‘What We Saw from the Cheap Seats’ by Regina Spektor
22 June 2012
I’ve been listening to ‘What We Saw from the Cheap Seats’,
the new album by Regina Spektor. I’ve written enthusiastically here before (in February
2010) about Spektor’s childlike voice and piano-backed pop/rock ballads. ‘What
We Saw from the Cheap Seats’ is quirky and kooky but strangely endearing. There
is a similar theatricality to her music to that of Nerina Pallot (reviewed her
in May 2006) and there is certainly a touch of Björk about her. When ‘Small
Town Moon’ breaks out of its wistful opening into a sudden rhythmic chorus it sounds
a lot like the indie rock of Tilly and the Wall (reviewed here in March 2007). At
first the impudence of the song ‘Oh Marcello’ in using the familiar words of
the Animals’ ‘Please Don't let me be Misunderstood’ to a completely different
tune seemed annoying, but the song has really begun to grow on me. The marmite
quality of Regina Spektor is perhaps best illustrated by ‘Don’t Leave Me [Ne Me
Quitte Pas]’ with its catchy drum-machine rhythm and cheery repeated chorus of “I
love Paris in the rain” – I suspect you will love it or hate it!
Labels: Albums, Music
‘Antigone’ by Sophocles (in a version by Don Taylor)
12 June 2012
At the beginning of Polly Findlay’s production of ‘Antigone’
at the National Theatre, the actors create a fleeting tableau. They gather
around a table to watch something happen on a small television set, recreating
that famous photograph of Obama and his team hearing about the death of Osama Bin
Laden in May 2011, with Christopher Eccleston’s King Creon in the Presidential
position. After the briefest of pauses, the cast rise from their seats and
return to the rapid pace of busy office life. This production of Sophocles’
‘Antigone’ (in a version by Don Taylor) appears to be set in a non-specified
Eastern European dictatorship in the 1970s (though I felt that the plastic
bottles of mineral water on the desks seemed inaccurate amid the period
detail). Christopher Eccleston is excellent as Creon, finding a surprising
degree of sympathy in a brutal dictator who is struggling with the need to
appear a strong and decisive leader as public opinion begins to sway against
him. His performance was subtle and clever, turning his mood on a sixpence and
discovering moments of humour amongst the angst of classical Greek tragedy,
without resorting to sending it up. Speaking of which, it was interesting to
see this sequel to Oedipus Rex so soon after watching Spymonkey’s wonderful spoof
‘Oedipussy’ (reviewed here in February 2012) which actually proved very helpful
in my understanding of the backstory. I last saw Jodie Whittaker in Joe
Cornish’s brilliant debut film ‘Attack The Block’ (reviewed here in May 2011)
and it was good to see her on stage here in a great performance as ‘Antigone’.
The rest of the cast took turns as a sequential relay Greek Chorus (much like
the Chorus in the Propeller production of ‘Henry V’, reviewed here in December
2011). It was an impressive and enjoyable production, particularly memorable
for Eccleston, Whittaker and Soutra Gilmour’s bleak office set.
Labels: Drama, Theatre
'The Red House' by Mark Haddon
8 June 2012
A lot of our holidays consist of a week in a self-catering
cottage so the setting of Mark Haddon’s new novel ‘The Red House’ was
reassuringly familiar. Angela’s mother has just died and her brother Richard suggests
a family holiday in a cottage in the Herefordshire countryside, near
Hay-on-Wye. The party consists of Angela, her husband and their three children
and Richard with his new wife and stepdaughter. All eight have some kind of
secret which, inevitably, is revealed as the week progresses. The seven-day
time frame gives the story a clear journey. Haddon’s previous novel, ‘A Spot of
Bother’ (reviewed here in June 2007) was also a tale of family relationships
and, while very enjoyable, was much more conventional than the wonderful book
that made his name, ‘The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time'. ‘The
Red House’ is really interesting because it feels like a combination of the
styles of the two earlier books. The third person narrative switches rapidly
between the points of view of the various family members, sharing their
interior monologues and their interpretation of events. This often naïve world-view
sometimes seems to echo the excessive rationality of ‘The Curious Incident of
the Dog in the Night-time'. There is no warning when the viewpoint switches and
it is sometimes a little difficult to work out whose world we are in. This is
an interesting challenge for the narrator of the audio book version, Nathaniel
Parker. Mark Haddon also likes his lists and ‘found poetry’: we are often
treated to excerpts from the book someone is reading or a description of items that
someone is looking at in a shop. This is ‘Peep Show’ narrative. At first you
wonder whether there is some deep significance to the choice of these passages
or whether they are completely random, but after a while you allow it to flow
over you and it conjures up an extremely realistic picture of the lives we are observing.
“Guests are kindly requested to leave this house in the condition in which they
found it” but these guests all leave the house in a significantly altered
condition.
Labels: Books
'The Tiger's Wife' by Téa Obreht
1 June 2012
I’ve just finished reading ‘The Tiger’s Wife’ by Téa Obreht,
which won the Orange Prize for Fiction in 2011. I was amazed to discover that
this excellent book is Obreht’s first novel, and that she was only born in 1985.
She was raised in the former Yugoslavia until 1992 when her family moved, first
to Cyprus and then to Egypt, where she learned to speak English, before
emigrating to the United States in 1997. ‘The Tiger’s Wife’ is set in the
modern day Balkans where Natalia is a doctor attempting to help casualties of
war on both sides of a border while remembering her grandfather and recounting to
us episodes from his long life. Though I had heard much praise for the novel, I
feared the setting sounded bleak but Obreht creates a mythic fairy-tale quality,
even in the contemporary scenes in which place names and real people are never
directly mentioned (Belgrade is simply ‘The City’). And as she delves (non-sequentially)
into episodes from the past, a jigsaw puzzle plot emerges which seems to come
from a tradition of Balkan folklore and storytelling. The tiger of the title
escaped from Belgrade zoo after the Nazi bombings and survived in the forests
outside Natalia’s grandfather’s village. This premise of a liberated zoo tiger
obviously reminds you of Yan Martel’s ‘Life of Pi’ and there are similarities
in the way Obreht uses a painstakingly realistic tiger (rather than a magical
realist device). But ‘The Tiger’s Wife’ is quite a different novel and weaves
an enticing spell around the reader. It’s a very clever and enjoyable book and
Téa Obreht is clearly a talent to watch.
Labels: Books
Norway
1 June 2012
We had a truly wonderful holiday in Norway last week. The
weather was perfect and the scenery stunning. It was our first visit to Norway
and our first cruise. I think we had seen the cruise merely as a convenient way
to get to Norway but after our first day on the P&O liner Oriana we were
completely hooked. The ship was great, the food was amazing (and endless!) and
we met some lovely people. We even enjoyed the on-board entertainment which was
of a much higher standard than I was expecting. We stopped for a full day at
each of our four destinations. At Stavanger we explored the town and visited
the Museum of Fine Art which was hosting a video installation by Bill Viola.
Our second stop was at the pretty village of Flåm on the Aurlandsfjord where we
travelled 8 miles up the valley on the remarkable Flåmsbana railway and then
hiked back down through breathtaking scenery to the fjord. We also hiked from the
village of Olden on the Nordfjord the following day – another 8 mile walk
around Lake Floen and part of Lake Olden. Our final stop was the city of Bergen
where we climbed Mount Floyen for spectacular views looking back over the city
and its historic harbour. You can see a small selection of my holiday photos at
http://culturaloutlook.blogspot.co.uk/search?q=norway.
Labels: Holidays
'The Sense of an Ending' by Julian Barnes
1 June 2012
Julian Barnes’ book ‘The Sense of an Ending’ won the 2011
Man Booker prize despite being more of a novella than a novel – it’s only 160
pages long. I read it as an audio book (narrated by Richard Morant) and would
highly recommend it. It’s a sad book, dealing with death and regret but I found
it enjoyable and intriguing. It opens with a school history lesson and keeps
returning to how history is recorded, false or suppressed memories, the value
of documentary evidence etc. The first person narrator, Tony Webster, is
looking back over his life in old age and realising that some things were not what
he had always remembered or thought they were. As he begins to piece the
evidence together the book feels almost like a detective story. Although it is
very brief ‘The Sense of an Ending’ does not feel like a short story. Rather it
seems like the selected highlights of a much longer novel. Tony’s life is a detailed
and well-drawn story from which he is choosing to tell us only those parts that
are essential to one particular part of it. This is a tale of remorse which
surprises with its twists and revelations.
Labels: Books
