I am just finding out that actor Adrian Schiller has suddenly passed away at the age of 60.
I will never forget his portrayal of Reverend John Hale in the 2014 stage production of The Crucible at The Old Vic. He was so very good in it. That whole production, Adrian included, blew me away and made me start following him on social media.
My heart goes out to his family and especially his young son. May his memory be a blessing.
I just renewed my two-year mobile phone contract a little early (was due at the beginning of the new year but the offer already came in now, so I went with it) and with that comes a new phone. I didn’t really need a new phone for myself but as my father-in-law’s phone could use replacement, I decided to order a newer one after all so that my current one can go to him.
That also means a new cover (why don’t they ever make phones in standard sizes?) was needed. About time too as the old cover was fading and I had to keep it all together with staples (you can see the staples alongside John Proctor on the right edge in the following image).
New phone arrived yesterday and is installed, my new cover arrived today (with the same The Crucible painting by my mother that I’ve had for 6 or so years now and never grows old) and I’m happy as a clam that it looks so good…
The new phone also has some filters on the camera. I’ve never used filters before but decided to try them now for the first time…
I look weird, myself and yet not myself, although I’ve got to say I’m quite partial to the following autumn beard and sunglasses look. I was instantly reminded of this Richard Armitage selfie. See the similarities?
Shape of glasses and beard (without the leaves) are quite the same. I could be his bearded dwarf sister!
(Modified to add this video about dwarf women…)
Anyway, fun to have a new phone although I’m not sure I’ll ever use those filters again. Most of all I’m just happy it works pretty much exactly the same as the old one (I had a Samsung and stayed with it), that it still has Richard and Anna Madeley in The Crucible on the cover and that my Angry Birds 2 advanced score is still intact.
The other day I blogged about the Uncle Vanya framed collage I had made needing another frame. As I have other things hanging on that wall with black frames, I figured black would be the way to go. So, I bought a new black frame and decided to keep the red background of the old frame for the collage. The end result looks like this…
Not only does this look better than the old, thick, light wooden frame, suddenly everything hanging on that wall pulls together nicely and I now have a complete Richard Armitage theatre wall in our dining area. My mother’s The Crucible painting now replaces a (pretty standard) Audrey Hepburn canvas I had hanging above that window, and the Uncle Vanya collage now hangs on the The Crucible poster’s old spot. I really like my themed wall.
The extra bonus is that the red background in the Uncle Vanya collage actually matches very nicely with the antique old Dutch children’s chair we have standing there. As a child I actually sat in that chair to eat. It is now used to store the cats’ food and is the spot where our black cat eats.
I start work again on Monday and the best thing of my working day will be that I can look at that Richard Armitage theatre wall. 🙂
Yesterday Richard Armitage tweeted this…
… and I can relate to the feeling old statement. It doesn’t feel like seven years ago that this play was staged at The Old Vic in London and that I went to see it during ‘the summer of love’, a term coined by some Armitage fans at the time due to the outpouring of love for this production and for Richard during that summer run. The Crucible gave me a lot personally as well.
By the time I traveled with my husband to London in July of 2014 to see The Crucible, I had been an Armitage fan for 8 years. I was a solitary fangirl at the time, eagerly slurping up Richard Armitage news and discussions on message boards and on certain blogs, lurking but never jumping in myself. During that summer, Servetus on her blog very helpfully kept a running commentary on all stage door encounters that were shared online, hence making it really feel like a summer of love for me. Check out the archives on her blog for June – September of 2014 if you are curious to see pictures of fans with Richard and read fan reports.
In tandem with this trip I had also been wanting to jump in to blogging on my own blog for a long time. I had started this blog with a single post in 2013 but didn’t know where to go from there as I didn’t want to write a single issue blog, so I stopped again. I was feeling especially inspired by some other Armitage blogs I also read (like Guylty’s blog or Herba’s blog and some other really great blogs that have alas gone silent over time, but popped up again partially during last year’s online blog reunion, see this Twitter hashtag).
Anyway, during this summer of Crucible love I started to feel the pull to also share my Crucible play and stage door experience. I was just a bit iffy about the public attention, i.e. worried that if I did get active, I too would eventually be caught in fandom spats as I had seen happening from the beginning of my fangirling days. I wanted to share but I didn’t want the drama, real life was busy enough. Then in September of 2014 I finally decided to stop over-thinking and over-analyzing, I just jumped in and wrote about my Crucible experience. With that post, really, this blog was born. Richard Armitage in The Crucible and the fans’ enthusiasm had pulled me over the edge and finally got me blogging. I didn’t announce anything about that post anywhere and it wasn’t until a few months later that this blog even started getting any traction but the slow start suited me well.
Not only did The Crucible get me blogging, it also, very importantly, led to my first personal encounter with Richard Armitage whom I had admired from afar for all those years. I can still remember the excitement while meeting him and handing him a little gift and exhanging a few quick words with him. Alas my camera failed that evening (also it was dark outside that stage door) and the pictures are all grainy but I don’t mind so much as the memories are all still there and really do not feel like 7 years ago! I am forever grateful to Mr Esther who helped me get my Crucible booklet and ticket signed and my little North and South poster as well that I had brought from home.
He also took this picture of me with Richard (I look a little manic!), which is now still the lock screen of my phone before I unlock it to reveal Mr Esther and our cats.
What The Crucible also gave me was a renewed admiration for Richard’s acting talents. I’d not been a huge fan of Robin Hood and Spooks and while I did love him in The Hobbit, I longed to see him do a great role without prosthetics. And boy, did I get that with Richard as John Proctor…
Mr E and I were both quite blown away by the production, by the cast and especially by Richard in it. We were mesmerized throughout and feeling quite shaken and drained by the end of it. My husband, who has always been supportive of my fangirling hobbies but always benignly from a distance, was just as much in awe as I was. Richard Armitage on stage is a wonderful thing to behold, he has a big presence there, he feels large and powerful, and when we met him at the stage door after the play he suddenly felt slight and almost shy. He must have felt competely drained.
That Crucible experience stayed with me for a long time (still very much alive in my mind and heart when I finally posted about it a month and a half after I’d seen it) and I was pleased when it was announced that the play would be filmed. When it came to the cinema in early 2015, I took my mother to see it and she too was very impressed. So much so, in fact, that for my birthday two months later she even gave me a watercolour painting she had made of a Crucible scene. It is now hanging above my signed Crucible ticket and poster in our dining area. That painting became my blog header and I also had a phone cover made of it that Richard Armitage even signed a few years later at the Newcastle International Film Festival.
I am glad The Crucible made me able to share some fangirling with my husband and even with my mother and I credit Richard as John Proctor for giving me the push to set me off on this blogging journey that I have really been enjoying these past almost 7 years. The play has been an important catalyst for me and I have loved revisiting it again and again over the years. I still think it is one of the absolute best things Richard has done in his career, he would have really deserved that Olivier Award he was nominated for at the time.
Long story short: happy 7th anniversary to The Old Vic’s The Crucible production, I’m glad you were made.
Michele added a second part to her Richard Armitage favourites challenge (and Armidreamer also participated). When I start a challenge I usually mean to finish it (see my answers to the first part) and so here it is. I needed to think on my answers for a bit and they may still sound rambling but that’s because these are not questions I necessarily think about a lot and so I don’t have any clear cut answers either. Anyway, for what it’s worth, my two cents (or two hundred cents, given the longish answers to some of the questions)…
1 You get one day with Richard what would your itinerary consist of?
Where would this day be? In London? So much to do in London! Like go for a walk somewhere (Hampstead Heath, the South Bank, Banksy walking tour, etc.), stop somewhere for scones and tea, maybe check out a (flea) market or an awesome museum like the Portrait Gallery. Dinner in Chinatown and spend the evening at the theatre or in the cinema, followed by a nightcap somewhere in a pub.
If he came here to The Netherlands, I’d take him on a little bike tour, walk through Utrecht (or really any of the old towns with canals, like Leiden, Delft, Gouda), make sure he ate some raw herring, take in an art museum (Amsterdam has some really famous ones with Rembrandts and Van Goghs), have dinner somewhere nice, preferably outside, in the evening go to the improv English language comedy club Boom Chicago in Amsterdam (gosh, I should go there again anyhow, haven’t been in 25 years or so! For American readers, Seth Meyers spent some time doing stand up there).
Either any of that or we just spend the day reading and puttering around the house or in the garden, before an evening out to dinner, theatre, comedy club, whatever. I’m not really particular, I’d give him options and let him pick or maybe he’d have ideas that I’d never think of.
2 What book adaptation would you pitch to Richard to star in and why?
Nope, nothing I could think of at first. Another romantic (preferably offbeat) hero would be nice after all the action and murder stuff he’s done, but I have no specific book heroes in mind. But then something did suddenly spring to mind! Speaking of an offbeat romantic hero, and a comedy to boot: he might be lovely as Don Tillman, the genetics professor with Asperger’s syndrome in The Rosie Effect. Don is sometimes compared to Gregory Peck in looks, I think Richard could pull that off too.
3 Richard has a charitable heart what cause is near and dear to you that you would ask Richard to support?
Human rights / the plight of refugees are usually closest to my heart, so organisations like UNHCR or UNICEF, SOS Children’s Villages or War Child. Those are big names and big organisations. Supporting something smaller and more local for children’s rights or refugees or the homeless or food banks would be fine too.
4 What flaw of Richards would you like to see him work on?
The need to please everyone.
5 Which of these ill fated characters did you relate to and why: Lucas North / Raymond DeMerville / Daniel Miller / Thorin Oakenshield
I can relate to Daniel Miller in that he grew up caught between two cultures but that never was explored deeply, just mentioned, so no real journey to follow him on there. Of these characters, I liked (and therefore related to) Thorin Oakenshield best, the fierce, honourable protecter of his people, trying to find a home again.
6 In a scavenger hunt where the end destination is your home what three clues would you give Richard to find you?
I’d need only one clue to guide him to the town I live in: Dutch cheese.
7 What three words would you describe your interest in a fandom?
Information and enthusiasm in my own quiet niche.
8 John Thornton embodies______________
Honesty, fairness and love.
9 What’s your favorite item of clothing that Richard wears?
Costume or private life? Again, I’m not very particular about his clothes, I’d be more particular about how his hair looked or whether he has a beard/stubble or is clean-shaven. As the question is about clothes, I will say that I really liked his look in The Crucible, especially that black coat turned up at the collar…
I like him a bit ruffled in a simple dark shirt…
…he cleans up nicely in a suit too…
… and I’m very partial to a turtleneck as well…
10 Complete this sentence: “I’m a Richard Armitage fan because he________________”
…. feels like a kindred spirit, more so than any other actor I know.
That’s all, folks! 🙂
The Book of Esther 