England V: Stratford
Aug. 27th, 2006 10:05 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
selenakAnd now instead of pretty pictures, the continuition of my ramblings. Though I must say, I need a Shakespeare icon. Preferably one showing Mr. Stewart. Be warned: gushing ahead!
Saturday morning brought it home once more that no one seems to get up early in England, since we were alone at breakfeast. Well, make that “no one among the part of the population who has holidays”. We packed and left York behind. Given that there had been ominous phrases like “the whole of Britain on the road” about this weekend, we thought we’d better start early. Incidentally: we still don’t know what exactly a “bank holiday” is. I know Kathy has explained it to me before, but I didn’t remember. Alas. The other big English mystery to us: what do the Brits do with all the wool from sheep? Because they have much more sheep than we do in Germany, and we have too much wool from sheep already (since cotton and artificial substances plus Cashmere made it near superfluous). Dad remembered the Bavarian minister of agriculture asking him whether the automotive industry couldn’t please, please use some sheep wool for stuffings (they couldn’t, because of the smell if it gets wet). So, what happens to all the wool from all the British sheep?
Visiting Warwick Castle did make it clear lots of families were around – which in turn meant lots of people in medieval costumes were, there were fights, joustings, lute players, it was absolutely adorable – and the AP stared, aghast, as a lot of them were queuing in front of the Keep. Then he realized they were queuing in front of the dungeon and its Ghost show, not in front of the state rooms and the exhibitions we wanted to see, and was a happy fellow again. The Warwick-the-Kingmaker rooms certainly would have flattered the ego of that gentleman, though I doubt he could have made that speech about rightful King Henry and ursurper Edward they have him make with a straight face, given that he was crucial in Henry’s first overthrow and just changed sides because Edward didn’t let him be the power behind the throne. (And due to Elizabeth Woodville, of course.) Then there was the late Victorian guest party exhbition, which was fun as well, and you’ve got to love the English use of quotes, as in the sign saying that the Prince of Wales (Bertie, the future Edward VII) had enjoyed his “friendship” with Daisy, Countess Warwick, for years. Leaving the keep behind, we came across a couple of eagles and falcons who looked miserable, which made us feel bad, and lots of kids in medieval plastic uniforms who had a blast, which cheered us up again.
Startford isn’t far, and the hotel that had come with the tickets I had purchased eons ago wasn’t hard to find, either – it was the Holiday Inn overlooking the Avon. We dumped our luggage and headed out on the pilgrimage. It was the fourth visit to Stratford to me, and the second one for Dad, bearing in mind that his first one was 45 years ago. So I played guide and showed him around, starting, as one must, with Shakespeare’s Birth Place in Henley Street, where we queued with a lot of Asian tourists. (This, by the way, isn’t because of any bank holiday – I’ve never been in that house without queuing with a lot of Asians, no matter the time of the year. Strangely, New Place, on the other hand, is more a magnet to Italians.) Since the last time I visited, they added cloth to cover the walls in several rooms, with patterns used for Elizabethan citizen’s houses – i.e. nothing grand enough to be called tapestry – plus a good reconstruction of John Shakespeare’s working place, complete with lots of the kind of leather (and wool!) he’d have used for making gloves. As this falls into the AP’s old line of work, he eyed the leather appreciatively. It didn’t get him a permit to take pictures within, though. Still, all the half-timber outside made him happy enough.
Next, while I narrated the story of Shakespeare’s comeback in his own country via David Garrick, and of the jubilee Garrick had organized in Stratford which drew attention to the place for the first time (my favourite detail is James Boswell wearing a hat with the inscription “Viva la Liberta” in between all the Shakespearean costumes, being at his buy-my-book-about-Corsica-already most, but my post of Boswell adoration will have to wait), we went to New Place, the house Shakespeare bought after having made some cash in London. Which has a great garden which somehow manages to create a peaceful atmosphere in the middle of all the Stratford buzz. Kudos! The same is true for the garden at Hall’s Croft, the house Shakespeare’s daughter Susannah lived in with her husband, Dr. John Hall. We looked at the Elizabethan medical instruments and shuddered in unison. This was also where the AP’s camera went out of electronic juice, so we decided to visit the other two Shakespearean places on Sunday morning, walked through Henley Street once more and encountered a mime painted all in grey who posed as Shakespeare’s ghost. Complete with little stone dog who held the plate for the coins. And here I had figured Will for a cat person.
Evening came, and with it one of my reasons for this journey: The Tempest, performed by the Royal Shakespeare Company, with Patrick Stewart as Prospero. “Young audience,” Dad said, once we had sat down in row C. By which it turned out he meant “people dressed in jeans” – he pointed out the tipsy crowd at the races had been way better dressed. I said this was Britain, where they wear jeans in theatres. Well, occasionally. Anyway, by the end of the evening, my father had deduced he had seen this Stewart fellow before and asked me distrustfully: “How old is he? He must be at least 70 if he was in you-know-what!”
The production had put the island from the Bermudas to some undefined near arctic place which worked amazingly well. It brought the dangers of a shipwreck and the lack of comfort and indeed danger of losing your life home in a way no Carribean-looking island could have, plus it subtly evoked Shackleton and/or Scott. What made the concept genius, though, was the Inuit connection and the idea of making the magic of the drama shamanistic. Patrick Stewart played Prospero as a shaman driven half-mad by his exile. Both his own ability for cruelty – viz a viz Caliban – and the fact he needs healing as much as anything else and gets it through what happens came across in a way I had not seen in an on-stage production of the Tempest before.
The central scene: Ariel’s claim that if Prospero saw Antonio, Alonso & Sebastiano, he’d be moved to pity, was countered by Prospero saying not thoughtfully, as I have seen it performed before, but angrily “dost thou think so?”, and then, when Ariel simply replied he’d be, if he was human, you got the shattering, the slow working through forgiveness, the realization he can, indeed, forgive, and Patrick Stewart did that all with his facial expressions before he finally said “and mine shall”. It was an extended silence which never was long because the audience was so entirely caught up in what was going on with Prospero.
Now I have seen male and female Ariels on stage, but never one so elementary, so not-human. What I said about how well the shamanistic background worked holds doubly true for Ariel: the scene where Antonio, Sebastiano and Alonso get tricked with food that then is spoiled by a harpy and vanishes usually comes across as something of a farce, but in this production the scene went like this: the three ghosts assisting Ariel – who functioned as a choir in other scenes and also were brilliant in the masque for Ferdinand and Miranda later – brought in a dead dolphin or mini whale, with one cut letting out blood, to the beat of drums but in silence otherwise. After initial hesitation, Antonio, Sebastiano and Alonso started to cut into the whale/dolphin, getting blood on their hands and on their mouth. And then Ariel broke out directly from the dead animal body, as part of it, all blood and bones himself. Instead of a tired old laugh, this got the audience to feel terror and shock just as the guilty trio had to. Finally, once the three have run off crazed, Prospero speaks his final pre-curtain words about having all his enemies at his power, and as he touches the fish, his hands are now bloody as well.
Other images which will remain with me: Prospero’s conjuring of his power „ye elves etc.“, going from the enjoyment of his magic to the promise to abandon it, and here Stewart didn’t go into a best-of-Shakespeare recital of one of the more famous monologues but managed to make Prospero a counterpoint to Faust. He’s in despair and tears, lying on the floor in classic penitent pose when he comes to “I’ll drown my books, I’ll break my staff”, and you feel it’s not just a sacrifice to Prospero but the penitence for his own guilt which he has to go through. Then there’s Antonio not accepting the offer of reconciliation – the director clearly read W.H. Auden – and Prospero forgiving him anyway, which reminded me that this must be the only time where an unrepentant Shakespearean villain gets forgiven. And it’s important that Prospero does that, because the production parallels his own actions towards Caliban with what Antonio did to him.
Sunday meant leaving Stratford – though we’ll be back for Antony and Cleopatra - after we went to Anne Hathaway’s cottage and Mary Arden’s farm. The cottage with its reed roof produced photographic ecstasies in my father again, and as we were the earliest visitors, we got a lot of explanations in the living room and the kitchen. Now as mentioned I had been there before, repeatedly, but there was still a lot new to me, as the fact the house actually belonged to the Hathaway family until the late 19th century. For a not-noble, not-rich family to hold on to a house for centuries has to be amazing. I was in a fairy tale mood, so the oven put me in mind of Hänsel and Gretel, and the spinning wheel of Sleeping Beauty.
Next we went to Blenheim Castle, which was build by the same architect who created Castle Howard, John Vanbrugh. I take it John Churchill, the first Duke of Marlborough, thought after his victory over some French generals he’d have to score not just against Louis but the Earl of Carlisle as well, building-wise. Anyway, I had seen the place on film before, since Kenneth Branagh used it as a location for Hamlet, and it is a not exactly mini Versailles, showing off in ocre against splendid English gardens, and showing off inside as well. Now there was a lot of information about the first Duke in the various exhibitions, but I couldn’t help but notice there was no mention of him first coming into cash and some notice by being Barbara Villiers’ boytoy. (Barbara the most notorious of Charles II’s mistresses.) Similarly, there was a lot of material about the most famous Churchill of them all, Winston, who was born at the place, after all, but it mysteriously had the great gap between young Winston reporting from South Africa and Winston C., legend, during WWII. Pity. I think historical figures come much more alive when you show their flaws or not so successful periods as well, and my favourite pro-Churchill description comes from a letter by T.E. Lawrence to Charlotte Shaw (who couldn’t stand the guy politically). Lawrence wrote during the 20s when Churchill wasn’t “Churchill” yet and was indeed regarded as a has been and something of a failure in some quarters, and it’s a very vivid, very endearing description defending him which I wish I could quote by heart.
(My favourite anti-Churchill description of the man is from a letter as well, and much shorter: Nancy Mitford writes to Evelyn Waugh in the early 50s that “Winston gets more like Tom every day - you can hardly tell them apart”; to get the full implication you have to know that Tom is Nancy’s brother-in-law Oswald Mosley, aka the leader of the British Fascists pre-WWII.)
Not wishing to see ferrets or hamsters, we skipped the tents outside on the grounds and went to Oxford. I’ll get the great tour from![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
wychwood tomorrow, so we just strolled around between the colleges, and I hit the bookstores. Then we walked at the shores of the Thames and I proved to Dad there was a connection between Christopher Marlowe and Philip Marlowe. (To wit, Raymond Chandler going to the college which Edward Alleyn who had played the original Dr. Faustus had founded.) “Show-off,” he said. “Guilty as charged,” said I.
Saturday morning brought it home once more that no one seems to get up early in England, since we were alone at breakfeast. Well, make that “no one among the part of the population who has holidays”. We packed and left York behind. Given that there had been ominous phrases like “the whole of Britain on the road” about this weekend, we thought we’d better start early. Incidentally: we still don’t know what exactly a “bank holiday” is. I know Kathy has explained it to me before, but I didn’t remember. Alas. The other big English mystery to us: what do the Brits do with all the wool from sheep? Because they have much more sheep than we do in Germany, and we have too much wool from sheep already (since cotton and artificial substances plus Cashmere made it near superfluous). Dad remembered the Bavarian minister of agriculture asking him whether the automotive industry couldn’t please, please use some sheep wool for stuffings (they couldn’t, because of the smell if it gets wet). So, what happens to all the wool from all the British sheep?
Visiting Warwick Castle did make it clear lots of families were around – which in turn meant lots of people in medieval costumes were, there were fights, joustings, lute players, it was absolutely adorable – and the AP stared, aghast, as a lot of them were queuing in front of the Keep. Then he realized they were queuing in front of the dungeon and its Ghost show, not in front of the state rooms and the exhibitions we wanted to see, and was a happy fellow again. The Warwick-the-Kingmaker rooms certainly would have flattered the ego of that gentleman, though I doubt he could have made that speech about rightful King Henry and ursurper Edward they have him make with a straight face, given that he was crucial in Henry’s first overthrow and just changed sides because Edward didn’t let him be the power behind the throne. (And due to Elizabeth Woodville, of course.) Then there was the late Victorian guest party exhbition, which was fun as well, and you’ve got to love the English use of quotes, as in the sign saying that the Prince of Wales (Bertie, the future Edward VII) had enjoyed his “friendship” with Daisy, Countess Warwick, for years. Leaving the keep behind, we came across a couple of eagles and falcons who looked miserable, which made us feel bad, and lots of kids in medieval plastic uniforms who had a blast, which cheered us up again.
Startford isn’t far, and the hotel that had come with the tickets I had purchased eons ago wasn’t hard to find, either – it was the Holiday Inn overlooking the Avon. We dumped our luggage and headed out on the pilgrimage. It was the fourth visit to Stratford to me, and the second one for Dad, bearing in mind that his first one was 45 years ago. So I played guide and showed him around, starting, as one must, with Shakespeare’s Birth Place in Henley Street, where we queued with a lot of Asian tourists. (This, by the way, isn’t because of any bank holiday – I’ve never been in that house without queuing with a lot of Asians, no matter the time of the year. Strangely, New Place, on the other hand, is more a magnet to Italians.) Since the last time I visited, they added cloth to cover the walls in several rooms, with patterns used for Elizabethan citizen’s houses – i.e. nothing grand enough to be called tapestry – plus a good reconstruction of John Shakespeare’s working place, complete with lots of the kind of leather (and wool!) he’d have used for making gloves. As this falls into the AP’s old line of work, he eyed the leather appreciatively. It didn’t get him a permit to take pictures within, though. Still, all the half-timber outside made him happy enough.
Next, while I narrated the story of Shakespeare’s comeback in his own country via David Garrick, and of the jubilee Garrick had organized in Stratford which drew attention to the place for the first time (my favourite detail is James Boswell wearing a hat with the inscription “Viva la Liberta” in between all the Shakespearean costumes, being at his buy-my-book-about-Corsica-already most, but my post of Boswell adoration will have to wait), we went to New Place, the house Shakespeare bought after having made some cash in London. Which has a great garden which somehow manages to create a peaceful atmosphere in the middle of all the Stratford buzz. Kudos! The same is true for the garden at Hall’s Croft, the house Shakespeare’s daughter Susannah lived in with her husband, Dr. John Hall. We looked at the Elizabethan medical instruments and shuddered in unison. This was also where the AP’s camera went out of electronic juice, so we decided to visit the other two Shakespearean places on Sunday morning, walked through Henley Street once more and encountered a mime painted all in grey who posed as Shakespeare’s ghost. Complete with little stone dog who held the plate for the coins. And here I had figured Will for a cat person.
Evening came, and with it one of my reasons for this journey: The Tempest, performed by the Royal Shakespeare Company, with Patrick Stewart as Prospero. “Young audience,” Dad said, once we had sat down in row C. By which it turned out he meant “people dressed in jeans” – he pointed out the tipsy crowd at the races had been way better dressed. I said this was Britain, where they wear jeans in theatres. Well, occasionally. Anyway, by the end of the evening, my father had deduced he had seen this Stewart fellow before and asked me distrustfully: “How old is he? He must be at least 70 if he was in you-know-what!”
The production had put the island from the Bermudas to some undefined near arctic place which worked amazingly well. It brought the dangers of a shipwreck and the lack of comfort and indeed danger of losing your life home in a way no Carribean-looking island could have, plus it subtly evoked Shackleton and/or Scott. What made the concept genius, though, was the Inuit connection and the idea of making the magic of the drama shamanistic. Patrick Stewart played Prospero as a shaman driven half-mad by his exile. Both his own ability for cruelty – viz a viz Caliban – and the fact he needs healing as much as anything else and gets it through what happens came across in a way I had not seen in an on-stage production of the Tempest before.
The central scene: Ariel’s claim that if Prospero saw Antonio, Alonso & Sebastiano, he’d be moved to pity, was countered by Prospero saying not thoughtfully, as I have seen it performed before, but angrily “dost thou think so?”, and then, when Ariel simply replied he’d be, if he was human, you got the shattering, the slow working through forgiveness, the realization he can, indeed, forgive, and Patrick Stewart did that all with his facial expressions before he finally said “and mine shall”. It was an extended silence which never was long because the audience was so entirely caught up in what was going on with Prospero.
Now I have seen male and female Ariels on stage, but never one so elementary, so not-human. What I said about how well the shamanistic background worked holds doubly true for Ariel: the scene where Antonio, Sebastiano and Alonso get tricked with food that then is spoiled by a harpy and vanishes usually comes across as something of a farce, but in this production the scene went like this: the three ghosts assisting Ariel – who functioned as a choir in other scenes and also were brilliant in the masque for Ferdinand and Miranda later – brought in a dead dolphin or mini whale, with one cut letting out blood, to the beat of drums but in silence otherwise. After initial hesitation, Antonio, Sebastiano and Alonso started to cut into the whale/dolphin, getting blood on their hands and on their mouth. And then Ariel broke out directly from the dead animal body, as part of it, all blood and bones himself. Instead of a tired old laugh, this got the audience to feel terror and shock just as the guilty trio had to. Finally, once the three have run off crazed, Prospero speaks his final pre-curtain words about having all his enemies at his power, and as he touches the fish, his hands are now bloody as well.
Other images which will remain with me: Prospero’s conjuring of his power „ye elves etc.“, going from the enjoyment of his magic to the promise to abandon it, and here Stewart didn’t go into a best-of-Shakespeare recital of one of the more famous monologues but managed to make Prospero a counterpoint to Faust. He’s in despair and tears, lying on the floor in classic penitent pose when he comes to “I’ll drown my books, I’ll break my staff”, and you feel it’s not just a sacrifice to Prospero but the penitence for his own guilt which he has to go through. Then there’s Antonio not accepting the offer of reconciliation – the director clearly read W.H. Auden – and Prospero forgiving him anyway, which reminded me that this must be the only time where an unrepentant Shakespearean villain gets forgiven. And it’s important that Prospero does that, because the production parallels his own actions towards Caliban with what Antonio did to him.
Sunday meant leaving Stratford – though we’ll be back for Antony and Cleopatra - after we went to Anne Hathaway’s cottage and Mary Arden’s farm. The cottage with its reed roof produced photographic ecstasies in my father again, and as we were the earliest visitors, we got a lot of explanations in the living room and the kitchen. Now as mentioned I had been there before, repeatedly, but there was still a lot new to me, as the fact the house actually belonged to the Hathaway family until the late 19th century. For a not-noble, not-rich family to hold on to a house for centuries has to be amazing. I was in a fairy tale mood, so the oven put me in mind of Hänsel and Gretel, and the spinning wheel of Sleeping Beauty.
Next we went to Blenheim Castle, which was build by the same architect who created Castle Howard, John Vanbrugh. I take it John Churchill, the first Duke of Marlborough, thought after his victory over some French generals he’d have to score not just against Louis but the Earl of Carlisle as well, building-wise. Anyway, I had seen the place on film before, since Kenneth Branagh used it as a location for Hamlet, and it is a not exactly mini Versailles, showing off in ocre against splendid English gardens, and showing off inside as well. Now there was a lot of information about the first Duke in the various exhibitions, but I couldn’t help but notice there was no mention of him first coming into cash and some notice by being Barbara Villiers’ boytoy. (Barbara the most notorious of Charles II’s mistresses.) Similarly, there was a lot of material about the most famous Churchill of them all, Winston, who was born at the place, after all, but it mysteriously had the great gap between young Winston reporting from South Africa and Winston C., legend, during WWII. Pity. I think historical figures come much more alive when you show their flaws or not so successful periods as well, and my favourite pro-Churchill description comes from a letter by T.E. Lawrence to Charlotte Shaw (who couldn’t stand the guy politically). Lawrence wrote during the 20s when Churchill wasn’t “Churchill” yet and was indeed regarded as a has been and something of a failure in some quarters, and it’s a very vivid, very endearing description defending him which I wish I could quote by heart.
(My favourite anti-Churchill description of the man is from a letter as well, and much shorter: Nancy Mitford writes to Evelyn Waugh in the early 50s that “Winston gets more like Tom every day - you can hardly tell them apart”; to get the full implication you have to know that Tom is Nancy’s brother-in-law Oswald Mosley, aka the leader of the British Fascists pre-WWII.)
Not wishing to see ferrets or hamsters, we skipped the tents outside on the grounds and went to Oxford. I’ll get the great tour from
wychwood tomorrow, so we just strolled around between the colleges, and I hit the bookstores. Then we walked at the shores of the Thames and I proved to Dad there was a connection between Christopher Marlowe and Philip Marlowe. (To wit, Raymond Chandler going to the college which Edward Alleyn who had played the original Dr. Faustus had founded.) “Show-off,” he said. “Guilty as charged,” said I.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2006-08-27 08:22 pm (UTC)When I was in Oxford, I saw a friend play Faustus in a production using a mixture of texts, not always successfully; but the most moving moment came at the end, when Faustus delivered those words of Prospero to Mephistopheles, moving into the final appeal from the epilogue: "Let your indulgence set me free." But Mephisto shook his head.
no subject
Date: 2006-08-27 08:35 pm (UTC)As for bank holidays - we can't figure out exactly what they are, either.
no subject
Date: 2006-08-27 08:45 pm (UTC)oh, whee! i remember discussing that scene when I taught that play, and the class discussion settling on that as the key exchange. There's so much potential interpretation with that text which makes it one of my favorites to use in the classroom. I've sadly never seen an even marginally good production, though that makes it almost more fun to think about the possibilities, since I don't have any fixed views of it in my mind.
Thanks so very much for sharing this writeup!
To change the subject completely, I saw the season 3 finale of "Babylon 5" last night and was amused at the extent to which Mr. Morden = Harry Lime. When he was giving his big reveal-y speech, I kept waiting for him to say "cuckoo clock."
and I was just thinking I need a Stewart icon too, but don't have one to hand, Shakespeare themed or otherwise.
finally. . .
Not wishing to see ferrets or hamsters, we skipped the tents outside on the grounds --
I'm almost afraid to ask but doing it anyway. FERRETS?
no subject
Date: 2006-08-27 09:31 pm (UTC)Lawrence did like Churchill. The two of them, with Gertrude Bell, have to bear some responsibility for what's going on in the Middle East, though.
And I never think of Mosley when I see the name "Tom" in Nancy Mitford's letters, but of her brother Tom Mitford, who died in 1945 in Burma. But you probably are right on which Tom it is.
So will you fit in London in-between plays at Straford?
no subject
Date: 2006-08-27 09:45 pm (UTC)For a not-noble, not-rich family to hold on to a house for centuries has to be amazing.
I... actually think that in pre-modern country areas, that probably wouldn't be that uncommon. Isolated farms, and so on. I know you get a lot of continuity in villages, over a century or two. Mostly for the better-off yeoman farmers and so on, though, you're right - and most of all for the actual upper classes, naturally.
no subject
Date: 2006-08-28 05:35 am (UTC)One thing that might interest you is that there was a production of MacBeth up here a while back in which the whole production was moved to Southeast Alaska, home of the Tlingit Indians. I wasn't able to see it, unfortunately, but it got uniformly rave reviews. The use of Tlingit symbolism, religion and culture actually worked very well. I really wish I'd been able to see it.
no subject
Date: 2006-08-28 06:03 am (UTC)Also, that MacBeth sounds fascinating!
no subject
Date: 2006-08-28 06:23 am (UTC)There were several moments where Ariel paralleld/contrasted Mephisto in this production, too.
no subject
Date: 2006-08-28 06:28 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-08-28 06:36 am (UTC)Morden: well, there is one significant difference. Harry Lime is a cynic. Morden is an ideologue. He does believe in the Shadow's cause as fervently as, say, Lyta believes in the Vorlons at this stage. Also, while Orson improvising the cuckoo clock speech is one of the high points of the film, I don't think The Third Man implies he's right, whereas neither Morden nor the rest of the gang are lying to Sheridan. They're putting a self serving spin on, of course, but they're not lying, and Morden's "when you look at a Vorlon, you see what they want you to see" was shown to be factually correct in s2 already if you recall. Bear the fact that this is an ideological war between Vorlons and Shadows in mind, it's going to be important in s4.
no subject
Date: 2006-08-28 06:39 am (UTC)Responsibility: true.
London: after Stratford, yes, on the 31st. I'll try to see your friend, but can't promise yet, hence haven't called him yet.
You interviewed Ian McKellen? Fabulous!
no subject
Date: 2006-08-28 01:44 pm (UTC)Ooh, I hadn't thought of that one. I was rather pleased when I realised Sisko was a ringer for Aeneas, but likewise I discovered it was all over the internet already.
no subject
Date: 2006-08-28 06:44 pm (UTC)Found a picture of regent's canal to tempt you re: London:
no subject
Date: 2006-08-29 07:07 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-08-29 03:43 pm (UTC)*utterly BRILLIANT