Ruhpolding, Bavaria
27 September 2019
We had a wonderful holiday in Germany last week, staying in Ruhpolding – a beautiful small town in the Bavarian Alps, 30 minutes from Salzburg. The flat valleys, steep mountains and lush green countryside were very similar to the area around Kitzbuhel in the Austrian Tyrol, which we visited in September 2016. We had some lovely late summer sunshine and used the cable cars and chair lifts to get some spectacular views. We did a lot of walking - on the Rauchsberg, Hochfelln and Unternberg mountains, around the Lödensee, Mittersee and Weitsee lakes and from the towns of Reit im Winkl and Inzell as well as visiting the pretty medieval town of Traunstein. You can see a selection of my holiday photos at:
https://culturaloutlook.blogspot.com/search/label/Bavaria2019
Labels: Holidays
'French Exit' by Patrick deWitt
13 September 2019
Patrick deWitt is trying to be the Stanley Kubrick of contemporary novelists, with each of his books exploring a completely different genre. After his brilliant quirky Gold Rush Western ‘The Sisters Brothers’ (reviewed here in October 2015) and the strange, funny, middle-European fairytale ‘Undermajordomo Minor’ (reviewed here in September 2016) he has now turned his hand to an old-fashioned ‘tragedy of manners’ in his latest novel ‘French Exit’ which I have just finished reading as an unabridged audio book, narrated by Laurence Bouvard. This feels like a chamber piece compared to the previous novels: it is a fairly short book in which not too much happens. A rich widow and her son lose their fortune and have to leave Manhattan to live in a friend’s apartment in Paris. Along the way they accumulate a collection of friends, acquaintances and tradesmen to whom they are mostly rude or indifferent. It’s an odd tale, slightly surreal and often frustrating. None of the characters are particularly likeable but the book has a strange charm. It reminded me a little of the play ‘You Can’t Take It With You’ by George S Kaufman and Moss Hart (reviewed here in January 2012) which features a house guest who arrived six years ago to deliver ice and never left. There is also an echo of PG Wodehouse about the idle rich characters – and the novel feels like it should be set in the Wodehouse era, despite apparently being present-day. It’s not trying to be funny in the manner of Wodehouse, though it builds gently until you reach a set-piece farce scene without realising it. ‘French Exit’ is a peculiar, detached piece of storytelling which I didn’t think was entirely successful but Patrick deWitt is a fascinating writer and it will be interesting to see which genre he chooses next.
Labels: Books
'The Entertainer' by John Osborne
6 September 2019
On Thursday we were at Milton Keynes Theatre to see ‘The Entertainer’ by John Osborne. ‘The Entertainer’ is such an iconic play, famous for Laurence Olivier’s self-deprecating performance and his endorsement of the angry young playwright. It’s one of those plays you feel you know, without having seen it. So it was fascinating to sit through a performance of ‘The Entertainer’ for the first time and to find that much of the play wasn’t what I had expected. The front-of-curtain routines in which the fading music-hall star Archie Rice is objectionable, embarrassing and sad yet, still manages occasionally to be genuinely funny, were wonderfully performed by Shane Richie. But the scenes in his family home surprised me, with Sara Crowe’s Phoebe an apparent prototype for Beverley in Abigail’s Party (reviewed here in March 2018) and the Rice family dynamic an uncanny predecessor of the Trotters in ‘Only Fools and Horses’. I also saw an unexpected parallel with 'The Remains of the Day' by Kazuo Ishiguro – both stories reflecting on the end of empire and a shift in Britain’s place in the world. Bizarrely, I spotted this similarity because Pip Donaghy, who played Archie’s father Billy Rice – a retired performer coaxed back onto the stage by his son, with disastrous consequences – also played Stevens Senior – a retired butler coaxed back into service by his son, with disastrous consequences – in the stage adaptation of ‘The Remains of the Day’ that we saw at the Royal Theatre, Northampton earlier this year (reviewed here in March 2019). Sean O’Connor’s production of ‘The Entertainer’ shifts the setting from 1957, with its backdrop of the Suez crisis, to 1982 and the Falklands War. This works well, without requiring much adjustment to the text. The action is interspersed with recordings of news broadcasts, giant projections of tabloid newspaper headlines and plenty of 80s pop music. This setting also now has the effect of making Archie Rice – as an ageing old-fashioned comedian in the early 1980s – seem even more seedy. ‘The Entertainer’ is an uncomfortable watch – a sad commentary on Britain’s global role that feels very timely.
Labels: Drama, Theatre
'Jeeves & Wooster in Perfect Nonsense' by The Goodale Brothers
6 September 2019
The pretty seaside town of Sheringham in North Norfolk is one of our favourite places. When we lived nearer we used to have regular day trips to Sheringham every summer to walk the dogs in Sheringham Park (a large National Trust country park) and along the seafront, before finishing the day with a visit to Sheringham Little Theatre. Since we have moved further away we have been less frequent visitors: our last trip was eleven years ago, when we saw the play 'Dangerous Obsession' by N J Crisp (reviewed here in July 2008). So it was a lovely trip down memory lane to return to Sheringham last weekend. The Little Theatre (capacity 180) still runs an old-fashioned weekly rep company over the summer months, with the same set of actors putting on a different play each week. On Saturday we saw them perform ‘Jeeves & Wooster in Perfect Nonsense’. This is a dramatisation by The Goodale Brothers of a P G Wodehouse tale, made even more entertaining by framing it as a play-within-a-play, as Bertie Wooster, Jeeves and fellow butler Seppings attempt to act out the story for us. The challenges of playing multiple characters, often within the same scene, create a wonderful theatrical farce. Nick Earnshaw’s production, starring David Tarkenter, Steve Banks and Ryan Starling, was great fun and a lovely end to a beautiful sunny day by the seaside.
Labels: Drama, Theatre
