Saturday, April 03, 2010

An Evening At The Tempest


It was the night of The Bridge Project's The Tempest at the Esplanade Theatre. We wouldn't miss it for anything! But we didn't want to be too dressed up for it either. It's just not quite our style to dress to the nines. We want to keep that indie edge, always.

Parking wouldn't be easy, so we arrived a good 1.5hrs before the show. We went up to Orgo for some pre-theatre bites and drinks. It was a wonderful rainy evening. But not for the wait staff. Orgo isn't exactly designed for rainy weather. The wait staff had to get out in the rain to bring us our orders. Fabulous martinis.

The Bridge Project has done a very refreshing take on what's been widely considered as Shakespeare's last play. This version is enjoyable. But I'm a little contemplative when it comes to the stage directions. I'm a bit of a prude that way. I'm not quite taken with the modern interpretation of the realm of magical versus the rational. I didn't think that had been successfully, for the want of a better word, bridged. It was almost, pedantic. Of course, there is this other point that Shakespeare isn't known to be very nice to black people and Jews. He most certainly didn't give them nice roles in his plays.

We rounded up the evening with dinner at Mandarin Orchard's Chatterbox, which serves my favorite lobster laksa. The man's rather fond of their chicken rice too. The other assorted friends are divided into these respective camps. Still, the one thing we refuse to order at Chatterbox are the drinks. Why on earth would we pay S$10 for non-alcoholic drinks at a hotel cafe when all we're interested in, is the food. Doh.

2 comments:

Oriental Queen said...

oh oh oh! i want to watch it too! was it really worth it?? =)

imp said...

orientalQ: hmmm....to me, yes, it's worth a watch. i wouldn't recommend it to anyone who's not into Shakespeare or modern-day theatre though. You could watch it and think it's not a big deal. but then, you'll still be richer for the experience when you look back and compare all the plays you've watched and discuss the stage directions, script, etc.