I went to see The Prince of Egypt again yesterday. Although I was really underwhelmed the first time I saw it, I appreciated that it was the very first preview and wanted to check out what had changed now that it's officially opened. My original post is obviously my first impressions which are often a bit chaotic as its initially taking everything in, whereas now I feel like I have a better grasp of what I do and don't like.
 |
| Emily Temple Cute dress, Wicked jacket, Primark shoes and socks |
I saw this fashion questionnaire on the wonderful Mermaiden's blog and knew straight away that I wanted to take part. I miss when blogs used to have fun little writing prompts, and we'd tag each other with various questions and awards (who remembers the Liebster?). It felt so much more personal as you'd feel like you got more of an insight into the person behind the blog. I also have personal reasons for wanting to do this, which is that I've felt a bit in a style rut these past few months, tending to stick to specific outfit combinations rather than experimenting, and I'm hoping that being pushed to think about things a little more might push me out of that comfort zone!
When I knew that I was going to see Mika in Utrecht I was really excited that I'd also finally be able to visit Amsterdam which has always been a place I've wanted to go! So for my second day in the Netherlands after seeing Mika I got up early and caught the train into the city. The Van Gogh Museum was first, and I knew as soon as I was going to Amsterdam that I really wanted to visit there as Van Gogh has always been one of my favourite artists. I've visited art galleries quite a lot and had seen the odd Van Gogh original before, but I still really wasn't prepared for just how much of an impact this museum would have on me.
“Instead of trying to render exactly what I have before my eyes, I use colour in order to express myself forcefully”
I was left feeling so inspired, by both his attitude and his work. Seeing his work in person and identifying the brush strokes he used from the texture is so different to seeing them through a screen or on a print. Even in the seemingly flat colours you can see his short brush strokes which seemed to be painted almost haphazardly. There’s no smoothness to his rendering, and you can distinctly see how he painted around things or he used it to convey the movement. You could even see his background sketches and the pencil guide lines he'd used to help him with perspective (something he struggled with). I'd always known that he'd started his painting career late at 27 and learnt to paint from scratch entirely self taught, but it never dawned on me that his entire painting career spanned only 10 years, and at one point he was creating one full painting a day and I just found his enthusiasm so inspiring!
Seeing so many of his paintings one after the other really allowed me to study his style and ways of working, and I love how his painting is actually fairly simplistic - it’s not about how fabric folds, or getting an exact likeness, but the larger shape of the thing. He often outlines objects which would otherwise look crude, and elements of his style are almost naive which is what I really love about it. Proportions are off and things sometimes look wonky - eyes don’t line up, the legs of a chair bow in different directions, but it’s because it's not what's important, it’s about the colour and the feeling rather than a true representation. Even the colours were often not mixed but used straight from a tube, flat colours with tones laid on top using the same paintbrush, wet paint on wet paint to mix the colours together on the canvas. He was also a huge fan of various artists of the time and studied their work for ways to improve his own unabashedly and when starting his career would even directly copy just to learn - something that's so important when learning yet is looked down on so much now.
There were a few Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec artworks as well, reminding me how much I love his work too. The whole trip just made me feel so inspired, and makes me wonder why I don’t study artists more instead of just illustrators. I have a tendency to get very caught up in things looking “right” and looking at Van Gogh’s work made me realise that I shouldn’t. I want my work to evoke a mood and a feeling which is why I restrict my colour palettes, but I now see that’s wrong, I’m reducing my art to something formulaic. I get too caught up in ideas of art style having to look “cohesive” which is such a BS modern Instagram thing and I hate it!!! I loved the paintings 'Gauguin's Chair' and 'Cypresses and Two Women' the most, I love the wonky perspective and sense of depth of the chair, and I love all of the swirly shapes in the cypresses it’s so full of life. I bought some postcards and the museum book so that I can hopefully hold on to how inspired it all made me feel, I've never wanted to pick up a paintbrush as badly as when I left!
I spent way longer than I thought I would looking at everything, the guide I'd read when planning my day reckoned it only took 1-2 hours to look around and I'd taken about 4! So I decided to have lunch at the museum, which ended up being a good choice as it was really nice fresh food and the first proper meal I'd eaten since arriving so I really appreciated it. I then walked the 1.5 miles to the Anne Frank House, which I'm not going to lie I was a bit underwhelmed by.
I don't think it helped that it was so busy, and because it relies on an audio tour everyone is moving through at the exact same pace so there's not enough room to even really see what you're looking at and it felt so claustrophobic with people that it was hard to judge the house itself as it took away from it so much. I spent most of my time there feeling like I wanted to get more out of it than I actually did, and feeling like I should be feeling sombre and mournful whilst actually feeling a bit grumpy by my lack of personal space and how sore my feet were.
I left the Anne Frank House as it was closing at 6pm, and as it was dark by then and I was so tired I didn't see the point in wandering around, so caught the train back to Utrecht.
I decided to spend my final day in Amsterdam rather than Utrecht now the Mika shows were finished, although I wasn't initially sure what I wanted to do there. I'd Googled for ideas the night before and decided to follow a tour route I'd found on Trip Advisor by myself. I had considered going on a canal tour as I really enjoyed the boat tour I did of New York, but as it rained all day I decided against it!
The walking route took me into the heart of Amsterdam and I finally saw the more touristy parts which I'd mostly avoided until then (not deliberately, it's just how it worked out!), and it ended by the Anne Frank statue which I’d somehow missed when visiting her house. I also popped by Pandora and got a new charm for my bracelet to represent my travel, an adorable little windmill!
It really was the most perfect trip. I wouldn't hesitate to go back as I'm sure there's so much more to see that I didn't have time to explore.
After I got back from seeing Mika in Luxembourg I knew I couldn't let the opportunity to see him again pass me by whatever the cost! Before I'd arranged to go to Luxembourg I'd originally been trying to decide whether to go to that show or the one in Utrecht, so I decided I'd go to both - plus attend both of the Mika shows in Utrecht because if I'm travelling that far then I may as well, right?
Yesterday I travelled down to London to see the very first preview of the stage adaptation of The Prince of Egypt. I've never been to a first preview before, so that was quite exciting in itself. I was sat second row so didn't see most of the creative team, but on my way out I saw them all running about with their notebooks and overheard them saying to each other what needed to change based on the audiences reaction. Before the show started the director Scott Schwartz came and gave a speech, and there were a couple of technical errors during the show with the set, costume, and the sound during the first act, but I loved getting to experience all of that and it'll be interesting for me to see how the musical changes and grows.
I really really wanted to like this show as it was so highly anticipated for me, but it was kinda hit and miss if I'm being completely honest. The movie is one of my all time favourite animated movies, and it's probably my most listened to movie soundtrack after Frozen. I've always respected how it adapts a religious story into something that feels relatable and non-preachy.
The first act was incredible. When it opened with Deliver Us I was moved to tears, everything about the sequence was just beautiful, and the fact that it was pretty graphic (it showed an Egyptian soldier murdering a baby, with a red scarf billowing down to indicate the blood while the mother screamed) made me feel like they weren't going to hold back at all and I had really high hopes. Perhaps too high?
Some of the costumes felt a bit off - from my second row seat I could clearly see that Moses and Ramses were wearing white jeans and t-shirts that had embroidery added to them and it just felt a bit weird? With a setting of Ancient Egypt the costumes should have been spectacular, but they felt a bit tacky for the most part. The same with the set - it was very bare bones minimal, which works for some shows, but didn't work for me here. Often times throughout I felt like the story they were trying to tell was too big for the confines of the stage and set they were trying to keep it within. It mostly relied on projections with a few 'stones' that got moved about, and the ensemble created a lot of the scenery, such as the river carrying the basket, or laying on the floor to create a well. Sometimes this worked, sometimes it didn't. The Nile turning to blood felt so anticlimactic as a bunch of dancers in red outfits jumped up out of the smoke and writhed around while someone shouted out "the Nile is turning to blood!" and it just felt a bit lame. I was expecting Moses to put his staff in the smoke and to have lighting effects make it look like the red was pooling out from it - I saw a similar effect used in Frozen with Elsa turning everything to ice, so it's doable. The Plagues in general were very underwhelming, which is a shame as it's one of my favourite scenes in the movie. I kind of get why - it's not like they can bring a load of locusts in! - but I think if I didn't already know what was happening then I'm not sure how much I would of gotten out of it, and I'm not sure how realistic it is to assume people are familiar with a Bible story in today's age.
The second act in general is where most of it fell apart for me, and until the intermission I was really enjoying it. The characterization of Moses seemed a bit weird - which isn't a comment on the actor's performance, he was incredible, it's the writing and direction. During the plagues he's running around as if he has no idea what's going on and just seemed oblivious to everything, which just doesn't make sense when he's supposed to be a messenger and have full knowledge of everything that was happening and why. He spent most of it wandering around looking horrified, his body seeming to move beyond his control as if he's possessed.
I also felt that they spent a bit too much time sympathizing the Egyptian characters. Apart from Deliver Us and the scene where Moses stops a guard from whipping a slave there isn't much depiction of what the Hebrews were going through. Which I get from the perspective that it's all pretty miserable, but they go to great lengths to show the Egyptians suffering from the plagues that Moses brought. Although the scene wasn't as graphic, there was a lot more time spent on the Egyptians losing their first born compared to the Hebrews and it just didn't feel very balanced.
Ramses was also no longer the villain and made much softer - it's all left to the High Priest Hotep to act as villain and he's the one pulling Ramses strings (Hotep also felt the most stereotypically Arab coded, so...yeah, that's a thing). After the parting of the Red Sea, Ramses and Moses have a heart to heart and they specifically state how he has a change of heart, changes his ways, and how Moses knows that he'll be the greatest Pharaoh who ever lived and I was just rolling my eyes so hard. He's supposed to grow more and more hardhearted and then get swallowed up by the Red Sea, which happens in the movie even if he does survive it - originally he's supposed to die. Obviously I don't think that it ought to be completely accurate - the movie certainly isn't! But it just felt like they'd removed it a bit too far and it was almost an entirely different story.
The choreography was insane, and probably the best I've ever seen in a show and absolutely the highlight of the whole thing. The performances all round were really strong, Yocheved (Moses' mother) was just heartbreaking, and she keeps reappearing at poignant moments as a spirit to remind Moses of his mission. Tzipporah (Moses' wife) is already a strong character in the movie, but she's fleshed out even more and I just love her, she's an incredible character and Christine did her so much justice - she also kinda looked like a human version of the animation which was cool! I liked how Liam Tamne portrayed Ramses despite my criticisms of how he's been characterized - he seemed more naive than asshole-ish, and he had a real arrogant swagger about him that just suited the character perfectly.
Although I felt critical of the minimal set, there were elements of it that I did enjoy. When the Red Sea crashes down around the Egyptian soldiers, the stage tips completely upwards which causes the soldiers to fall and roll into the orchestra pit which was a really neat effect. There were quite a few fire effects which were really well done too, and I didn't actually mind the projections, I just wish it hadn't relied on them so heavily instead of having more set.
The show ran for about three hours total, including intermission, which is pretty long for a show. I didn't mind it, but I've seen other people that were there say that they started to lose interest so I guess it's personal preference. It'll be interesting to see how it evolves, and I'm tempted to try and see it again at the end of the month after it's opened and out of previews!
Towards the end of last year Mika kicked off his Revelation tour in London, and I was so bummed that I missed it because I was in Disneyland Paris! I figured that was that, I'd missed him and would have to miss the tour, it hadn't worked out for me, etc. But then in late December when I was sorting through my journal in preparation for the new year, I came across a paragraph I'd written after I came home from New York about how "I want to be this happy again, I want to make the effort to travel to see my favourite performers instead of wishing they'd come to me. And if that means cutting back in other areas and travelling long distances for just a day or two, then I think it will be worth it. Hopefully I can make the opportunity happen again!" And all of those feelings I had at that time came flooding back to me, and I realised how daft I was being with Mika's tour. I'd travelled all the way to New York just to see Aaron Tveit, and now I only had to hop across the Channel to see Mika!