The Review - Wyrd Sisters

I love reading. To be honest, though, I haven't always loved reading; it wasn't until I was 10 years old and my parents took my sister and I for a 3 month tour around Australia that I finally discovered the wonderful world of books. So there you go parents, a perfect solution to solving your kids' lack of enthusiasm for reading: stick them in a car for 6 hrs a day (provided they don't get car sick when reading I guess). Anyway, I digress... fortunately Luke shares a love of reading, although his literary diet has 100% more sci-fi books in it than mine.

After we got married, Luke and I decided it would be nice to read books aloud together. So far we have read: Harry Potter 1, 2, 3 & 4, The Hobbit, Jane Eyre, North & South, and most recently Wyrd Sisters by Terry Pratchett.

Our choice of Wyrd Sisters was based purely on the fact the Bex (Luke's sister) had been cast in a play based on the book. And we are both the kind of people who really get a kick out of reading a book and then watching the movie, or play, or whatever really. So I can now offically say I have read an entire Terry Pratchett novel.

Wyrd Sisters is essentially a spoof/parody of Shakespeare's Macbeth. Apparently Pratchett does a lot of spoofs in his Discworld series (Wyrd Sisters is one book in this series). To be honest, I'm still not quite sure what to make of Terry Pratchett's style. For one thing, I kind of got annoyed with the lack of chapters in this book! Also, he changes scenes and point of view every 2 paragraphs, which makes the storyline kind of hard to piece together, or sometimes makes it feel like there is none at all. However, to his credit, he is incredibly inventive, imaginative, and clever. I was continually amused by his creativity and wit and often found myself whole-heartedly smirking. I loved the idea of the shy standing stone and the personification of the storm that has been practising.

Anyway, believe it or not, this review is supposed to be about the play, so to remind myself of that I will post a picture of the poster:

There we are, back on track. As I mentioned previously, Bex was one of the actors in this play. She played Hwel, a character who is a parody of Shakespeare, and she did a wonderful job. I was really proud of her. The other actors were great too. Of special note were: The Fool (Cameron Langdon), the Duke (Alex Rogers), and the Dutchess (Dee Guja), along with the witches (Catherine McMechan, Helen Chesterman, Jan Maltby), who probably made me chuckle and smirk the most (although that was the same in the book). Oh, and how could I forget Tomjon (Lee Dowsett)? Anyway, it was a most enjoyable night. Simply but effectively staged. And here are some photos for your admiration:

 Rebekah is on the far right, doesn't she look the part?

The Duke and the Duchess

The fab Fool

The scheming evil black and midnight hags (aka witches)

Until next time :)