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selenakI'm in London for a few days for work-related reasons, which means a busy schedule, but every now and then I add non-work perks. Yesterday I arrived in time to still get a ticket for Six Degrees of Separation, starring, among others, Anthony Head, Stephen Greif and Stephen Pacey, so it was quite the genre event for a Buffy and Blake's 7 fan like me. :) I was very amused by the way these actors handled their credits in the program. Stephen Pacey, who played Tarrant in B7's third and fourth seaosn, didn't mention Blake's 7 at all, just as Josette Simon (who played Dayna; it was, I think, in fact her first tv job) had excluded it from her credits when I saw her in a RSC production of A Midsummer Night's Dream ages ago. On the other hand, Stephen Greif (Travis I), who was "only" around for one season, had no problem listing it. And Anthony Head gave his most famous role a place of honour. "Television includes NYPD Blue, Spooks, Doctor Who, My Family, The Invisibles, Little Britain, Manchild, Free Agents and Merlin. Anthony appeared as Rupert Giles in Buffy The Vampire Slayer, a critically acclaimed US series." Go, ASH!
The play itself I had seen about fifteen years ago in Los Angeles, but I had forgotten a lot about it, so I didn't import any biases based on other actors. Oli Abili, who plays the central role of Paul, a young conman passing himself off as Sidney Poitier's son to a rich New York couple, pulled off the charm and sincerity splendidly which are necessary so the whole thing remains plausible, and Lesley Manville, playing Ouisa, has the big emotional outburst/revelation near the end which makes the play from mostly satire to character drama and was excellent in it. As was everyone else. It was weird though to hear Anthony Head going for a New York accent, let me tell you that. He was good in his part, btw, as a man who once upon a time used to be passionate about art but has become hollow and only about the money, in his way as much a conman as Paul is, but as for American accents by British actors, I thought Stephen Greif beat him in the convincing department, fair and square.
In other news, during my flight here I read Una MacCormack's The Never-Ending Sacrifice, a Star Trek: Deep Space Nine novel which manages to be at once a media tie-in (it picks up the story of a one-shot character introduced in the second season episode Cardassians and a standalone work with incredible resonance if you have any interest at all in characters between two worlds and cultures, or stories of survivors of catastrophes for whom the euphemism "collateral damage" is all too often used. Her Rugal is a very engaging character, and she never comes up with any pat answers for him; the cameos of familiar DS9 characters like Tekeny Ghemor, Ziyal and of course Garak are great, but I found myself even more captured by her OCs and near-OCs, like Rugal's grandmother (who is a Cardassian version of Livia Drusilla if there ever was one) and his biological father, Kotan, and the painful, intense relationships between these three. Highly recommended
The play itself I had seen about fifteen years ago in Los Angeles, but I had forgotten a lot about it, so I didn't import any biases based on other actors. Oli Abili, who plays the central role of Paul, a young conman passing himself off as Sidney Poitier's son to a rich New York couple, pulled off the charm and sincerity splendidly which are necessary so the whole thing remains plausible, and Lesley Manville, playing Ouisa, has the big emotional outburst/revelation near the end which makes the play from mostly satire to character drama and was excellent in it. As was everyone else. It was weird though to hear Anthony Head going for a New York accent, let me tell you that. He was good in his part, btw, as a man who once upon a time used to be passionate about art but has become hollow and only about the money, in his way as much a conman as Paul is, but as for American accents by British actors, I thought Stephen Greif beat him in the convincing department, fair and square.
In other news, during my flight here I read Una MacCormack's The Never-Ending Sacrifice, a Star Trek: Deep Space Nine novel which manages to be at once a media tie-in (it picks up the story of a one-shot character introduced in the second season episode Cardassians and a standalone work with incredible resonance if you have any interest at all in characters between two worlds and cultures, or stories of survivors of catastrophes for whom the euphemism "collateral damage" is all too often used. Her Rugal is a very engaging character, and she never comes up with any pat answers for him; the cameos of familiar DS9 characters like Tekeny Ghemor, Ziyal and of course Garak are great, but I found myself even more captured by her OCs and near-OCs, like Rugal's grandmother (who is a Cardassian version of Livia Drusilla if there ever was one) and his biological father, Kotan, and the painful, intense relationships between these three. Highly recommended
