Quills

Hello dear reader. It pains me to break from the norm of this site but I feel a need to address you formally as the loyal, consistent members of 'edardaily' that you have been. You may have noticed a change in this site's policies as of late, one that stems towards everything my original aim directed against. For those of you new to my humble area of the internet, 'Edar' was set up as a way of backlashing against the typical review structure of our modern periodicals, to give credence and substance to the life which is exerted in everything around us, not just the typical forms of media. In that way I thought it best to give to you tongue-in-cheek situational reviews of the most mundane aspects of the World I perceived around me. Recently, these have devolved into my giving over to members of the Horse-Twattersley family members' theatrical reviews which have become nothing more than ridiculously immoral and peverse characterised satirisations of the English upper classes. 

Well, I can't do it anymore. I need to claw this blog back from the dark depths it has been dragged to, these preposterous facsimiles of human subject must be reigned in to regain me some level of resp...hnnnngkkkurrrgh.....skkkrrruuuughhhnkk...Neiighhhhhh..skkkrrruuueeergghh...familiarity with my own, wait....what? What the sh...skkkrruuuggg....Brrrrggghhhh.....Hello reader! Welcome to 'Quills'. A play written about the Marquis De Sade, Produced by Stoke Newington's very own Second Skin Theatre. The owner of this blog doesn't know it yet, but I, Night's Rapture, am pleased to present to you my very own review , one that aims to finally set to rest...noooo, no please, I look ridiculous enough already, please, I can't have a horse doing a review. They don't even make keyboards big enough to accommodate hooves. This is just ridicu...Brrrrgghhhhgh...I think you'll find, Mr Reviewer, that I was personally invited along to give my esteemed opinion on this production, and I shall not be swayed on this. My relationship with Lady Cytherea Horse-Twattersly has been the subject of much conversation these past few months, and I must be allowed my voice. Dearest reader, enjoy!

Night's Rapture, in his glory days.

It's not easy being a horse. Oh my God, that is the singularly worst start to a review ever...Ahem, as I said, it isn't easy being a horse. For all our brute strength, speed and tenacity of spirit, we have allowed you humans to enslave us as tools of your own progression. In the past we towed your farming equipment and conquered the Wild West for your personal gains, now we jump over little hedges, chase down foxes and prance about like little ninnies for your entertainment. We've shaped the modern World as you know it from Mongolia to Montreal and how do you repay us? Bales of hay and the odd sugar-lump here and there. Now, correct me if I'm wrong, but that's not entirely fair is it? You refer to dogs as 'Man's best friend', but what have they ever actually done for you? Those yappy little bastards get all the credit for...right, a whole paragraph and you haven't mentioned the play once...I'm getting round to that. Hold your horses mate. Heh heh heh.

So it was with great pleasure that I received my invitation to The White Rabbit's basement production of Second Skin Theatre's 'Quills' on that drizzly October night in Stoke Newington's famous Church Street. I trotted down the steps and settled myself into one of the the cosily positioned pews almost within the stage. This wasn't the first play I had attended, in my mortal life  Lady Cytherea had dragged me along to various Women's Institute performances of Anne Yearsley and Adrienne Kennedy productions in spacious yet for the most part empty Church halls. For the first time I realised the ability of Fringe theatre to accommodate the smallest area into a thriving venue, contorting the restrictions of space into an intimate evening wherein the audience feels more a part of the action than ever. Also, the fact that it's been nearly two decades since my death means I possess no earthly body and was able to float ephemerally above the other audience members, causing no actual discomfort to myself or others around me.

As the lights rose the stage was revealed and it has to be said, the limitations of space did nothing to sway the stage design's ability to place the audience within the office of the head of the Chanterem Asylum as he discusses with the Marquis de Sade's wife the suggestion of silencing his blasphemous works to retain her own honour. On a personal level, the actress playing the part of the wife gave one of the most stellar performances I have ever seen, perfectly representing in the most humourus way these ladies of supposed high-class who would so shamelessly use her own husband's wealth to protect their image. Oh, Lady Cytherea, I could almost envisage your own twisted features on that actresses head; utilising your womanly wiles to contort and betray the ugly truth of what lay beneath your own reserved and haughty exterior. But, in the immortal words of her own son and heir, Terrence, I digress.

This totally doesn't even happen in the play

The performances of the entire cast continued in an equally memorable and wonderful fashion, but especially prominent was that of  the actor playing the Marquis de Sade. With all the passion and natural exuberance of a roaring steed he burst onto the stage and so began the play's diatribe to the injustice and torment suffered by the protagonists real life counterpart. But not only was his performance so well devised, due in no small part to the writing and direction of the production, because of its pertinence to the real life story of the Marquis de Sade, but also for the memories it invoked within my ethereal being. Now, reader, I must confess two things to your good selves. Firstly, my life was one of torment almost tantamount to that of this play's hero. My true desires, as to those of the Marquis' with that of the seductress maid played by the fantastic 'Nika Khitrova', were usurped and denied by a bitter, twisted old hag such as the Marquis' wife. Secondly, Lady Cytherea Horse-Twattersley is a lying, deceitful, selfish, murderous whore of a...this had better not be going where I think it's going. Please, my mum reads this stuff...Silence! I will have my say.

For you must understand, dear reader, that for all the sordid although ultimately reticent deeds I was forced to perform with that old hag, it was my only wish that it was the man of the house, Sergeant Edmund, who showed me such tenderness. Witnessing that actor's fully fronted nakedness brought back such wondrous images of lonely nights, grazing the Twattersly ground's pastures and casting my fleeting glimpses towards the manor windows, where he would be stood at the window of their bedroom, resplendent in all his glory. If you could only understand the pain and longing that pervaded the days at the stables with her, stroking my mane and playing with my fetlocks as I wished her husband would do. The final insult, when I thought my eventual death could finally lead me to rest, was her last unscrupulous deed. She cut off my horsehood and kept it safe in a jar on her own private mantle piece, using it to her own terrible deeds and entrenching me within this infinite hell.

If I put a Jimmy Saville joke in  here it would
be obsolete in a few weeks, so I won't.

Her actions kept my spirit in this World, bound to the jar of formaldehyde that held my prominent prowess, I was forced to watch the lives of the Twattersly's evolve and continue. Oh how I sobbed as I saw her convince that poor man his yearly offerings to her were enough to produce a son as perfect and brilliant as Terrence , how I wept as I saw her conspire to protect her own falsehood as she sent Terrence away to that asylum for witnessing her facetious and blasphemous acts upon my own member. Terrence, my son, how I regret being just a dead horse and not being able to reveal to you your true father, or my love for the one that Lady Cytherea convinced was your own. How I...Right. That's it. Thats enough. I am not having this shit anymore. You are not telling me that a human being can be produced through a woman copulating with a horse. No fucking way. If you want to see the kind of play that invokes these sorts of mental images, do it, it's showing at the White Rabbit bar in Stoke Newington Church Street from now until the 4th of November, shows begin at 19:30. Otherwise watch the fucking X Factor or some bollocks like that.