Easter weekend

Happy Bank Holiday Monday everyone! Hope you have had a lovely Easter Weekend.

As an athiest, I never celebrate Easter for it's religious reasons (nor Christmas for that matter). As a child, Easter was about the chocolate, and now I'm older, it's about having some time off work with my nearest and dearest. It is for those reasons that despite not being religious, I love Easter and enjoy celebrating it.

This weekend, a Hollywod actor has been performing a play in my town. Michael Sheen was born and bred here, so he came back to his roots for The Passion. His parents still live here too - and his Dad is a Jack Nicholson lookalike!

Michael Sheen, for those who don't know, is Aro from New Moon :

Or Lucian from Underworld :

Also known as the ex of Kate Beckinsale:

Or the current squeeze of my favourite actress in the whole wide world, Rachel McAdams, who has been spotted around town recently (not by me, to my dismay):

So now that we are all better acquainted with Michael Sheen, let me tell you about the play he has been doing. It's called The Passion and being held on Easter weekend, it's clearly about the trials and death of Jesus. Now, I didn't pay much attention in RE classes, but I kinda know the story of Jesus and his last few days. This is what Michael Sheen has been re-enacting, just a modern day version.

The story was written by Welsh writer and poet Owen Sheers, and was centred on corrupt company ICU, fictional owners of the town. They wanted to dig it up and create a second bypass, referred to as a “Passover”, but they were met with fierce opposition from the Resistance. Meanwhile, Sheen’s character – a teacher from the town who had been missing for 40 days and 40 nights – returned as a modern-day Messiah, with no memory of the time he was missing.

He started the open-air play at 5:30am Friday, with a baptism on the beach. On my doorstep. And I missed it. With Rachel in the audience. Sigh. He has been doing a number of performances around the town, including marching along the beach on Friday afternoon, which we watched. Mr L snapped this one outside our house! With the little boy at the front looking like his bodyguard, according to Mr L's brother haha:

He has been camping up the mountain, having a last supper at a local social club with the Manic Street Preachers and Paul Potts performing, getting 'arrested' (with the Manics), spending the night in our local police cells, having a trial in our town centre, walking through the streets with a huge cross and a crown of thorns, and finally, being crucified on a roundabout.

We dipped in and out of it, but really wanted to watch the crucifixion. I know that Michael is a method actor, and has been 'saving up his blood', so I was really intrigued to watch him on the cross. We walked down the beach in the glorious sunshine at around 5 o'clock, stopped for a delicious banana and toffee ice cream, then found the best spot. He wasn't due to be crucified until sunset, so around 8pm, but it was starting to fill up pretty quickly, even though it was relatively early. By the end of it there were thousands crowded around him!

I thoroughly enjoyed the performance. He was running late so the sun had set and it was rather chilly by the time the final scenes were starting, but it was nothing a glass of cider from the local pub couldn't sort out!

We watched with anticipaton as he got strapped to the cross, and as he was 'nailed' in, blood squirted everywhere. So that's what he was saving it for. Very unrealistic, but knowing it was his blood was kinda freaky. Drums were beating, bands were playing... it was all very emotional as he hung there, dying.

Then he made a massive speech about remembering the town, and started to list a lot of landmarks that you would only know if you lived here, like the Starlight nightclub, which was the place to be and is now Morrisons car park, or Beach Hill, an iconic part of the main road from town to the beach, which was demolished for traffic lights, or the old traditional sweet shop, that is now a house. I loved his speech, and the crowd did too as they cheered with everything he (and we) remembered. Then the spotlights on him faded to black as a mist of water sprinkled behind him, with images of the town, things he remembered and parts of his performance projected onto it to a beauitful soundtrack. Wow, is all I can say.

Despite not being religious, I have been enthrealled by it all. I love how he came back to his home town and created a play that everybody could get involved in. He could easily have turned this into a multi-million-pound Hollywood performance but he didn't. He is grounded enough to come back here and I think it worked perfectly. He created a sense of unison amongst us all and really boosted the community spirit. Every single person I've spoken to over the weekend has been talking about it. My Facebook is still buzzing from last night, and loads of my friends have bits of his speech as their status.

An amazing man who put on an amazing performance, and has done amazing things for this humble little town. And for that, I love him. He worked solidly ands tayed in character for 72 hours, and his hard work for the last 2 years of planning this has really paid off. I for one am very proud of him and am very proud of everything he has done for Port Talbot.

All images (except the one Mr L took) taken from Google as mine on my camera were rubbish as it was dark! So, how was your Easter? Not as odd as mine, I bet ;)

xoxo