Make Him Cure Me

I did consider going to withiel's Cave of Debauch tonight, but I couldn't. Instead, I went to the Burton Taylor to see Make Him Cure Me, which Tom Campion, Wadham first year, is writing and directing. Of course, the main reason the gang were going to see it is because Sky's thesping in it, but it's a reworking of Euripides' Hippolytus and it promised to be very good in its own right. So after much idiocy involving us being unable to find the Burton Taylor (I cringe) we made it, got front row seats (the studio is tiny anyway, so we were right up close) and settled in for a nice night out. I was actually going to post an entry earlier today exhorting all the Oxonians round about to go and see it, but I desisted: the show is sold out for all four nights. We had the very last ticket going, which got sold to one of Pat's neighbours.

But I digress. The play was what I wanted to write about. It was a very intimate setting, with only a large double bed as the main focal point of the scenery, and while it wasn't perfect, it was very good. One girl in particular, Corinne (I don't know her, but she told Sky she saw me and jacinthsong kissing once, so I guess she must know a lot of the people I know) was incredibly good. She was perfectly, chillingly believable as the hysterical, dying stepmother character, and she made everyone around her shine. Sky, meanwhile, was playing a difficult, ruthlessly ambitious old scientist, who is finally driven to murder at the end, and all this week, I've been wondering aloud how we were going to reconcile Sky, whom everyone knows and loves, with this less-than-pleasant character. I've never seen a serious play that had someone I knew in the cast before, and it was a little disturbing. In retrospect, it's probably a sign of how good an actor Sky is; I mean, I always knew he thesped, but I'd never seen him in action (barring last night, when post-alcohol, he started to sing the play's dialogue to various melodies from Grease). Anyway, what I am ineptly trying to get at is that it was strange and hard to see my friend become an evil monster with such evident ease.

After the play, he was crying a little when he came out, at which point I, backed up by everyone else, handed him a large bunch of roses. He looked overcome. "Oh," he said. "Oh, fuck off. I mean, thank you."

And he ran for it. We found him later, in the bar drinking caipirinhas and getting a little glassy-eyed. There was drinking. (Why do all my entries contain that phrase, lately?) We decamped, en masse, with Sky getting quiet and clutching his flowers, and drank Claire's horrendous red wine, until the evening drifted off into night and it's probably time for bed for all. It's been a long day.

Although it's probably worth mentioning before I go to bed: I have Placebo tickets! I got up early this morning to book them before they sold out, and Claire and I are seeing them in London on April 11th, and sleeping on Sky's floor afterwards, natch. Beyond that the day was slow, as I went to my French lecture, came back, messed about on LJ, went to my tute (and, bizarrely, Sudhir liked my essay! He said it was "well constructed", gleee), and promptly fell asleep in Claire's chair and slept till dinnertime.

And now I plan to sleep until lunchtime. Goodnight, all; and if perchance you murder anyone tomorrow and they have Make Him Cure Me tickets in their pockets, be sure to go. It's a wonderful production, and Sky and Corinne are both very good.

Things that never happened to me

me_ves_y_sufres did an absolutely fab meme, where you give your own life the "five things that didn't happen" treatment. I said it was particularly wonderful because it tells you so much about what did happen as well as what didn't. Whilst I might try the version that involves my becoming a published author and part of an international spy ring at age fourteen, I think I'll stick with the old-fashioned, could-have-happened canon divergence type AUs. Because they are interesting, and there are quite a few interesting could-have-gone-either-way points in my life. In third person, because it's easier, five four things that never happened to Raven:

( or, four alternate versions of me )

I am now going to the library, and doing some actual work, because I am crap.