Tunesday : Science Fiction / Double Feature

Science Fiction / Double Feature

(Written by Richard O'Brien, from Rocky Horror Picture Show)

Michael Rennie was ill
The Day the Earth Stood Still
But he told us where we stand
And Flash Gordon was there
In silver underwear
Claude Rains was The Invisible Man
Then something went wrong
For Fay Wray and King Kong
They got caught in a celluloid jam
Then at a deadly pace
It Came From Outer Space
And this is how the message ran...

Science fiction (ooh ooh ooh) double feature
Doctor X (ooh ooh ooh) will build a creature
See androids fighting (ooh ooh ooh) Brad and Janet
Anne Francis stars in (ooh ooh ooh) Forbidden Planet
Wo oh oh oh oh oh
At the late night, double feature, picture show

I knew Leo G. Carroll
Was over a barrel
When Tarantula took to the hills
And I really got hot
When I saw Janette Scott
Fight a Triffid that spits poison and kills
Dana Andrews said prunes
Gave him the runes
And passing them used lots of skills
But When Worlds Collide
Said George Pal to his bride
I'm gonna give you some terrible thrills

Science fiction (ooh ooh ooh) double feature
Doctor X (ooh ooh ooh) will build a creature
See androids fighting (ooh ooh ooh) Brad and Janet
Anne Francis stars in (ooh ooh ooh) Forbidden Planet
Wo oh oh oh oh oh
At the late night, double feature, picture show
I wanna go - Oh oh oh oh
To the late night, double feature, picture show
By R.K.O. - Wo oh oh oh
To the late night, double feature, picture show
In the back row - Oh oh oh oh
To the late night, double feature, picture show

Last week we went to see a couple more shows at the Stratford Festival - a double feature as it were - and as this song served as the intro to our day of theatre, it'll serve as my intro here with no deeper meaning intended (and, yes, I could have used a more upbeat tune, but I really was looking forward to stressing the "double feature" aspect.) I should start the whole thing off by noting that Rocky Horror, the movie, is a huge favourite with the rest of my family (when discussing it over dinner later, I was totally shot down when I said, "Can we at least agree that the movie itself - without the fun audience participation - is garbage?") This love leads to this kind of dressup fandom (too bad Mal's fishnets don't show up in the bad cellphone picture; she looked pretty cute):

So, to put it mildly, they were all totally pumped to see the stage show, and I am always totally pumped to go anywhere with my whole family; and what could be more fun than singing and dancing and catcalling along? We thought the show was a whole lot of fun, but to me there was one exception: There were plants in the audience, and some of the things that they yelled out to interrupt the narrator were pretty vulgar. I understand it's an adult show, I'm only mostly a prude when it comes to entertainment, but I was brought out of the fun experience too many times not to mention it. (And, yes, the crude interruptions got their laughs, but I found it pretty lowbrow for Stratford.)

And after a lovely meal (at which I was yelled down for calling the Rocky Horror movie "garbage"), we returned to the Avon to see Coriolanus; and it was a marvel of setting and stagecraft. Coriolanus is one of the few Shakespeares that I hadn't seen performed before, had never even read it, but having now seen it in this production, I can't imagine it being done any other way. The set was a mix of hard objects and video projections, making it seamless to constantly transition between "a war camp in the countryside" and "a public place in Rome" (I can't begin to imagine how that is achieved quickly enough in a traditional staging). Even the way that the screens in the front of the stage would turn to black and slowly narrow down on the one character left weeping on the stage (for instance) was so cinematic and so impactful that you have to wonder, "Why has no one done this before?" From having some of the conversations be inside the studio of a talk radio program, to some monologues being one-sided cellphone conversations, to a moving scenery screen (like in old timey movies) showing a car driving off into exile, the director (Robert Lepage) just found every bit of meaning and sense in a lesser-loved Shakespeare play and he made art out of it. And all of that is, obviously, just the backdrop to stellar performances by the whole cast - but we had to conclude that it was probably Lepage who found the meaning for the actors to hang their craft upon. Total knockout show. Back to a highbrow experience.

And that, as we drove home near midnight, made for the most engaging of conversations; discussing with the whole family our late night, double feature, picture show.