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« Books in January | Main | Unravel 2019 »

Thursday February 7, 2019

When We Have Sufficiently Tortured Each Other

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I'm a great fan of Cate Blanchett but when I heard she was appearing in a play at the NT I imagined I would never get a ticket especially as it was in the smaller Dorfman space. However, I think sales were not what they'd expected (it's not a play to everyone's taste) so we were able to book for a matinee.
This new play by Martin Crimp is 12 Variations on Samuel Richardson's Pamela and it's very ... explicit. Frankly, the original by Samuel Richardson dating from 1740 is weird enough: "A 15-year-old servant (Pamela) is approached by the master of the house, who solicits her for sex. She resists and he abducts her. Encouraged by his housekeeper, he tries and fails to rape her. More twists and turns ensue, they realise they're in love, they marry."; it was subtitled "virtue revealed". Quite beyond needing a good dose of #metoo, I suppose it could be said that these variations provide a thought provoking treatment of a totally unacceptable set of premises, through violence and (priceless) role reversals, involving bridal gowns and sex toys. Need I say more? I observe it was interesting being exposed to all this in the middle of the afternoon - emerging from the theatre under the cover of darkness might have been more suitable somehow. Saying that I enjoyed it would not sit well, but I would not have missed out on it for the world.

Limbering up for our sedate afternoon in the theatre, we spent the morning at the British Museum - last chance to see I am Ashurbanipal: Warrior. Scholar. Empire builder. King slayer. Lion hunter. Librarian.

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I think the latter role and the huge wall displays of the Library were what impressed me most - he wanted a copy of every book worth having - reams (not) of tiny cuneiform writing on small clay tablets - showing evidence of burning but surviving the destruction of the empire. It made me want to learn cuneiform - and then to my amusement there was a section at the exit of the exhibition asking for volunteers to do just that...

King Ashurbanipal of Assyria (669- 631 BC) was the most powerful man on earth - and dead keen on slaughtering lions for some reason. His reign from the city of Nineveh (now in northern Iraq) marked the high point of the Assyrian empire, which stretched from the shores of the eastern Mediterranean to the mountains of western Iran. And yet the one thing I remember from school is making a careful drawing of the trademark winged bull, with a paragraph copied from the history book saying no more than "not much is known about the Assyrians" - I guess they had not translated enough of the tablets at that time.... or they were all self-publicity:

I am Ashurbanipal,
King of the world,
King of Assyria.

[Shortly after his death, the Assyrian empire fell, Nineveh was destroyed in 612 BC, and its ruins lost to history.]

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Posted by Christina at 11:51 PM. Category: Art and Culture

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