Thursday, 30 August 2012

27/8 Richard III & Ghosts


Monday 27th Last day at sea

Brekky, morning quizzes (no luck) and then we did an hour in the gym and lunch. We had a few minutes at the open choir singing in the atrium, which was enjoyable, and then into the RADA performance of Shakespeare’s Richard III. It was a 75 minute version and they had adopted a novel approach of having a sort of stepped area on the stage. Each time Richard had somebody murdered, floral wreaths that spelled out their names were placed on the steps.

Richard is traditionally played as a hunchback but this one also had port wine blotches, a shrivelled hand that constantly nursed a silver dagger, and a metal leg brace. He made a thoroughly convincing scoundrel and switched smoothly and fluently between the various aspects of Richard’s character. An excellent production (although not Everybody (no names) managed to remain awake!).

They put out the usual selection of merchandise for us to redeem our winning stamps. It was a bit of a no-brainer – 7 memory sticks please. Small, light and useful  (Inasmuch as a 1Gb drive is useful). Hardly a lucrative return on investment but we do enjoy the quizzing and we had some quite stimulating collaborations with several groups of people on board.

We managed to sit near Beryl for the first time at dinner. She is a very sprightly and sharp 90 year old who seems to cruise constantly. Martin and Virginia were back after their dinner at Todd English restaurant yesterday. They joined us for the evening quiz and the final show in the theatre, which was a bit of an anticlimax after yesterday. We really enjoyed our farewell 10pm trivia with Emma from Canberra, Maryanne from NY NY and Susan the English granny. All very different and all very nice people. We capped off a very busy day with the 30 minute Ghost Story that was put on by RADA. Disappointing  . . . unlikely to “chill your bones and haunt your dreams”.

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