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Jan. 21st, 2019 04:29 pmI've been on vacation for three days now and it has been largely wonderful! I got to celebrate ![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
raven's birthday at brunch with happydork and such_heights and various others, and get dinner with aella_irene, and today innerbrat and I have arrived in Amsterdam and got frites and fondue and free cider (not all at once) and also did some museuming!
Also, yesterdayinnerbrat and I went to go see a show called The Wider Earth at the Natural Science Museum in London, because Debi used to work there and I'm always intrigued by the notion of 'weird theater with puppets.'
I wasn't at all sure whether this was going to be a Play or an Informational Travelogue About Darwin's Naturalist Adventures, but it was very definitely a Play and overall one that we were glad we decided to see! The puppetry for the various creatures that Darwin encounters on his voyage is legitimately gorgeous - here's a trailer that gives something of a taste - and the music was ... charmingly unsubtle? Okay, imagine basically Ariel singing her "aaaah-ahhh-ahhhhhh" in Disney's The Little Mermaid, except instead it's a tenor, and that's the Music of Scientific Wonder and Romance that plays in the background every time Darwin is doing something important.
Which is appropriate really because Darwin himself is very much played as a puppy-eyed Disney Science Prince, who just wants the opportunity to become the naturalist that he knows he is inside! Early on he goes and flings himself down woefully at [future wife] Emma's feet:
EMMA: We've been protesting for the abolition of slavery!
DARWIN: Yes and talking of slavery, my FATHER is PRACTICALLY keeping me a slave in the house --
innerbrat and I: [look at each other with YIKES faces]
BUT IN FACT, much to our surprise, this turns out to be foreshadowing, as the show goes on to lean pretty hard into issues of slavery and colonialism and how those things are intertwined with the nineteenth-century theological worldview that the advance of scientific knowledge is in the process of disrupting!
This is voiced most prominently through the character of Robert Fitzroy, captain of the Beagle, who --
-- okay, so we hit the intermission, and the very first thing thatinnerbrat did was go search the AO3 to see if anybody had already written Charles Darwin/Captain Fitzroy RPF. (Nobody has.) The thing is, first of all, Puppy-Dog Eyes Disney Science Prince Darwin and Angsty Captain Fitzroy are both cast quite hot (Fitzroy's the visibly angsty one here), and second of all, the soundtrack insists on cuing up the Music of Scientific Wonder and Romance for all their positive interactions, and third of all, they spend the entire show having intense philosophical arguments and then making up, and throwing their arms around each other during life-threatening storms, and then Fitzroy names a mountain after Darwin, and then Darwin's like "I see you're having a crisis of conscience and are going to resign your commission, so I've decided that this time ashore is dedicated to inspiring YOU, specifically, by proving that I, specifically, can make it Meaningful! Look, I brought you a seashell!" and various Significant Repetitions of "I respect you even though I know in my heart that you're wrong!"
... however, as hilarious as is this show's earnest commitment to Emotional Tension On The Good Ship Beagle, I do think we are probably by this point well past "We Can Respect This Man For His Strong Beliefs While Knowing They're Wrong" when those strong beliefs are Ah, Yes, The White Man's Burden.
Still, I do remain impressed that this one-off show about Darwin at the Natural Science Museum did emphasize the topics and the historical beliefs of the people involved; I also liked the way the show left space for the story of Jemmy Button, the native Fuegian essentially kidnapped by Fitzroy for the purpose of "civilization" who's being returned to Terra del Fuego on the Beagle to start a mission there, and gives that character voice and opportunity to complicate the things that are being said about and around him.
...and for the record, Jemmy is also cast very hot, and has a number of quite significant scenes with Puppy-Dog Eyes Disney Science Prince Darwin before vanishing from the production in accordance with his historical return to Tierra del Fuego, so if you want shipboard romance for Disney Science Prince Darwin that isn't a hot but extremely Victorian Racist sea captain there is an alternative.
(My actual favorite scene, though, is probably when Puppy-Dog Eyes Disney Science Prince Darwin attempts to cheer up the ship's priest from a crisis of faith by explaining to him the proto-theory of natural selection, and then is utterly taken aback when this instead traumatizes the priest to his core. YOU TRIED, DISNEY SCIENCE PRINCE DARWIN.)
raven's birthday at brunch with happydork and such_heights and various others, and get dinner with aella_irene, and today innerbrat and I have arrived in Amsterdam and got frites and fondue and free cider (not all at once) and also did some museuming! Also, yesterday
innerbrat and I went to go see a show called The Wider Earth at the Natural Science Museum in London, because Debi used to work there and I'm always intrigued by the notion of 'weird theater with puppets.'I wasn't at all sure whether this was going to be a Play or an Informational Travelogue About Darwin's Naturalist Adventures, but it was very definitely a Play and overall one that we were glad we decided to see! The puppetry for the various creatures that Darwin encounters on his voyage is legitimately gorgeous - here's a trailer that gives something of a taste - and the music was ... charmingly unsubtle? Okay, imagine basically Ariel singing her "aaaah-ahhh-ahhhhhh" in Disney's The Little Mermaid, except instead it's a tenor, and that's the Music of Scientific Wonder and Romance that plays in the background every time Darwin is doing something important.
Which is appropriate really because Darwin himself is very much played as a puppy-eyed Disney Science Prince, who just wants the opportunity to become the naturalist that he knows he is inside! Early on he goes and flings himself down woefully at [future wife] Emma's feet:
EMMA: We've been protesting for the abolition of slavery!
DARWIN: Yes and talking of slavery, my FATHER is PRACTICALLY keeping me a slave in the house --
innerbrat and I: [look at each other with YIKES faces]BUT IN FACT, much to our surprise, this turns out to be foreshadowing, as the show goes on to lean pretty hard into issues of slavery and colonialism and how those things are intertwined with the nineteenth-century theological worldview that the advance of scientific knowledge is in the process of disrupting!
This is voiced most prominently through the character of Robert Fitzroy, captain of the Beagle, who --
-- okay, so we hit the intermission, and the very first thing that
innerbrat did was go search the AO3 to see if anybody had already written Charles Darwin/Captain Fitzroy RPF. (Nobody has.) The thing is, first of all, Puppy-Dog Eyes Disney Science Prince Darwin and Angsty Captain Fitzroy are both cast quite hot (Fitzroy's the visibly angsty one here), and second of all, the soundtrack insists on cuing up the Music of Scientific Wonder and Romance for all their positive interactions, and third of all, they spend the entire show having intense philosophical arguments and then making up, and throwing their arms around each other during life-threatening storms, and then Fitzroy names a mountain after Darwin, and then Darwin's like "I see you're having a crisis of conscience and are going to resign your commission, so I've decided that this time ashore is dedicated to inspiring YOU, specifically, by proving that I, specifically, can make it Meaningful! Look, I brought you a seashell!" and various Significant Repetitions of "I respect you even though I know in my heart that you're wrong!"... however, as hilarious as is this show's earnest commitment to Emotional Tension On The Good Ship Beagle, I do think we are probably by this point well past "We Can Respect This Man For His Strong Beliefs While Knowing They're Wrong" when those strong beliefs are Ah, Yes, The White Man's Burden.
Still, I do remain impressed that this one-off show about Darwin at the Natural Science Museum did emphasize the topics and the historical beliefs of the people involved; I also liked the way the show left space for the story of Jemmy Button, the native Fuegian essentially kidnapped by Fitzroy for the purpose of "civilization" who's being returned to Terra del Fuego on the Beagle to start a mission there, and gives that character voice and opportunity to complicate the things that are being said about and around him.
...and for the record, Jemmy is also cast very hot, and has a number of quite significant scenes with Puppy-Dog Eyes Disney Science Prince Darwin before vanishing from the production in accordance with his historical return to Tierra del Fuego, so if you want shipboard romance for Disney Science Prince Darwin that isn't a hot but extremely Victorian Racist sea captain there is an alternative.
(My actual favorite scene, though, is probably when Puppy-Dog Eyes Disney Science Prince Darwin attempts to cheer up the ship's priest from a crisis of faith by explaining to him the proto-theory of natural selection, and then is utterly taken aback when this instead traumatizes the priest to his core. YOU TRIED, DISNEY SCIENCE PRINCE DARWIN.)
