Episode 491: Emily Of Emerald Hill

So my French presentation went really well today. I'm just assuming this from my tutor's reaction right after because she didn't actually have time at the end to give me feedback. I think the general coherence and fluency of it threw people off, if I may boast a little. (Indulge me here.) Anyway, I thought I had to be at rehearsal today, but Bella disabused me of that notion, so I went to see Ranon's production of Emily Of Emerald Hill instead. Very, very wise decision on my part. I believe Ranon's a first-time director, but his work was quite frankly, bloody good. The idea of taking a monologue and dividing it according to the shifting personalities of the speaker was ingenious. I've read Stella Kon's play when I was much younger, but I always thought of the shifts as a classic case of the unreliable narrator, and what Ranon's done is take that and go a step further in interpreting the text. The acting was really solid as well. For me, the litmus test where emotional scenes are concerned is whether the actors can convey the emotional content without slipping into bathos or caricature, and the cast did it excellently here, particularly in the scene where Emily receives the telegram informing her of Richard's suicide. The production's travelling to London last two days of this month, so if anyone reading this lives there, I highly recommend it.