Dramaturday: Entertaining Ms. Mehitabel

Well, I missed a couple days' worth of posting because things have been a mite busy at the Casa de Cutty Bark. February means two things in my life: Valentine's Day pressure to be all smooshy (hate it, hate it, hate it, I'm happily married and I STILL hate it), and an overwelming desire to start planning another redonkulously overambitious garden makeover.

In aid of the latter, I've been spending a lot of time in the hazy netherworld of B & Q (stands for Buy...a ton of overpriced jetsam and Quit...your project when you realise you measured everything wrong because you were using inches instead of centimeters, you feelthy American peeg). I could do an entire treatise on the epic unhelpfulness of the B & Q employees, but not today.

No, today is Feb 14th, so let me tell you about an actual date that I had with my actual husband: we went to the thee-ay-tuh in London proper and saw Entertaining Mr. Sloane, starring Imelda Staunton and some other people.

This is my kind of Valentine play: no hand-holding, no gooey looks, just sex, blackmail and murder. Aaah, that's better.

Most plays/musicals set the bar so high that no matter what you say afterwards to your beloved, it will sound flat and hollow and leave him wondering why you can't just occasionally give a twenty-line soliloquy in iambic hexameter comparing his left elbow to the curve of the Tiber River. After this play, all I had to say was, 'I like that tie on you,' and he was just glad that I hadn't kicked him in the bojangles.

Y'know, romantic comedy is a pernicious-yet-pervasive force in the universe, and I blame Shakespeare (or possibly the Earl of Oxford, Francis Bacon, or Queen Elizabeth I -- you take your pick). He might have had a way with a word, but he started a long and ugly chain of 'romantic' plays, then movies, that I as a woman am constitutionally required to like but DON'T.

The most obvious of Bill S's crimes is Ro & Jo, 'cause where did all that star-crossing lead? Bleah, right to things like frickin' Love Story (excuse me, I think I just threw up in my mouth a little typing that title), Titanic (Why did I see that twice, you ask? Easy: big crashy/splashy effects), and that other one, y'know the one with the all music and dancing. C'm on, it's really famous... What's it called again? Oh yeah: Breakin' 2: Electric Boogaloo!

Then ya got The Taming of the Shrew, which begat all those 'I hate you, I hate you, I love you' comedies like Sweet Home Alabama (Dear Ms. Witherspoon, yes you are very cute, but in future please remember that comedies are, by definition, supposed to be funny), that Heath Ledger one Ten Things I Hate About You (a seriously odd movie. Can't decide if your target audience is tween or adult? Split the diff and make a film that's inappropriate for BOTH!), and the over-referenced behemoth When Harry Met Sally (where there is an element of humour. See that team Alabama? It can be done!).

And what about the cross-dressing ones? As You Like It and Twelfth Night have any number of descendents, including 'real' movies like Tootsie, and not-so-real ones like Just One of The Guys (I have never seen it and as God is my witness, I never will). There are also less literal adaptions where someone pretends to be something he/she isn't like Legally Blonde (at least there's a chihuahua), She's the One (which I've only seen through a combination of its repeated cable airings and my own chronic insomnia; 90 minutes of my life that I could have spent sleeping, alas!), or the recent grotesquerie that is The House Bunny (which there is not severe enough insomnia in this world to make me sit through).

Okay, yes, Bill S. (or Earl of O., Frankie B., Queen Lizzy, whoevs), you're very cute and your plays are actually fun to watch, but does that excuse their noxious legacy? If I give Archy a piece of Stilton cheese, yes it's delicious, but is the resultant smell his fault or mine? Why did you give people the idea that if you have enough forced banter, then plot, character, pacing and motivation are superfluous?

But surely, I hear y'all saying, there cannot be a woman on earth who is truly immune to the power of romantic comedy flicks? Go on, you secretly love them, don't you? Fess up, you are planning to watch one with your honey tonight, aren't you?

Mmm...yes'n'no.

With luck, I shall watch the same flick that I watch every V-Day. Is it a romantic comedy?

Well, it's got witty, rapid-fire dialogue, a star-crossed pair from different worlds in a love that society cannot condone (R&J) , one character with a bit of a temper problem who must learn to open his heart (ToftS), and another who doesn't mind a bit of gender-bending disguise to realise his dreams (12thN/AYLI).

Yup, Silence of the Lambs it is. Happy Hannibal, everybody!