That's so cool 🤩
10.03.2026 07:27
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That's so cool 🤩
Fool of a Took! That was an exhausting afternoon..
😎❤️
I watched this movie because of the soundtrack by Daniel Pemberton and I was not disappointed in this regard!
Photo of a wooden cutting board with Pippin's head and the words "Yes, but what about second breakfast?" burned into it.
Just got a gorgeous piece of wood burning art from Ivy Yves Art - the Second Breakfast Board.
Isn't this the cutest thing ever? 😄
The event takes place at "Teatro di Imladris" 😄
At the Tolkien Music Festival in Mirandola, Italy (August 30-31), the pieces "The Grey Havens", "Lalaith", "Lorien" (world premiere) and "The Great Horn of Helm" of a composer that I'm working with will be performed:
www.tolkienmusicfestival.it
Best programmer joke I've seen lately:
A test customer walks into a bar and orders 1 beer. A test customer walks into a bar and orders 99.5 beers. A test customer walks into a bar and orders -7 beers.
Test complete.
A real customer walks into a bar and asks where the bathroom is. The bar explodes.
Just found a quote from The Wanderer in Patrick Wolf's Hymn of The Haar:
"Or were the voices just too loud today to let you tell anybody?
Or back across the bar them pray, oft him anhaga are gebideð."
So from now on this song will always remind me of the Lament for the Rohirrim.
Congratulations 😁
Awesome, thank you! Already voted for it 🤞
Ooh, I also read my first one this year. Had some great moments but overall didn't really convince me.. Hope you enjoy yours!
Already learned two new words from Tolkien this year (which I apparently didn't pay attention to during any of my previous rereadings of Lord of the Rings): "tussocky" and "countrified"
I think they're kind of cute.
Lastly, the contemporary setting worked really well in general. It reminds me of Hytner's similar Julius Caesar (2018) – because, as Richard's usual histrionics are not given much space here, the focus of this production is once more on the frantic struggle to regain control that follows all coups.
In terms of setting "Of comfort no man speak" is especially interesting because it seems to take place in a rubbish dump or at least a part of the harbour where a lot of rubbish has accumulated - already the setting here mocks Richard's rule of England and his sad attempts do stay in power.
Therefore, despite Richard's many beautiful speeches, he did not manage to win my sympathy here (as he did in so many other productions where he was presented in a more ambiguous way), but they nevertheless managed to draw me in. "I have been studying" is the most captivating one in this production.
This clear-cut representation of Richard has the curious side effect that, for once, it is easily understandable why Bullingbrook takes the throne: because Richard has to be stopped at any cost. And Royce Pierreson does an excellent job of portraying Bullingbrook in a sympathetic way.
Richard has very few opportunities for emotionally enthralling theatrics in this production. He is mostly very quick to anger and treats nearly everyone with contempt; and only once this production slows down a little bit (by act 4) does he get some genuinely pensive moments in.
Nicholas Hytner presented Richard II totally in black and white: Richard was the terrible and ruthless king and Bullingbrook was the one who had to right his wrongs. This was really fun because I had never before seen a production where the plot was presented in such a simple, straightforward way.
Photo of "Richard II" bows at the Bridge Theatre, London. Rectangular, black but brightly lit stage with Jonathan Bailey, wearing a white shirt and dark trousers, in the middle. The stage is surrounded by the audience, except for an entrance to the auditorium at the back of the stage/photo.
Photo of "Richard II" bows at the Bridge Theatre, London. Rectangular, black but brightly lit stage with the cast of "Richard II", all of them looking at different sections of the surrounding audience. Colours of their clothing mostly muted (white, black, grey, different shades of brown and green..). The stage is surrounded by the audience, except for an entrance to the auditorium at the back of the stage/photo.
I enjoyed this one a lot! Richard II at the Bridge Theatre. Mini thread about it follows (not spoiler-free).
Lastly, fyi for my fellow TROP fans: Nia Towle plays Ophelia in this production ;)
But: I absolutely loved the extraordinary stage design by Es Devlin. And Anton Lesser as King Hamlet/Player King was simply perfect - he had me at the very first word, and the scene with the ghost was one of the best!
The original Hamlet ending in this production is drowned out by something much bigger than the fate of a couple of people or even an entire country. Not sure if this ending would have made sense to me if I hadn't been to the Director Talk before the play..
One prominent feature of this production immediately reminded me of a similar, fascinating feature in Polly Findlay's Macbeth (2018), but I don't wanna spoil this by going into more detail :)
The new placement of To be or not to be worked really well for me, and I think everyone can interpret for themselves what this scene means - for me it was a nightmarish vision of future events, clearly precipitated by H's actions.
So yes, there are a lot of textual changes in this production, but what is "a lot" when it comes to editorial changes of Hamlet texts anyway..?
I found Rupert Goold's idea for the setting of this production very intriguing because it comes with a lot of textual and staging limitations, and it was fascinating to see how those were dealt with.
Orange flyer of "Hamlet", Royal Shakespeare Company production, on a black background. Hamlet (Luke Thallon) looks pensively and maybe a bit pained into the middle distance (his head, tinged in blue light, is turned slightly to the left). Left upper corner "RSC", right upper corner "STRATFORD-UPON-AVON 8 FEBRUARY - 19 MARCH". Left bottom corner: "HAMLET BY WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE"
Well, this was interesting. Little thread about the RSC's latest Hamlet for my fellow Shakespeare enthusiasts (spoiler-free).
Wow, this is gorgeous!
