skygiants | (no subject)

skygiants

I've been on vacation for three days now and it has been largely wonderful! I got to celebrate

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.)

Threaded | Top-Level Comments Only

From:

bookblather

My reaction to Disney Science Prince Darwin: OH MY GOD YOU'RE AN INFANT I MUST PROTECT YOU.

In other news this seems both adorable and really quite well done!

From:

davidgillon

I had a vague memory of watching a BBC series on the voyage of the Beagle, and a little googling turned up https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Voyage_of_Charles_Darwin
Gulp, 1978?

From:

kore

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!

!!! Wow!

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

//FACEDESK

-- Also WHOAH, check this out! https://www.darwinproject.ac.uk/letters/darwins-life-letters

There's some amazing online collections now -- van Gogh's letters, and Dickinson's poetry.

From:

kore

...and for the record, Jemmy is also cast very hot

OH MY GOD HE SURE IS.

From:

rushthatspeaks

Have I ever before suggested you read Period Piece, by Gwen Raverat? It is the illustrated memoir-- she was a professional illustrator-- of her Victorian childhood as Darwin's granddaughter, and it is charming and hilarious beyond description.

Honestly, based on her account of how his kids turned out, I accept Disney Science Prince Darwin as historically accurate. They were an incredibly intelligent pack of total and complete eccentrics. There is an illustration of one of her uncles sitting in the parlor under one of the dusting covers her aunt has been putting over everything, including him, that makes me laugh every time I think about it.

It is also the book that answered a major question about the Victorians for me. I had often wondered how people wrangled the complicated petticoats and so on without feeling as though they were continuously in costume and getting stained and having bits fall off. Raverat explains: they didn't. The clothes felt horribly unnatural and were difficult and aggravating even if you were born to wearing them. Makes sense, but I hadn't thought of it.

Anyway, Period Piece is one of my favorite comfort reads and, while it does not quite contain Disney Science Prince Charles Darwin, it contains his large and loving family instead.

From:

osprey_archer

I'm on the verge of shipping everyone in this play based purely on the photographs you have provided. What is it about naval uniforms? Ugh.

From:

kore

Oh, that sounds like a great book!

From:

amelia_petkova

Agreed that Jemmy's actor is very hot...but I keep getting distracted because I want that lizard puppet!

From:

nevanna

go search the AO3 to see if anybody had already written Charles Darwin/Captain Fitzroy RPF. (Nobody has.)

I KNOW THAT FEEL. Maybe for Yuletide?

From:

graycardinal

Clearly if you can get someone to turn this into a manga/anime, you will soon have Darwin/Fitzroy slash up to your eyebrows. Because obviously Puppy Dog Eyes Science Prince Darwin was born to be an anime character...

From:

luzula

This review is great breakfast reading!

Also, have you watched Creation? It's a quite angsty version of Darwin, but it does have Paul Bettany.

From:

rmc28

I have been eyeing this and wondering if I can get to it. I rather think this constitutes encouragement to do so!

From:

skygiants

He just wanted to FIND his CALLING! He knows he has the most impressive collection of beetles at school for a reason!

From:

skygiants

I saw that while fact-checking which anecdotes in the play were Real Historical Fact (not all, but a surprising number of them, as it turned out!) and now I have a terrible urge to watch it...

From:

skygiants

Digital humanities are pretty amazing! *_*

(though as a moving image archivist I always get a bit jealous of how easy historical letters are to share and publicize as opposed to our lengthy time-based video collections...)

From:

skygiants

RIGHT

From:

skygiants

! You have not, and that sounds extremely charming - I'm putting it on the library pull list right now while my Darwin Enthusiasm is still on full blast. Thank you for the rec!

From:

skygiants

I don't know but it's certainly a Thing! (The captain also had this hilarious habit of standing in a Pose with his Back to the Audience, Hands Clasped Backwards, Stern Profile In View, radiating BBC Period Drama as hard as he possibly could.)

From:

skygiants

THE PUPPETS WERE ALL SO GOOD

From:

skygiants

I feel like

innerbrat's now committed to making it happen!

From:

skygiants

All it would probably take is one contemporary TV show, honestly!

From:

skygiants

I have not, but Paul Bettany has a good track record for Age of Sail drama! (I don't actually even remember hearing about it - when did it come out?)

From:

skygiants

I'd love to hear what you think if you get there!

From:

osprey_archer

Maybe he got a tip there was a BBC talent scout in the audience that night. HIS DREAMS MIGHT FINALLY COME TRUE if only he could Radiant Sternness with a Tinge of Vulnerability just right.

From:

luzula

Imdb says 2009. It is not the movie of Darwin that I would have preferred though--I mean, I would have wanted to see him exploring on the Beagle, but in this movie he is sad about his daughter's death and worrying about his relationship with his wife, and angsting over whether/how he should publish his theories.

From:

obopolsk

My brother's dog is named Charles Darwin, and I feel like his closest human analogue might actually be Puppy-Dog Eyes Disney Science Prince Darwin.

From:

alchimie

I love Period Piece very much -- Raverat has so much affectionate snark at various parts of her childhood, plus she knows she is in a way serving as a translator, writing in 1952 about a childhood in the 1890s; in that same great clothing section rushthatspeaks mentions above, Raverat writes that she's having difficulties illustrating the book because "if I draw the people as they really were, they simply look impossible. Not quaint, or old-fashioned or uncomfortable or even ugly; but just simply impossible" -- which I think maybe says more about 1952 than about the 1890s, but I like having the double vision.

From:

copperfyre

This sounds delightful! I see no way in which I am ever going to see this, but I am so glad to know it exists! Also, those puppets are amazing.

From:

skygiants

omg, I hope your brother's dog goes on to make many important discoveries

From:

skygiants

I thought the production was going to live and die at the Natural History Museum, but surfing YouTube reveals to me that it actually started in Australia, so it's always possible it will go somewhere else next!