Second thought for the day - what do you think I was doing at 7:45 last night when Doctor Who was on.
That's right. I was watching The Book of Ebenezer La Page performed by our local am-dram club.
It was like spending two hours with your least favourite relative, as they recite banal experiences from their life. Scratch that - at least that has the personal dimension. Two hours with someone else's least favourite relative. From birth, to death, he sits in the corner of the stage telling us we had the day he got told on by a classmate, the day he dressed up for a parade, lots of news about his two aunts, who were Clarice and Cora from Gormenghast. Tiny disconnected anecdotes, none of which were particularly interesting or eventful. These short, half-minute scenes were acted out by the company.
You could even have done the life of a man where nothing happens in an intelligent way - twas Forrest Gump with fishing nets - but no. It was painfully, deliberately parochial. I don't want to be snobby about my island home, because it wasn't trying to be highbrow. It grated - yet I fully appreciated what they were trying to do. The story spans from 1880 to 1970, and I understood it as a portrait of an island as much as a man. Crabs, tomatoes, tourists. Both wars, the Occupation. Cracks about Jersey. As such, everyone was using their best "Guernsey accents" - which for non-locals, sounds something like a cockney Welshman might, with a few "cor"s and "eh"s thrown in for good measure. Ebenezer himself was a fun no-nonsense character - he actually reminded me of the "mystical Negro" cliche, dispensing his home-grown down-to-earth sensibilities with a crooked smile. Moral of the story: these young'uns don't know how good they have it! Everything's changing, but not for the best! Just like spending time with the family.
Yes, it was for us, not you. The biggest laugh of the evening involved someone taking a short cut around Chouet, the subtlety of which'd be totally lost on anyone who didn't live here. And me, because I'm unobservant and have no idea where Chouet is. In fact, I'm not sure you non-locals wold have seen the point at all. Every character, scene, scenario was very firmly linked to a place. Not Horace, but Horace from the Pollet. Not Raymond, but Raymond from L'ancresse. And the audience was packed out by merry old dears - my sister noted that she and I halved the combined age-average - who cackled raucously like a laughter track, at anything even vaguely humourous. By my book, there were some five good jokes - the regularity of the audience's reaction would put it on par with Airplane!'s 1.6 jokes a minute.
It says something that the original novel's "I would rather be a black man than a Jerseyman, me" was amended to "I would rather be a monkey than a Jerseyman, me": that's the type of evening it was, in that it was about a cosy perfect Guernsey through the ages, not a genuine all-angles portrait of how life used to be, warts and all. Even the jerrybag moment was played for laughs (jerrybag: nasty local term for girls who were friendly with the German soldiers during the Occupation. It still carries a lot of power and bad blood.)
It also says a lot: the program had the words of "Sarnia Cherie" in it, so we could sing along at the end. "Sarnia Cherie" would be our national anthem, were we actually a nation. As it is, it's a nauseatingly screechy dirge from 1911, written at a pitch that can only be sung by the aforementioned merry old dears. Yet like all anthems, it's not meant to be great music - the point is the way it grabs you by the heartstrings and gives them a sharp tug. Which it does, for me. And it was all very Dunkirk-spirit, to hear it being sung by the entire audience, especially after two hours of "aw, how lovely is our little island." I half expected to hear the Blitz going on overhead. Here's the nicest version I could find. The lyrics are on Wikipedia. Unfortunately, no version with vocals, so you can't hear fifty old women trying to make "verdure" scan.
That's right. I was watching The Book of Ebenezer La Page performed by our local am-dram club.
It was like spending two hours with your least favourite relative, as they recite banal experiences from their life. Scratch that - at least that has the personal dimension. Two hours with someone else's least favourite relative. From birth, to death, he sits in the corner of the stage telling us we had the day he got told on by a classmate, the day he dressed up for a parade, lots of news about his two aunts, who were Clarice and Cora from Gormenghast. Tiny disconnected anecdotes, none of which were particularly interesting or eventful. These short, half-minute scenes were acted out by the company.
You could even have done the life of a man where nothing happens in an intelligent way - twas Forrest Gump with fishing nets - but no. It was painfully, deliberately parochial. I don't want to be snobby about my island home, because it wasn't trying to be highbrow. It grated - yet I fully appreciated what they were trying to do. The story spans from 1880 to 1970, and I understood it as a portrait of an island as much as a man. Crabs, tomatoes, tourists. Both wars, the Occupation. Cracks about Jersey. As such, everyone was using their best "Guernsey accents" - which for non-locals, sounds something like a cockney Welshman might, with a few "cor"s and "eh"s thrown in for good measure. Ebenezer himself was a fun no-nonsense character - he actually reminded me of the "mystical Negro" cliche, dispensing his home-grown down-to-earth sensibilities with a crooked smile. Moral of the story: these young'uns don't know how good they have it! Everything's changing, but not for the best! Just like spending time with the family.
Yes, it was for us, not you. The biggest laugh of the evening involved someone taking a short cut around Chouet, the subtlety of which'd be totally lost on anyone who didn't live here. And me, because I'm unobservant and have no idea where Chouet is. In fact, I'm not sure you non-locals wold have seen the point at all. Every character, scene, scenario was very firmly linked to a place. Not Horace, but Horace from the Pollet. Not Raymond, but Raymond from L'ancresse. And the audience was packed out by merry old dears - my sister noted that she and I halved the combined age-average - who cackled raucously like a laughter track, at anything even vaguely humourous. By my book, there were some five good jokes - the regularity of the audience's reaction would put it on par with Airplane!'s 1.6 jokes a minute.
It says something that the original novel's "I would rather be a black man than a Jerseyman, me" was amended to "I would rather be a monkey than a Jerseyman, me": that's the type of evening it was, in that it was about a cosy perfect Guernsey through the ages, not a genuine all-angles portrait of how life used to be, warts and all. Even the jerrybag moment was played for laughs (jerrybag: nasty local term for girls who were friendly with the German soldiers during the Occupation. It still carries a lot of power and bad blood.)
It also says a lot: the program had the words of "Sarnia Cherie" in it, so we could sing along at the end. "Sarnia Cherie" would be our national anthem, were we actually a nation. As it is, it's a nauseatingly screechy dirge from 1911, written at a pitch that can only be sung by the aforementioned merry old dears. Yet like all anthems, it's not meant to be great music - the point is the way it grabs you by the heartstrings and gives them a sharp tug. Which it does, for me. And it was all very Dunkirk-spirit, to hear it being sung by the entire audience, especially after two hours of "aw, how lovely is our little island." I half expected to hear the Blitz going on overhead. Here's the nicest version I could find. The lyrics are on Wikipedia. Unfortunately, no version with vocals, so you can't hear fifty old women trying to make "verdure" scan.
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