Today was full of surprises. We went to UCLA's annual book festival to hear a few people speak about their book-writing careers. I did not expect Bob Barker to be so funny, nor Alyssa Milano to be so boring. Biggest surprise of the festival: Ray Bradbury is a passionate, passionate man. He's really a lover of loving love (not just in a romantic way, but in an everything way). His speech was really inspiring.
Gore Vidal was also another moving speaker. I did not realize what a cool dude he is. We also saw Yeardley Smith, Tom Bergeron, a brief glimpse of Brooke Shields, and we totally got Kathy Kinney's autograph. Luckily, the last event of the day (Ray Bradbury) was all about literature, and not celebrity... or I would have been depressed.
We finished off the night with a little-known author named Shakespeare. Our friend took us to see a production of Macbeth at a tiny venue named "The Banshee." Overall, the show was enjoyable because of a few key performances and fight scenes.
You wouldn't expect a large portion of the ensemble to outshine the performances of Macbeth and Lady McB, but in fact that happened in a very huge way. The actor playing Macbeth was just sort of dull, and the actress' character choice for Lady Macbeth was obvious and unintelligent. The performance of the Porter was so poor that my non-Shakespearenut boyfriend didn't realize he was supposed to be the clown of the play. Conversely, the witches were enthralling, and Lady Macduff's performance was very touching (the fact that the Macduff child was played by a ten-year-old rather than a sixteen-year-old, and was abruptly killed on-stage may have had something to do with it). Anywho, I liked that choice because it changed the dynamic of the whole scene.
And of course, Macbeth's head being impaled at the end of the play was way more awesome than I expected.
