Thursday, January 29, 2009

Gertrude le Crie and Kangaroo - Jan 14th

On Wednesday the 14th I was able to get theater tickets to see 'Gertrude le Cri" at L'Odeon, a French national theater here in Paris. I invited my friend Robin, a Canadian teaching assistant, and we went to a restaurant nearby. On the menu one particular item caught my eye, Steak de Kangaroo. I'm far from vegetarian and like to think of myself as open to new things, if you don't try it you can't knock it. Kangaroo is tough meat and thanks to Robin's recommendation I had it prepared quite rare. I'm usually not a fan of too rare meat but see above. Well, when the thick slice came out I was reminded of how the French do rare. It was just barely singed around the outside, lots of pink meat inside. But who would have known...I loved it! I would certainly order it again. I started with smoked salmon, Robin had escargots and duck. We finished the meal with creme brulee...

The play however...was...rare. It was over two hours with no intermission, totally in French, had lots of nudity, male and female, and lots of long monologues. It took a lot of plot elements from "Hamlet" so I was able to follow the story fairly well, but it was just a bit too much. Luckily the play was saved by its set. Lots of double sided rolling set peices which the actors often "surfed" on top of. There were holes in the floor which actors crawled out of and dived into. An enourmous wall that fell forward towards the audience and onto an actor who was placed at just the right spot so that he would fit through the window. The coolest though was a giant mirror which was lowered into a diagonal position and reflected the backside of said wall. The wall was painted to look like the face of a building, so as the actors crawled across the floor on the wall, the action was reflected on the mirror and appeared to the audience as people scaling the side of a building. A whole scene took place like this, actors literally crawling across the floor, but appearing to climb up and down the face of a building. If it hadn't been for this exciting/ingenious climax I would have left dissapointed.