Digital Theatre!!! 💓💓💓

Reading has been a bit slow lately – other things to do! – but it has definitely picked up pace with the “cinema season”, and now I have discovered DIGITAL THEATRE!!! As I should have done years ago, of course … First thing I did was to rent out “The Crucible” for 7.99 £ to watch within the next 48 hours. Not just because it is the first thing that hits the eye when you open their page – still, after all these years!!! (I must say, I was sooo pleased!)

Of course I knew that I was kidding myself pretending that I didn’t WANT to see it another time, but I couldn’t own up to it. It was just too painful to acknowledge that I will never EVER have it on DVD. But Digital Theatre certainly is the next best thing. There was a sound reason, though, for not wanting to see it again because there was a genuine fear of spoiling the supreme pleasure I remember from my first time. A danger that it suddenly might appear “relative”, and that I wouldn’t even know why I had loved it so much. So, I set this up because I knew that I had to – now that I had discovered that I could! -  but didn’t really dare to look forward to it.

Apart from that, there was the tiny little hiccup that I cannot set it up at home (at least not yet, I am definitely working on it!) and had to watch it in my office, a prospect I didn’t fancy that much. There is nobody in my office on the weekends, though, and, of course, I am not supposed to be there, but what …?! So, I bought a quarter of prosecco and some cake for the interval to prevent low blood sugar, and, on a beautiful Oktoberfest Saturday, set out on my quaint mission. (I mean, how WEIRD is this: going to my office to watch digital theatre while “everybody” is outside in the sun in dirndl and lederhosen, gaping at the horses and drinking beer …? I definitely began to like this!)

It was just as well that I didn’t bother with it because I could never have ANTICIPATED the pleasure I experienced seeing it again. It was even better than seeing it the first time, even though it was only on a computer screen with insufficient sound, not on the big cinema screen in surround. (The sound was very clear, though, so that I could understand every word and appreciate every “voice feature”. So, basically, everything was fine.) And I cannot even begin to say how pleased I am that I HAD BEEN RIGHT! Right about seeing it again as well as about my first impression of this being the best production of a play I have ever seen. The most perfect, most beautiful, and most emotionally exact production of a fictional text I have ever seen – be it on screen or in the theatre. I remember thinking, when I saw this for the first time,  that this must be the best production of this play EVER, and I am now positive that it will be. There is just NOTHING RELATIVE about it, and this is what I enjoy more than anything. That it is possible to leave all my petty “construction sites” behind me for a few hours and have the FEELING of this in my memory for years - potentially forever. This is what I want, and it is what I can get when I am playing it right. I think I understand now why Richard Armitage talked about “opera” on behalf of “The Crucible”. This is exactly what opera is destined for – though, in my case, it doesn’t work because I don’t enjoy the music that much and am always so suspicious about the romantic and tragic content. Arthur Miller is just so RIGHT about everything, and intellectually and emotionally challenging, that there is no problem at all with the tragic content. Richard Armitage roaring at the skies at the end with everything that was in him is just EXACTLY as it should be.

And I had been right, by the way, about not having WANTED to see it in the theatre. I would just have been crushed and totally unable to analyze. Unfortunately, most of the time I am actually happier with a solid screen between me and the text instead of an imagined fourth wall. Not least because it prevents me from trying to distance myself from the text, which was rather important in this case.

I won’t embark on an analysis now – not just because I would never be able to finish. The main reason – and this might appear kind of sad, but isn’t! – is that I have FINISHED reading it. Seeing it this time has closed everything that was still open from seeing it the first time, and this is also something that I thought could never happen with any important text, but it has. And it is not the least bit sad but feels great because this is a stage I have probably never reached with any text, but which SHOULD be – ideally! - where reading leads to. I will never discover anything new now about this text because I have seen it all, and I have understood it all, and felt it all. And this is, of course, why this production is so good. (It is even exactly right to feel like shit for three days, realizing that such a high will probably never come again. I just hope that it won’t happen again this time …)

I already tried to analyze the complexity of this play, dealing with tragedy in my blog. And I think I already discovered tragedy as a VEHICLE. I wouldn’t distance myself in the least from anything I have written about Richard Armitage playing John Proctor – quite the contrary. I think I still couldn’t believe seeing something so powerful and so exact AT THE SAME TIME. Like the rest, it was even better than my memory of it. I didn’t know that he got an Olivier Award nomination for this until I finally read the Wikipedia this year. The only thing I will never understand is that he didn’t get the award. (Well, the audience’s choice in this case would have been obvious: it is still one of the top three productions on Digital Theatre, and the others much more recent!) Nonetheless, reading all these interviews by him afterwards, and being still so preoccupied with my own issues about the play, my reading got biased. I missed most of the complexity of this incredible text, and this was what I could compensate this time. I even knew that I had only these fuzzy memories left of what I felt about certain moments, and had lost the text, REMEMBERING at the same time what I had lost. This was kind of frustrating, and it got completely mended seeing it a second time.

It think that, for the first time ever, I actually NOTICED directing. I sometimes notice camera, very rarely, and only if I get kind of hit on the head with it. Nonetheless, camera is crucial, and I instantly notice when something is wrong with it. I never notice directing. Strictly speaking, it isn’t even possible to notice directing, but this time I actually SAW it. Being able for the first time to take in the complexity of what is going on on the stage, the number of actors involved, almost everybody being equally important and everybody as right about what they were doing as could be, the incredible timing and dynamics … Sure, there is this great STAGE TEXT – that you think would work like a charm almost by itself when you see this – but of course this is not so! Somebody has to set this up so that it can work like a charm. I’ll never forget now Elizabeth Proctor standing alone on that stage at the end, speaking her last sentence exactly as she spoke it. The end is as strong as the beginning, and there is not one weak or fuzzy moment, or any single second of insufficient acting, in between. So – Yael Faber is a genius and a miracle, and her directing is the main reason that I could read this text so COMPLETELY. It is incredibly complex and exact - and utterly terrifying! - as to what happens in between people, what society is made of, and how people would react when something like this is breaking loose. The “classical” tragedy is just the most powerful vehicle to carry this through to the end – and NOT to leave us in a muddle of wretched feelings which would make us want to forget this “mess” as fast as possible, as we would do in real life … Arthur Miller certainly is a genius when it comes to handling “us” – and in this case I don’t mind!

So, back to my petty construction sites! After this, I have even more reason to go to London next year to see “Uncle Vanya” than I had before, but now my credit card is buggered because I cannot set up the new secure code shit they have deviced, and there is nobody who can help me with it. One day we’ll finally all be so secure that we cannot leave our flats anymore … It is such a ridiculous issue but so important because, before this is resolved, I won’t be able to book anything for next year. I don’t even know if my MasterCard will still work in the UK after Brexit – or will I need Visa??? As usual, I have no idea … At least there will still be Digital Theatre for me, and Amazon – but how long until they will have noticed that they have to implement the new secure shit …??? The horizon is darkening, and I just hope that SOMEBODY has a plan …