The Hamlet Challenge Entry No 1: Tis Pity She’s a Whore by Cheek By Jowl

On Monday, I was at the Barbican to see Tis Pity She’s a Whore, a production by Cheek By Jowl. To my shame, I hadn’t seen a Cheek by Jowl production before, but on this evidence, I will be coming back. Punchy (in every sense of the word), sexy, gruesome, it was as much about words, as it was about visual beauty and bodily fluids.

In the second scene, when Grimaldi and Vasques have a bare knuckles, Fight Club style, fight, someone yells at some point “A hit. A very palpable hit“. The line, that doesn’t exist in the text, is a refernce to Hamlet, uttered by Osric at the start of the final – let’s see how many people we can kill in less than ten minutes – sword fight between Hamlet and Laertes.

Ten Golden Rules for Twitter (that they are absolutely no use to anyone)

These rules won’t get you more followers. So there is absolutely no reason to continue reading.

1) I only follow people who I like. If I want to follow what you say but I don’t like you, I ‘ll put you in a (private) list. And I ‘ll probably lose interest very quickly.

2) No text speak. If you can’t say it in 140 characters, you are doing something wrong. I do have shortcuts I consider acceptable (“&” instead of “and”, “v” instead of “very”) but I won’t use numeric symbols unless I would use them in a normal written sentence. I don’t use long tweets either. It’s 140 characters for a reason (mainly to make you edit it a few times)

3) I don’t tweet about frustrations at work or problems with friends, lovers, family. I know some people do, and it’s fine by me, but twitter is like being in a party: you know some, you don’t know most, & I ‘ll try not bore people with my troubles. Unless I am sloshed. See rule number 5.

4) But I will tweet about frustrations with public transport. This is what twitter was invented for.

5) I don’t tweet when I am drunk. At least not when I am sloshed. But other people’s drunken tweets at 2am on a Saturday night (or rather Sunday morning) are very amusing. Especially Russell Tovey’s.

6) I don’t do Follow Fridays and don’t thank the people who include me in their Follow Fridays. The former because I don’t think they work, the latter because I am basically rude.

7) I don’t tweet during tv drama. I ‘ll tweet through any other tv programmes.

8) I still mourn the old Retweet functionality, when tweets appeared from your account.

9) I block all spam accounts religiously.

10) There is no tenth rule. But I am surprised you made it that far.