#22 & #24 - The perfect performance is (all) in my head

I love reading plays, the whole stage stretches out in my mind as I read. Beautiful visuals, perfect performances, impeccable timing... all without actual people to mess with it. Of course, there is something daunting, isolating and not a little depressing about a performance for one. Nevertheless - I polished off two intriguing plays, Cyrano de Bergerac and A Streetcar Named Desire for days 4 and 5. My last experience with Cyrano was probably Gerald Depardieu (or, ugh, Steve Martin in Roxanne - blech). Come to think of it the Monsterpiece Theatre version's pretty decent too. Anyways, the play is unabashedly entertaining, clever and heavy on the romance. It worth keeping in mind that the first performance of this play was in 1897 (though the story behind it is older) and would have been playing to a repressed but expectant Victorian audience as opposed to a ribald 17th century crowd.

I also had a chance to read Streetcar, which was not the play I thought it was. I don't know why but the events I assumed made up this drama were not, in fact, the plot at all. Again, my experience of the play is marred/enhanced by pop culture references, mostly Simpsons related. Overall though, I enjoyed reading the play and it was a needed break in between heavy readings. Likely I will gather a few more to add to the list. That is not to say that I didn't come up alongside the deeply hopeless and suffocating atmosphere of the play itself. The growing pains and explorations of morality/immorality in early 20th century southern American society do not light bedtime reading make.