Saturn Returns: New play on an astrological theme

Val — Sun, 31 Oct 2010 15:46:31 +0000

Every thirty years, the planet Saturn returns to the same place in the universe it occupied on the day of your birth. Its arrival is said to herald pivotal events in a person’s life.
In Saturn Returns, we follow one man, Gustin Novak, at the ages of 28, 58 and 88, as he reaches a series of crossroads with three key women and comes to understand how the echoes of the past have defined the orbit of his life.
An enthralling time-bending structure allows us to watch Gustin over a period of sixty years in a series of deftly interwoven scenes. Moving from wry humour to touching poignancy, this new play from one of American theatre’s brightest new voices unashamedly looks for answers to life’s big questions.
From the 2nd – 27th November at the Finborough Theatre, 118 Finborough Road, London SW10 9ED. Details: finboroughtheatre.co.uk

Survivors

Val — Fri, 19 Dec 2008 15:49:31 +0000

The BBC has remade one of its classic serials, Survivors. The first episode of the original series was broadcast at 20:10 BST (19:10 GMT) 16th April 1975 (time taken from a scan of the original Radio Times page). A chart set for London has 29Libra rising, with Uranus at 00Scorpio and Aquarius on the IC – this strong Uranian emphasis shows how revolutionary such a programme was at the time (co-incidentally, Bill Gates had founded Microsoft just 12 days before). The first episode of the new series was broadcast at 21:00 GMT on 23rd November 2008; this chart has 9Leo rising – the same degree as the MC of the 1975 chart.
As Paul Newman has shown in his articles about the Dr Who TV series – especially A New Dr Who in Transit May 2004 (on the web at http://tinyurl.com/6lbgwp), the charts of popular TV shows often reflect their times. If you don’t remember it, Survivors is about the aftermath of a plague that wipes out 95% of the world’s population; the survivors must suddenly learn how to live without any of the benefits of a technological civilisation. Its revival and broadcast now, when everyone is learning how fragile the world’s economy is, is eerily prescient.

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Saturn Returns: New play on an astrological theme

Survivors