her. Because he is obsessed with her, he agrees. She tries to pay him in gold, but he has another form of payment in mind. At first she cannot guess what his price is but soon she realises that the only payment that he will accept is Joanna herself. At first she is totally repulsed by this thought but once he has had his way with her and beaten her intended husband to her virginity, she realises that, in common with most women, a bit of depravity floats her boat, and quickly she can't get enough of it. So here we go again, yet another wayward, if not quite married, woman.
During the interval, we have a bit of a debate over the play and sort out a few things we don't understand between ourselves while enjoying our respective tipples of Burton Ale and Leffe. One of the things that confuses us is that a lot of the play takes place in a lunatic asylum. Although the set, laid out like an ancient stone asylum building, is excellent.
Unfortunately as soon as the second half starts, I get even more confused. Joanna appears to go ahead with her marriage to Alsemero, who appears to be something of an amateur medic and has a load of potions in his wardrobe. As you do. She discovers a potion called 'M', which when taken by a virgin, causes her mouth to gape, sneeze uncontrollably and then laugh hysterically. This presents a bit of a wedding night problem for her, that is solved by Joanna substituting her maid in her place in the marital bed but we didn't realise this at the time. If they’d made these things clearer we might have understood it better.
Also apparently the title of the play comes from a sub-plot in which another servant, Tony, pretends to be a lunatic in order to infiltrate first the asylum and then hopefully the wife of the chap who runs the asylum.
The play is quite psychological, with its portrayal of a woman who will stop at nothing to get her way and in the process is driven to dangerous lengths but that's women for you. Sex after all is a phenomenal force that causes chaos with everyone's lives.
At the end, after their affair is discovered, Joanna and De Flores, overtaken by the aforementioned trio of lust, lunacy, and murder, finally end up stabbing each other to death during a one final torrid shag.
When I read up on the play after the fact, it looks a cracking plot, if only we could have followed it fully at the time. It all seemed rather muddled. It was still good though, a full-blooded production you might say. The casting is good, Joanna is young and attractive, De Flores, older and deformed. They do say opposites attract. Imagine how good it would have been had we understood it all. Perhaps I should become a theatre director myself.
Up to the Ropewalk for a couple of pints of their guest ale from Mauldon. Home for a very late Spam curry.
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