2017/107: Dzur (Vlad Taltos Book 10) -- Steven Brust

2017/107: Dzur (Vlad Taltos Book 10) -- Steven Brust

With cooking and murder, there really shouldn't be a "good enough." You need to get as close to perfect as possible, otherwise find another line of work. [loc. 3998]

Reread, though I didn't realise it and nothing seemed familiar: only when I tried to add the book to LibraryThing did I realise it was already there ... Apparently I enjoyed the novel very much when I read it in December 2006: eleven years later, it felt rather less satisfying.

See that earlier review for plot details: I came away this time reminded that cooking and murder both require patience; that with any Vlad Taltos book it's wise to review the story so far, from notes or Wikipedia or whatever (perhaps some people rely on their memories?); and that I become irritated with long conversations where I have to count lines to work out who's talking.

I do like this series, though: must work out where I'd actually got to, so I can carry on from there.

Monthly culture: January 2018

05JAN18: Scythians, British Museum
Official Site
No music in the background of this exhibition, which made me happy.
Like the best exhibitions, this brought home the reality of human life in a distant time and place. Outstanding items included shoes with embroidered soles (when your culture is about riding everywhere, and sitting on the ground, this makes sense); textiles from 800 BC, the dyes still bright; 2000-year-old cheese!; tattoo art -- the women tattooed with predators, the men with prey animals. Made me want to reread The Corn King and the Spring Queen, though that's set towards the end of the period covered by the exhibition.

18JAN18: The Return of Ulysses (Monteverdi), Royal Opera, Roundhouse
ROH page
A performance in the round, on a stage which encloses the orchestra.
A combination of a heavy cold, some wine and the eccentricities of this production (a flock of white helium-balloon sheep; the glutton Iros who I don't recall from classical myth; Telemachus and Minerva on a tandem) meant that I spent the evening in a state of happy bafflement. The singing was gorgeous, the translation a good one: plenty of humour, some relevance (chorus as refugees), and lots of lovely visual touches. However, this is a very early opera, and peters out rather than ending properly with a rousing finale.

20JAN18: Amadeus, National Theatre
NT page
Absolutely splendid production: I know the film pretty well, and there is a lot that didn't make it onto the screen (Salieri's wife, for instance, and quite a bit of Salieri's rage against and disgust at God). Lucian Msamati is a stunning Salieri, and Adam Gillen is brattish and charmless as Mozart -- far less impishly likeable than Tom Hulce's version in the film. You can see why his very existence appals Salieri.
The opera excerpts in the original film made a huge impression on me at the time: I am happy to report that the mini-stagings in this production (Abduction, Don Giovanni, Magic Flute, Figaro) are excellent -- though the most arresting musical moment was surely the oncoming Kyrie, orchestra and choir at full blast moving inexorably towards a cowering Salieri.
excellent review here

25JAN18: Edward II (Marlowe) Greenwich Theatre
Lazarus Theatre Company's page
A 90-minute production without an interval, but which retains all the vital elements of the original. It's a minimalist staging: nobody leaves the stage when their character exits, but instead the actors retreat to the sides, where the props and costumes hang. Everyone is barefoot. The young prince who'll be Edward III is just a voice on the phone.
Edward is really not very good at being king, and Gaveston seems to delight in flaunting his privilege -- interestingly, in this production Gaveston is played by a black actor, which adds a touch of racism to the classism, homophobia, xenophobia and envy that drives the action.
I became nervous towards the end when a great deal of plastic sheeting went down, and masks and plastic gloves were donned by Mortimer and his crew. Luckily 'that scene' was mostly sound, with the lights down: it was nauseatingly awful. Amazing.