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My daughter took me to see Kinky Boots at the Theatre Royal last Friday as a (belated) birthday treat. It was a lovely evening - we ate at Wagamama's beforehand, and ice-creamed at half time. The show was a lot of fun, very close to the movie, and some of the script changes were, I thought, improvements (I watched the DVD again on Saturday). Kayi Ushe was *fabulous* as Lola, necessarily larger-than-life on stage in a way that Chiwetel Ejiofor didn't need to be on screen.
My big problem with it all was the sound. I heard the words to Not My Father's Son, but practically nothing else, because once the cast were belting and the orchestra at full blast it was simply impossible to discern more than, oh, a quarter of the syllables being sung. I've rather got used to being able to hear the words. I'm sure it ought to be possible for a theatre's sound to work in the audience's favour, enabling us to hear the lyrics (which, after all, may carry plot along with them), but it's rare.
Ah, well.
*
First there was SkyKnit. Now there's HAT3000.
Did you see the computer-generated knitting patterns, a while back, that had been knitted up by competent but baffled knitters? Someone did the same thing with crochet (it's here), training the neural network on crocheted hat patterns. Yes.
Then, the HAT3000 proceeded to story-writing.
*
And I learned from MetaFilter (this week, but it's an old post) that Americans do not eat boiled eggs with soldiers for breakfast. I weep for the poor, lost colonials.
*
Bonus: Photos of water droplets
My big problem with it all was the sound. I heard the words to Not My Father's Son, but practically nothing else, because once the cast were belting and the orchestra at full blast it was simply impossible to discern more than, oh, a quarter of the syllables being sung. I've rather got used to being able to hear the words. I'm sure it ought to be possible for a theatre's sound to work in the audience's favour, enabling us to hear the lyrics (which, after all, may carry plot along with them), but it's rare.
Ah, well.
*
First there was SkyKnit. Now there's HAT3000.
Did you see the computer-generated knitting patterns, a while back, that had been knitted up by competent but baffled knitters? Someone did the same thing with crochet (it's here), training the neural network on crocheted hat patterns. Yes.
Then, the HAT3000 proceeded to story-writing.
*
And I learned from MetaFilter (this week, but it's an old post) that Americans do not eat boiled eggs with soldiers for breakfast. I weep for the poor, lost colonials.
*
Bonus: Photos of water droplets