GERMAINE WARFARE

It's been some time since Germaine visited Stratford [see my Germainia blog of 3.9.06], but absence doesn't seem to have made her heart grow any fonder. She went to King Lear; some of her more memorable observations are below.

" you have to understand that the 1,000-strong audience is composed of a minority of geriatrics who haven't got out of the theatre-going habit, [that presumably includes Germaine?] and a majority of teenaged school-trippers bussed in from various grim hostelries in the environs of Stratford."

"Most of the members of the audience don't have English as their first language."
Lucky she didn't come to any of the Complete Works performances, as she would have discovered that not only are some of our audiences like that, but some of our acting companies - Titus, Lear, Henry V, Twelfth Night, Dream, Othello, Hamlet, Richard II and III, Macbeth and The Two Gentlemen of Verona. Foreigners all.

Her most bizarre comment was this,
".......the Royal Shakespeare Company long ago gave up simply saying the lines for mouthing, gnashing, yelling, snarling, munching, spitting, gritting, grinding, shrieking, slobbering, snapping and gobbling them."
Given the care and effort that the RSC puts into speech this is almost inexplicable; I'd send the old girl a hearing aid if I thought she could master the technology.