Identical Twins in Literature, Cough Mixture and WestEnd Wilma; DIrector's Blog 36

So, the hacking Thespian Malady chose to lay me out for a day! 

And I have to admit to  getting rather high on Venos cough mixture! In fact this little virus made me stay prone all day and play on here, blogging, facebooking, tweeting. Even suggested to Phil that if he put me on Skype I could watch the show from his phone in the band stand! Mmm - he ignored this suggestion. Might have to work on that one.

Coral and Gabby have blogged for the first time today and I expect my regulars have seen their comments. The thing I liked most about what they said was just how much fun they are having with each other and the entire Team Cinderella and the fact that they feel that as well as learning a lot that they are respected.  

Both Young Company teams work very hard and without a single moan.(That I get to hear anyway!)  And Its great to watch the kids in the audience responding to them as their own peers. I imagine that quite a few of them will want to audition for next year's panto!

About blogging though, on a very serious note I am aware that most people who read my blog may not feel inclined to comment, which is of course fine! The last thing I would want to do would be to put you off your coco-pops. However if you do suddenly find yourself thinking something about the show, or wanting to ask me a question, it would be great if you did put something in the comment box. Can't guarantee that I can answer all the questions you might have, but I will give it a good go. If not I know someone who can! 

It would be really helpful too for when it comes to feeding back and putting our evaluation report together for the Council in February. It would be fantastic to be able to use such comments and quotes in this, both good and not so good.

There were also a couple of other things that came up yesterday that I found highly amusing but didn't have space to cover in my last blog, but will now attempt to do so this morning! 

The first was the extraordinary admissions by two esteemed theatre goer friends in two separate conversations that neither of them had realised until the finale walk down that Buttons and Dandini are played by the same actor! 

Go Dean, bit of a result there mate!  

Now that beats any transformation in my book (blog?) and I roared with laughter for at least ten minutes!  How could they possibly think it was two different actors, at the very least did they not have a programme to read? 

And then it gets even funnier, believe me! 

One of them who shall remain nameless, except to say she's been around Arc for a long time and is really very clever, commented that whilst she thought both actors were brilliant, she preferred the actor playing Buttons than the one playing  Dandini, feeling that the former was overall a better actor! 

Another ten minutes roaring with laughter. I think Dean and I need to sit down and have a chat over a quiet drink about this, just in case his agent gets any funny notions in his head!  And indeed budget did have something to do with Olly's ingenious solution! 

This exquisite revelation did lead me to ponder the timeless story told again and again in literature about identical twins separated at birth. Most often one living in poverty and the other in riches, until by some act of divine or human intervention they are reconciled and become one again.  

As far as I can see though there is no tradition in pantomime for Buttons and Dandini to be played as identical twins, let alone by the same actor! You see how necessity is so often the mother of invention!  But in spite of this it seems that in Olly's retelling the notion of identical twins fits seamlessly into the rags and riches narrative of the Cinderella story.

Since the beginning of recorded culture, twins have held a social fascination for us.Twins were used in ancient mythology to provide explanations for natural phenomena such as the weather and the use of twins in literature and the arts predates The Bible.

William Shakespeare of course uses the concept of twins and doubling in a number of his plays. Whether writing about actual twins in such mistaken identity comedies as The Comedy of Errors or Twelfth Night, Shakespeare never lost sight of the literary powers of twinning. 

The theme of duplicity and double dealing including the theme of twins is important in reading Shakespeare.The natural reaction many people have when seeing two twins is to think of them as one person.(although not in our case clearly!)  

For a writer like Shakespeare who was so concerned with his characters' abilities to see both themselves and the world with double vision, the irony of one person apparently being in two places at once was probably too hard to avoid using in at least a couple of his comedies. Shakespeare’s twins are certainly used for comic relief as are Oliver's! 

So it is that Olly has brought another strand of classic storytelling themes into the fabric of our Cinderella. Clever old boy really! And of course some of you who have seen the show may have spotted the hommage to Jeeves and Wooster in the combining of Buttons and Dandini.

Just for interest here are some of the other twins we love in literature.
Of course one of the most powerful musicals Blood Brothers by Willy Russell is one such story. Mr Phil, Phil H and Dean have all worked on the national touring show of Blood Brothers over the past three years!  All a bit spooky really! 

I'll  leave you this morning to have a look at the other ones I could find. I am sure there are more!

Will be in for the show today as the hacking appears to have settled, although it obviously continues on these pages! 

Oh yes and well done Sally for getting WestendWilma in to the show last night! Phil thinks he spotted him! Good to see her tweet immediately to say she had enjoyed it! 

Oh and just a little nostalgia -  early rehearsal videos of our Be a Lady  and Wonderful Day - uploaded originally for chorus learning purposes! What a journey! 

Bye for now.


Twins in Literature:

Antipholus (x2) and Dromio (x2)

For The Comedy of Errors Shakespeare took Plautus's Latin play Menaechmi, about a pair of identical twins who have been separated as children and keep being mistaken for each other, and added a second pair of identical twins. Antipholus of Ephesus and Antipholus of Syracuse have servants called (respectively) Dromio of Ephesus and Dromio of Syracuse. And they all arrive in Ephesus on the same day.

Fred and George Weasley

Older brothers of Ron Weasley, they first appear in Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone. They are pranksters whose identities are constantly confused by other characters, including their own mother. As if in imitation of Shakespeare, J K Rowling cannot resist including a second set of (female) identical twins – Padma and Parvati Patil – as pupils at Hogwarts.

Claude and Eustace Wooster

Perhaps the Weasley twins owe their love of practical jokes to Bertie Wooster's tormenting twin cousins. They pitch up at Bertie's place having been sent down from Oxford for pouring lemonade over the junior dean. When they fall in love with the same girl, Jeeves tells them she has sailed for South Africa, and they set off in pursuit.

The Cheerybles

In Dickens's Nicholas Nickleby, Charles and Ned Cheeryble are benevolent, interchangeable twins and wealthy philanthropists. Both possess "the utmost serenity of mind that the kindliest and most unsuspecting nature could bestow", and "both had lost nearly the same teeth, which imparted the same peculiarity to their speech". They rescue Nicholas and thwart the schemes of his villainous uncle.

Tweedledum and Tweedledee

Lewis Carroll got the idea for this disturbing pair from a nursery rhyme. He made them giant schoolboys who mirror each other and yet look forward to having a fight. His illustrator, John Tenniel, memorably bodied them forth.

Sam and Eric

The identical twins in Lord of the Flies are so conjoined that they become "Samneric". Together they desert nice Ralph and betray him to nasty Jack. People acting together are even worse than people on their own.

Angelica and Lily Pabst

Persse McGarrigle, virginal anti-hero of David Lodge's Small World, falls for Angelica Pabst at an academic conference. She eludes him, and much of the novel is his round-the-world quest to find her. When he tracks her down there is an ecstatic coupling, then she reveals that she is in fact Lily Pabst, a prostitute who is Angelica's identical twin. He conquers his disappointment.

Cor and Corin

In C S Lewis's The Horse and His Boy, Shasta has a dog's life, skivvying for his fisherman father, Arsheesh. One day he overhears Arsheesh selling him as a slave and confessing that he found Shasta abandoned. He runs away with a talking horse and eventually bumps into his twin, Prince Corin of Archenland. Shasta turns out to be 20 minutes older, and therefore heir to the throne.

Olivia and Victoria Henderson

Let Danielle Steel's Mirror Image be the representative for all the airport novels in which genre twins proliferate (just try Judith Krantz). Two rich, beautiful American sisters are so alike that their own father cannot tell the difference. Olivia is dutiful and Victoria is a feminist rebel, but in the end they team up and swap places: Victoria goes to France to fight the Germans, while Olivia takes over Victoria's husband, who can't tell the difference either.

Jackson and Pierrot

These unnerving nine-year-olds, miserable echoers of each other, are Briony's cousins in Ian McEwan's Atonement, dumped on her family after their mother bolts. Their joint decision to run away leads to the novel's transforming night of chaos and betrayal.