Edinburgh Festivals 2012

31 August 2012

Last week we were in Edinburgh for our biennial visit to the Edinburgh Festival Fringe. We’ve been regular festival-goers since our first trip to Edinburgh in 1994 but I think this was one of our best weeks. We relaxed our pace a little, only seeing 22 shows this time, but either the standard is improving or we are getting better at picking things to see. We averaged 4.1 on our own personal 5-star rating system, and only saw 2 shows all week that we rated lower than 4 stars. I think we also managed a greater mix of artforms than ever before: we saw drama, stand-up comedy, improvisation, poetry, spoken word, orchestral music, folk music, opera and two BBC Radio 4 shows.

There were many highlights but I think our favourite show was ‘The Boat Factory’, a play by Dan Gordon, produced by Happenstance Theatre Company at Hill Street Theatre, which looked at the history of the Harland and Wolff Shipyard in Belfast. This two-hander told the story of an apprentice starting work at the shipyard in the 1950s. It was funny, moving and fascinating with both actors, Dan Gordon and Michael Condron, giving stunning performances as a range of characters.

We also really enjoyed ‘Dr Quimpugh's Compendium of Peculiar Afflictions’ – a delightfully silly new chamber opera by Martin Ward and Phil Porter, produced by Petersham Playhouse, which we saw at Summerhall. Three singers, accompanied by three musicians, portrayed an ageing doctor looking back at his long career and remembering the many surreal, bizarre medical conditions he had encountered and documented – like an operatic version of Oliver Sacks’ ‘The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat’.

We saw an amazing performance of Ferruccio Busoni’s ‘Piano Concerto’ by Garrick Ohlsson with the European Union Youth Orchestra, conducted by Gianandrea Noseda, at the Usher Hall (as part of the Edinburgh International Festival). This mammoth, five movement concerto, composed in 1904, lasts 70 minutes and finishes with a male voice choir singing a poem praising Allah. It’s a wonderfully over-the-top piece of music and it was fascinating to witness this rare performance with Ohlsson demonstrating outstanding technique and stamina and the glorious sound of the men of the Edinburgh Festival Chorus creating a brilliant climax.

The most bizarre moment of the week happened during ‘Austentatious’, an improvised comedy show which re-enacts the ‘lost novels’ of Jane Austen. We were part of a full-house packed into a room above a pub watching the actors creating the story of ‘Vanity and Virtue’ when a live pigeon emerged from behind a curtain and flew in a panic above our heads before flying into an unsuspecting musician who screamed and bolted from his position at the side of the stage. Shocked by this sudden intrusion, in a split second I think we all moved through a range of emotions – from surprise to terror to hysterical laughter – as we tried to work out whether this was part of the act. The funniest thing was the immobility of the male members of the cast as the women took control of the situation, threw a shawl over the bird and carried it outside. At the end of the show one of the actors said “every performance of Austentatious is different but we’ve truly never had that happen before!”.

This narrowly pipped our experience at ‘Midnight at the Board’s Head’ in which Fine Chisel Theatre combined the pub scenes from ‘Henry IV Parts One and Two’ with a host of other extracts from Shakespeare plays to create a show in the cabaret bar at Zoo Southside which ended with the entire audience on its feet, re-enacting the Battle of Agincourt with balloons and party poppers!

As well as all this we enjoyed the excellent folk trio Bellevue Rendezvous, the play ‘Wojtek the Bear’, the remarkable life story of Hervé Goffings, the excellent Martin Oldfield as ‘Pierrepoint’, the last hangman, Liz Lochhead reading her own poetry, Mark Lawson interviewing Ian McEwan and the brilliant Jasper Fforde speaking at the Edinburgh International Book Festival.

'The Importance of Being Earnest' by Oscar Wilde

31 August 2012

It’s many years since I saw a production of ‘The Importance of Being Earnest’ (apart from the spoof ‘Spyski or The Importance of Being Honest’ by Peepolykus, reviewed here in April 2009) but, attending an outdoor performance of the play by The Pantaloons at Woburn Abbey the weekend before last, I discovered that I still knew most of Oscar Wilde’s text off by heart. Wilde’s knowing sarcasm worked well in the necessarily exaggerated delivery that an open air production requires. The Pantaloons gave a charmingly silly performance with a few very funny additions to the original – Jack and Algernon’s journeys from the town to the country in the form of a musical montage, a wonderful cinematic re-cap at the beginning of the second half (“previously on Earnest …”) and an interval ‘Bracknell Factor’ competition (looking for the best enunciation of “a handbag?”) which led to a wonderful pay-off at the end of the play. All the cast were very funny but there was some great added humour with Producer Mark Hayward having to deputise at the last minute for the indisposed Helen Taylor as Gwendolen and Miss Prism.

'The Testimony' by James Smythe

13 August 2012

It’s not often I have a book recommended to me by the writer’s father but I was delighted to discover that the son of Voluntary Arts Board member, John Smythe, is a very accomplished novelist. ‘The Testimony’ by James Smythe is set a few years in the future when people across the world simultaneously hear a voice in their heads. Is this the voice of God, some kind of radio interference, a terrorist plot, a sinister government weapon or the work of aliens? The story unfolds in a series of very short first person accounts which alternate between 26 characters in a variety of situations around the world – as if they are being interviewed by a reporter and this is their testimony. It’s a very clever jigsaw: at first you feel there are too many characters and it is hard to keep track of them all but gradually their individual personalities shine through and you find yourself rooting for your favourites as they seek to survive the global crisis. Although the setting seems like science fiction – and the worldwide catastrophe that ensues reminded me of two recent TV series (‘FlashForward’ and ‘Torchwood: Miracle Day’) and is very much in the tradition of ‘The Day of the Triffids’ or ‘The War of the Worlds’ – most of the jeopardy comes from the behaviour of crowds, governments and individual people reacting to ‘The Broadcast’ rather than any direct effect of whatever lay behind it. This reminds you how close to chaos our ‘civilised’ society always is – a lesson demonstrated by last summer’s riots. Ultimately ‘The Testimony’ is a story about people rather than gods or aliens, and a genuinely touching humanity emerges from the disaster movie it describes.

'Emma' by Jane Austen, adapted by Laura Turner

6 August 2012

Two years ago we made the short journey to the gardens of Woburn Abbey to see an outdoor performance of ‘Pride and Prejudice’ by Chapterhouse Theatre Company (reviewed here in July 2010). Last year we returned to Woburn Abbey to see Chapterhouse’s adaptation of ‘Sense and Sensibility’ (reviewed here in September 2011). And on Saturday we completed our hat-trick of Chapterhouse Jane Austen dramatisations at Woburn with ‘Emma’. Once again this production was adapted by Laura Turner and I think this this show was the best of the three. It was certainly the funniest. Clara Edmonds was an excellent Emma and Grace Scott’s Harriet Smith displayed a wonderfully entertaining range of facial expressions and double-takes but Liam Webster and Vicky Album stole the show in their gloriously over-the-top portrayals of Mr Elton and Miss Bates.

‘The Marriage Plot’ by Jeffrey Eugenides

3 August 2012

I’ve just finished reading ‘The Marriage Plot’ by Jeffrey Eugenides (as an unabridged audio book, narrated by David Pittu). I very much enjoyed Eugenides’ previous novel ‘Middlesex’ (2002) – an unusual, ambitious, clever and gripping tale of gender, family history and inheritance. ‘The Marriage Plot’ is a more conventional novel: the plot concerns the three members of a love triangle who meet at university in the 1980s. It’s not really a campus novel: the book opens on graduation day and although the story of their university years is told in flashback (from each of the three perspectives) we are more concerned with what happens to the main characters after they leave university. Madeleine has been studying 18^th and 19^th century fiction and is fascinated by whether ‘the marriage plot’ – resolving a novel by having the two main protagonists marry, a mainstay of Jane Austen – is no longer viable in an age of divorce and remarriage, where the wedding is no longer necessarily the end of the story. Inevitably Madeleine’s own story plays with ‘the marriage plot’ and keeps us guessing about her romantic future. Eugenides also looks sensitively and achingly at manic depression and way it affects the lives of the sufferer and all the people around them.

WOMAD 2012

3 August 2012

This year the WOMAD Festival was celebrating its 30^th anniversary. It was a glorious weekend at Charlton Park in Wiltshire and there was plenty of fantastic music and more than a little wonderful dance (the ‘D’ in WOMAD). I saw 27 bands including 15 complete sessions – slightly fewer than last year because I left early on Friday to watch the Olympics Opening Ceremony. The highlights for me were:

•  the amazing young Azerbaijani mugham singer Nazaket Teymurova – haunting classical music from Central Asia (listen at: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p00wsz1z);
• the excellent young Cape Breton fiddler Chrissy Crowley;
• the Alaev Family – a Jewish family from Tajikistan, now resident in Israel who play the music of Tajikistan and the Bukharan region of neighbouring Uzbekistan with enormous exuberance and three generations together on stage, including their 80-year old grandfather;
• the polyphonic multilingual harmonies of Chet Nuneta, featuring three female vocalists from France, Spain and Italy whose sound reminded me of my favourite Finnish group Värttinä (reviewed here in August 2006);
• the engaging songs of ‘the Norwegian Kate Bush’, Ane Brun;
• the Peatbog Faeries – high energy dance beats with Scottish fiddle and bagpipes;
• and the South African rock group Hot Water, whose breezy guitar-based music would sound familiar to anyone who knows Paul Simon’s ‘Graceland’ album.

But the best gig of the festival was definitely The Correspondents: WOMAD doesn’t feature many British groups and those who make it onto the programme are usually something special. The Correspondents mix swing-era big band records with contemporary electronic beats. The result is cool, serious and ridiculous. Their sound reminded me a lot of the French group Caravan Palace (reviewed here in July 2009) who play the gypsy jazz swing of Django Reinhardt and Stephane Grappelli to pounding high-tempo electronic beats and the Greek duo Imam Baildi (reviewed here in May 2009) who take old Greek tunes from the 40's, 50's and 60's (from their father's collection of 78s) and add modern instruments and beats. The Correspondents gave an incredible performance with some of the most energetic and eccentric dancing I have ever seen (try to imagine Doctor Who impersonating Michael Jackson). Frontman Mr Bruce is a fascinating and slightly disturbing performer – see http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NGebmvnR158 – and his set included the first crowd-surfing I can remember seeing at WOMAD, an experience he recovered from by having a nice cup of tea!

'The Woman Who Died a Lot' by Jasper Fforde

26 April 2012


It’s some time since I last visited the wonderfully silly parallel-universe Swindon inhabited by Jasper Fforde’s literary detective, Thursday Next (‘First Among Sequels’, reviewed here in April 2009). So it was a great pleasure to reacquaint myself with Thursday’s friends, family, colleagues and enemies in Jasper Fforde’s new Thursday Next novel, ‘The Woman Who Died a Lot’. If you haven’t worked your way through the Thursday Next canon I suspect this would be completely incomprehensible: even an experienced Nextian has to pay attention to work out what is going on. This is a tale of the after-effects of the end of time travel, the use of dodos to explore unpublished fiction and the difficulties of knowing whether the body you are inhabiting is your own or a time-limited replica. I’m not sure whether you would call this science fiction, fantasy or comedy: it’s delightfully silly and very clever. Despite the complexity of the plot ‘The Woman Who Died a Lot’ felt like light relief after Fforde’s very different previous novel 'Shades of Grey' (no, not that one! – reviewed here in April 2011) which I found hard work. I was pleased to be reminded of the tourist slogan of the Socialist Republic of Wales (“not always raining”), to finally twig that ‘Thursday Next’ is itself a line from ‘Romeo and Juliet’ and to discover that there is now an annual gathering of Jasper Fforde fans in Swindon (obviously) which is inevitably called the ‘Fforde Fiesta’!

'Romeo and Juliet' by William Shakespeare

26 July 2012


The final performance of the RSC Open Stages National Showcase was an amazing production of ‘Romeo and Juliet’ by Rugby Theatre, directed by Robert Sloan. In this version, set in contemporary Britain, when the Capulet boys first taunt the Montagues in the street it is a shockingly brilliant moment as the Montagues shout back at them in Polish. Portraying the Montagues as an immigrant Polish community, played by Polish-speaking actors, gives the play a fascinating modern slant. The Polish characters sometimes speak Shakespeare’s text translated into Polish (but retaining the rhyming couplets!) but mostly they speak in Polish-accented English. Most believably, at the times of greatest emotion they naturally slip back into their native language. The Rugby Theatre production was excellently acted. Romeo was muscular, tattooed and shaven-headed but betrayed a childish vulnerability. Juliet was outstanding – tiny and clearly very young she was excitable, naïve, emotional and totally believable. This was a very funny production with some assured and witty comedy in the scenes featuring Mercutio and Benvolio (here a tall, bleached-blond Polish girl). The Nurse was played almost as a pantomime dame, appearing in more and more outlandish costumes. Yet it was also an incredibly realistic production: you could feel the angst of Romeo’s Polish-speaking parents and the knife-crime violence of the gangs was frighteningly real. Rugby Theatre made good use of Jon Bausor’s set for the RSC production of ‘Twelfth Night’ (reviewed here in March 2012), Mercutio dangling his feet into the pool of water at the front of the stage and characters getting temporarily stuck in the eccentrically angled revolving door. The biggest audience of the RSC Open Stages National Showcase almost filled the lower levels of the Royal Shakespeare Theatre and rose to a spontaneous standing ovation at the end of the evening. It was a brilliant end to two wonderful weekends of amateur theatre in Stratford-upon-Avon: ordinary people: extraordinary performances!

'Brush Up Your Shakespeare' by Penny Gorman

26 July 2012


On Sunday evening the RSC Open Stages National Showcase moved into the new Royal Shakespeare Theatre in Stratford-upon-Avon for its final two performances. The first of these was ‘Brush Up Your Shakespeare’, a marvellous production by the Luxulyan Amateur Dramatic Society from Cornwall, written and directed by Luxulyan member Penny Gorman. ‘Brush Up Your Shakespeare’ follows a bored schoolgirl, Suzannah, who is persuaded to take a trip on an open-top tour bus in Stratford-upon-Avon, only to discover that this bus doesn’t visit the usual tourist attractions. Instead it travels through ‘Villains’, ‘Kings’, ‘Tragic Heroes’, ‘Lovers’ and ‘Clowns’. This allows the show to incorporate many of Shakespeare’s most famous scenes, visiting the best-known plays and encountering the most infamous Shakespearean characters along the way. This was an inventive, ambitious and versatile production, featuring some great acting and some very ingenious touches. Puck acts as a linking character throughout the story and is portrayed as a modern teenage girl wearing a hoodie and a mock-French Connection T-shirt bearing the letters ‘PCUK’. And when the ass-headed Bottom becomes infatuated with Titania he performs a striptease, revealing his boxer shorts, the back of which bear the informative word ‘BOTTOM’. ‘Brush Up Your Shakespeare’ was clever and extremely entertaining. It felt occasionally as if it hadn’t really decided whether it was aiming at children of Suzannah’s age or adults but it was incredibly enjoyable nonetheless.

'Much Ado About Nothing' by William Shakespeare

26 July 2012


On Sunday afternoon I joined the crowds in beautiful sunshine at The Dell, the RSC’s open-air performance space next to the river in Stratford-upon-Avon, to watch the Royal Navy Theatre Association production of ‘Much Ado About Nothing’ as part of the RSC Open Stages National Showcase. The stage at The Dell is under an open-sided marquee, with views through to trees and foliage behind. We had all just found a spot to sit on the grass in sight of the stage when we were surprised to hear the national anthem – but of course the Royal Navy Theatre Association would start their performance with the national anthem. Outdoor performances of Shakespeare require a different technique: they have to be slightly broader and exaggerated compared to acting in an intimate indoor theatre. The Royal Navy Theatre Association really made the play work in this setting. Much of the comedy was really funny and Sarah Miatt and Tim Stokes were excellent as Beatrice and Benedick. I was also impressed by Surgeon Captain Mike Howell as Don Pedro. ‘Much Ado About Nothing’ starts with soldiers returning from a war and there was an added poignancy to this production knowing that many of the actors have recently returned from active service in Afghanistan. Using genuine contemporary uniforms, and with some added naval references, there was a clear reality underpinning the comedy. Even the uniformed stage crew brought a naval efficiency to shifting the props and furniture. And it was wonderful to see this article about The Royal Naval Theatre Association in The Guardian last week: http://www.guardian.co.uk/stage/2012/jul/17/shakespeare-amateur-theatre-open-stages?newsfeed=true.

'Hamlet' by William Shakespeare

25 July 2012


Rather than try to condense the whole play into one act, Studio Theatre from Salisbury, who won the All-England Theatre Festival/RSC Open Stages Final of the National Shakespeare Competition, presented a performance of one section of ‘Hamlet’ at the Swan Theatre in Stratford-upon-Avon as part of the RSC Open Stages National Showcase last Saturday. After a brief (and extremely effective) résumé of the early scenes of the play, they performed the central part in full, beginning with the arrival of the players and concluding with Hamlet’s departure for England. This was a stunning performance – some of the highest standard amateur acting I have ever seen. All of the cast were outstanding and the actor playing Hamlet gave an incredible performance which would bear favourable comparison with some of the highest profile professional Hamlets of recent years. His movement was compelling and you could see him thinking of and arriving at his lines rather than merely reciting them. Ophelia was an intelligent, thoughtful and believable performance. Claudius was powerful and determined whilst also vulnerable and surprisingly sympathetic. Polonius was serious and officious – more like Malvolio from ‘Twelfth Night’ than the buffoon he is sometime portrayed as. It’s hard to convey how thrilling the Studio Theatre performance was, played very straight without any tricks or gimmicks – just extremely well-acted. A wonderful example of the heights to which amateur theatre can climb.

‘Witches of Macbeth’ adapted from William Shakespeare

25 July 2012


When we held the original consultative weekend in Stratford-upon-Avon in 2009 at which we designed what became RSC Open Stages, we asked representatives of voluntary arts umbrella bodies to devise a number of options for the project. At the end of the weekend we voted on these options and, famously, ‘competition’ was the winner. We agreed that it was very important that there should be a competitive element to Open Stages and that there should be a route through the project for those amateur theatre groups who take part in competitive drama festivals. The two amateur performances at the Swan Theatre in Stratford-upon-Avon last Saturday as part of the RSC Open Stages National Showcase were winners from the Welsh Regional One-Act Festival and the All England Theatre Festival. Rather than having to shorten their productions for our RSC Open Stages National Showcase, these groups had prepared one-act plays that fitted the double-bill format perfectly. Both were versions of famous Shakespeare plays but they took very different approaches to creating their one-act versions.

‘Witches of Macbeth’ was a fifty-minute adaptation of the Scottish Play, consisting of 17 short scenes with greater emphasis on the role of the witches. In this production, by the Phoenix Theatre Company from Mold, North Wales, the witches were ever-present, lurking in the background in every scene. At first this reminded me of Tom Stoppard’s ‘Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead’ but the witches were far from peripheral to this story. They hovered, unseen, beside Lady Macbeth, putting thoughts into her head and words in her mouth. When Macbeth dispatched assassins to kill Macduff’s wife and children it was the witches he sent. The Weird Sisters were constantly moulding the story and shaping the Macbeths’ destiny.

As well as the witches, the actors playing Macbeth and Lady Macbeth were very strong. When she said “give me the daggers” it was an exclamation of genuine exasperation with her husband. Phoenix Theatre Company coped well with the vertiginously sloping set of ‘A Soldier In Every Son – The Rise of the Aztecs’ which dominated the stage of the Swan Theatre, making it seem like it had been designed for them, The Swan was almost full and there was a great atmosphere. ‘Witches of Macbeth’ was excellent, rattling through the story without ever feeling rushed. 

Northampton Symphony Orchestra concert

18 July 2012


The final concert of the Northampton Symphony Orchestra’s season is always a free Sunday afternoon performance to the Friends of the Orchestra. This is a lovely way to thank the Friends for their support throughout the year while also providing the orchestra with the opportunity to explore repertoire that might not easily fit into a standard concert. This year the Friends concert featured Wagner’s rousing ‘Prelude to Act III of Lohengrin’ and the mighty ‘March Slave’ by Tchaikovsky. We also played two pieces with Spanish themes written by French composers – the delightful ‘Espana’ by Chabrier, with its flamenco syncopation, and ‘Carmen Suite No 2’ by Bizet, featuring an excellent off-stage trumpet solo by Nick Bunker. This was a short but heavy programme with some great tunes and powerful themes. I’m not sure whether our audience in the Cripps Hall at Northampton School for Boys chose to cluster at the back of the stalls because the view is better from there or actually started sitting at the front and were propelled backwards by the volume of the music! It was a lovely concert and a nice way to end our 2011-12 season.

‘MacBeth in Scots’ by William Shakespeare, translated by Robin Lorimer

18 July 2012


Later on Saturday evening the Courtyard Theatre hosted 'MacBeth in Scots', translated from Shakespeare by Robin Lorimer and performed by Edinburgh Theatre Arts as part of the RSC Open Stages National Showcase. From the start we knew we were in safe hands: this was clearly an experienced and confident amateur theatre group. The large cast was packed with talented actors and the staging, costumes and set design were subtle and clever. It was fascinating to spot the most famous lines of the play in slightly unfamiliar form in their Scots versions and I had no difficulty in following the proceedings. Danny Farrimond as MacBeth and Edith Peers as Lady MacBeth conveyed the emotional journeys of the characters with skill and empathy, though Colin McPherson's Janitor almost stole the show in a great comic interlude amidst the tragedy. Edinburgh Theatre Arts will be performing 'MacBeth in Scots' from 6 to 18 August at St Ninian's Hall, Edinburgh, as part of the Edinburgh Festival Fringe.

'Julius Caesar’ by William Shakespeare

18 July 2012


I was back at the RSC Open Stages National Showcase at the Courtyard Theatre in Stratford-upon-Avon on Saturday to see ‘Julius Caesar’ performed by Rainbow Factory from Belfast. This thrilling, fast-moving production set the play on the Shankill Road in the early 2000′s. The crowd scenes featured track-suited teenage mothers with pushchairs and youths in hoodies clutching cans of lager, in front of sectarian murals. This was a Senate of folding plastic chairs which became protest placards, brandished by an angry mob. The young cast brought an urgency and energy to the text, though the lines were often difficult to hear because of their rapid speed of delivery. There was no difficulty following the plot, however, which was clearly communicated. It was an exciting and extremely violent depiction of shifting allegiances and the power of the mob, with knives, guns and balaclavas to the fore. I don’t have a cast list to properly credit the actors but Mark Anthony was, for me, the pick of the performances – an assured actor with the confidence to slow things down occasionally amid the frantic action. And Cassius, Brutus and Julius Caesar were also very strong – believable characters who were compelling to watch. 

'Baba Shakespeare' by Emmeline Winterbotham

16 July 2012


As I entered the auditorium of the Courtyard Theatre inStratford-upon-Avon on Friday evening I was listening carefully to the pre-show chatter. Two RSC front-of-house staff were deep in conversation with one saying clearly to the other “no, the rules about photography and video recording are same as for any other show”. Someone at the back of the stalls was asking his neighbour “which workshop are you going to tomorrow? I thought I would do the voice one”. And to the side of me someone else was carefully explaining “yes, some amateur theatre groups do light, easy plays but others do really ambitious things”. This was RSC Open Stages: some of the country’s best amateur theatre had come to town. 


It was fitting that the RSC Open Stages National Showcase should begin in the Courtyard Theatre. This was the setting, in November 2009, for the creative planning weekend at which we designed the Open Stages project. More than two and half years ago Voluntary Arts brought 65 representatives of national voluntary arts umbrella bodies to Stratford-upon-Avon for a weekend to work with RSC staff and actors to develop ideas for the 2012 World Shakespeare Festival. Now, at the end of a journey that has included skills-sharing workshops that have brought together amateurs and professionals across the UK, national competitions and more than 260 amateur productions, some of the best RSC Open Stages shows have been given the opportunity to perform in the RSC’s own theatres in Stratford-upon-Avon, alongside professional productions from across the world, as part of the World Shakespeare Festival.


The first National Showcase performance, on Friday, was by the Tower Theatre Company from London. They performed ‘Baba Shakespeare’ – a new play written and directed by Emmeline Winterbotham, suggested by the Merchant Ivory film ‘Shakespeare Wallah’, which itself was based on the real life experiences of Felicity Kendal’s father’s company ‘Shakespeareana’. Set in 1961, ‘Baba Shakespeare’ tells the tale of a troupe of British actors touring an India that no longer values their Shakespearean productions as it once did. The Tower Theatre Company’s production was ambitious and impressive, encompassing a variety of set-piece scenes that included puppetry, Bollywood dancing and excerpts from a range of Shakespeare plays. The cast of 26 included a high proportion of young Asian actors and dancers and the standard of performance was uniformly high. Ian Recordon and Simona Hughes as Tony and Clare Buckingham, Lizzy Barber as their daughter, Lizzie, and Cael King as Sanju Rai, with whom she falls in love, were all excellent – as was Llila Vis as the Bollywood film star Manjula (played in the original film by Madhur Jaffrey). The ensemble playing was very slick, with some great comedy, particularly that involving Ankur Chopra as Gupta. 


The Tower Theatre Company felt at home in the large Courtyard Theatre and the measure of their success was that there were times when I genuinely forgot I wasn’t watching the RSC and had to remind myself that this was an amateur theatre production. ‘Baba Shakespeare’ was a great way to start the RSC Open Stages National Showcase: it is a play about theatre, and about Shakespeare, and there are references within the text to maybe playing upon the stage at Stratford one day. Looking at Shakespeare in an Indian context also emphasises his global reach: this was a fitting first contribution from the UK’s amateur theatre sector to the 2012 World Shakespeare Festival.

Olympic Torch Relay

13 July 2012


On Monday morning I was in Milton Keynes to watch the Olympic Torch Relay go past. I was surprised how many people had turned up at 8.30 am on a Monday morning: it was packed. And it was surprisingly exciting watching families crowding the route with children sneaking out onto the road to see if the torch was coming. One boy near me had a cardboard and tissue paper replica torch and lots of people were eagerly waving flags. There was a friendly mood with police officers on motorbikes slowing to slap the outstretched hands of the youngsters as they passed. You can read biographies of each of the torch-bearers on the London 2012 website and the variety of personal stories reminded me of the Antony Gormley 'One and Other' project on the fourth plinth in Trafalgar Square. The actual moment the torch went past was fairly fleeting but I got a good look at it and I’m pleased to be able to say I was there the day the Olympic flame came to Milton Keynes. See: http://www.voluntaryarts.org/london-2012-cultural-olympiad/line-the-route-of-the-olympic-torch-relay/ and some of my photos at: http://culturaloutlook.blogspot.co.uk/search?q=torch+relay

‘Mrs Robinson's Disgrace: The Private Diary of a Victorian Lady’ by Kate Summerscale

13 July 2012


In 'The Suspicions of Mr Whicher' (reviewed here in April 2009) Kate Summerscale constructed a gripping picture of a real Victorian murder mystery, drawing on a wide range of evidence and research. Her latest book takes a similar approach to tell the story of a very different court case from the same era. ‘Mrs Robinson's Disgrace: The Private Diary of a Victorian Lady’ deals with one of the first divorce cases brought under the new Matrimonial Causes Act of 1857. Isabella Robinson’s apparent infidelity was discovered by her husband, Henry, when he came across her incredibly candid personal diary. It is this diary that forms the main evidence against her in the trial. The fact that Henry is himself openly unfaithful to Isabella appears to be irrelevant and the sexual inequalities of the time become more evident as the divorce proceeds. As in ‘The Suspicions of Mr Whicher’, Kate Summerscale creates a vivid social history of the Victorian middle classes. It’s amazing how many key characters of the age (including Charles Darwin, Charles Dickens and George Eliot) drift in and out of the Robinsons’ lives. I read ‘Mrs Robinson’s Disgrace’ as an unabridged audio book narrated by Jenny Agutter. I’m not sure it worked so well as an audio book because the need to indicate, by tone of voice, which words are quotations from original source material really breaks up many of the sentences. Though, without this indication much of the book might sound like a fictionalised account which would have seriously reduced its power. Nevertheless it’s a fascinating work and a compelling story.

Northampton Symphony Orchestra concert

6 July 2012


Tchaikovsky’s ‘Manfred Symphony’ is a big, heavy, long and loud piece of music. Its length and the technical challenges it presents mean it is rarely performed. I hadn’t heard it before we started rehearsing it for our latest Northampton Symphony Orchestra concert. The Manfred Symphony feels quite different from Tchaikovsky’s other symphonies. It’s a programmatic piece, based on Byron’s epic dramatic poem. At times it sounds almost like a Mahler symphony. The big tunes are stirring and dramatic and I enjoyed tackling the recurring horn call solos. I suspect the Manfred Symphony might have been more fun to play than it was for our audience to listen to but I think we gave a very presentable account of it at the concert. The rest of our programme included another infrequently played work by a well-known composer – the overture ‘In Nature’s Realm’ by Dvořák. This is a gentle, pastoral piece which contains plenty of echoes of other Dvořák compositions (including the New World Symphony) and seems to suggest the influence of Mendelssohn. The concert also featured Mozart’s wonderful ‘Clarinet Concerto’, impressively played by John Sharp. The slow movement in particular is achingly beautiful.

‘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!

‘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.

'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.  

'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.

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.

'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.

BBC Young Musician 2012

16 May 2012

I have written extensively here before about the BBC Young Musician competition (in May 2006, May 2008 and May 2010) and I’m pleased to report that, compared to the dark days of 2008, the BBC coverage of the 2012 finals continued the return to a sense of dignity that I observed here in 2010. The TV coverage of BBC Young Musician 2012 was slick and modern but also serious and respectful. It’s just really sad only to see three concerto finalists rather than all five category winners getting the chance to perform at the Sage, Gateshead, with the Northern Sinfonia. Once again this year there was no brass concerto in the final concert. Apart from this, however, 2012 was a vintage year for the competition. The field seemed stronger than I can remember it and amazingly, after predicting the winner for the very first time in 2010, this year I knew Laura van der Heijden was going to win as soon as I saw her performance in the Strings Final. She was clearly something special and her performance of the Walton ‘Cello Concerto on Sunday was mesmerising. It is hard to believe she has only just turned 15. So well done Laura and well done BBC but how disgraceful that none of the national newspapers reported the result of BBC Young Musician 2012, see: http://www.artsjournal.com/slippeddisc/2012/05/not-one-uk-paper-reports-bbc-young-musician-result.html.

'A Midsummer Night's Dream' by William Shakespeare

14 May 2012

We started Voluntary Arts Week 2012 on Saturday by making the short journey to the TADS Theatre in Toddington. TADS is celebrating its 50^th anniversary – which it shares with the Royal Shakespeare Company – by presenting its first ever performance of a Shakespeare play. Sue Sachon’s production of ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’ has clearly been a major undertaking for TADS: the theatre has been transformed for the occasion, creating a central stage area with seating on two sides and the greenery of the Athenian forest covering the whole auditorium. This spectacular setting (designed by Grainne Allen) is perfect for a wonderful performance that makes you wonder why it has taken TADS 50 years to get around to Shakespeare. Setting the production in the Edwardian era gives the play an added poignancy. It feels like a last hurrah for the old way of life – in which an aristocratic father is prepared to condemn his daughter to death for refusing to marry his preferred suitor, while the deference of the servants already seems old-fashioned and outdated. The rude mechanicals are dressed as cloth-capped labourers and bring to mind Robert Tressell’s ‘Ragged-Trousered Philanthropists’. Amid the mirth and mayhem, the impending shadow of the Somme hangs over these “hard-handed men”. There were some great performances: Michael Collins stood out as a mercurcial Irish Puck, Dave Corbett was powerful as Oberon and Steve Loczy and Cameron Hay show an impressive range of emotions as Lysander and Demetrius. Lea Pryer completely inhabits the part of Titania – convincingly amorous with the ass-headed Bottom though it is probably only fair to point out that he is played by Lea’s husband! Steven Pryer is a great comic turn as Nick Bottom but the show is stolen by the tiny young actor, Harry Rodgers: his performance, in a wig of flowing golden locks, as the bellows mender Francis Flute playing Thisbe (in the play-within-the-play) is hysterically funny. All of which reminds you what an excellent amateur theatre group TADS has become – and what a wonderful play ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’ is: a triumph.

‘I, Partridge: We Need to Talk About Alan’ by Alan Partridge with Rob Gibbons, Neil Gibbons, Armando Iannucci and Steve Coogan

11 May 2012

I’m not a great one for celebrity autobiographies and I wasn’t sure how much I would enjoy the ‘autobiography’ of a fictional celebrity but I thought that ‘I, Partridge: We Need to Talk About Alan’ might be an undemanding bit of light relief. Once I got started with the unabridged audio book, read by ‘Alan Partridge’ himself, I realised that I was in for a treat. ‘I Partridge’ is a really clever and incredibly funny book. I found myself laughing out loud at least once a chapter. The book, written by ‘Alan Partridge’ with Rob Gibbons, Neil Gibbons, Armando Iannucci and Steve Coogan, is exactly how Alan Partridge would have written his autobiography. It is painstakingly accurate (or pleasingly pedantic) in its references to Alan’s broadcasting career, taking in all the incidents that I remember clearly myself having followed Steve Coogan’s comic creation from its inception. Indeed you quickly realise that Alan Partridge has now been around so long and appeared in so many incarnations, since his debut on Radio 4’s ‘On The Hour’ in 1991, that he has grown into a rounded character with a substantial ‘real’ history. But the historical events familiar to us from Alan’s various radio and TV shows are recounted in the book very much from the Partridge point of view, and with the benefit of hindsight, and may not always be exactly as you remember them. ‘I Partridge’ is not a ‘greatest hits’ exercise, merely replaying old jokes, it actually adds a further layer of hindsight humour. There’s also a lot of playful meta-textual stuff, with Alan being careful to warn us when he is about to shift to a first person, present tense, narration for effect, and pointing out which passages his publishers have insisted he includes. This talking directly to the reader, together with the confusing nature of having a fictional character reading the audio version of a book written by a fictional character about events that, though fictional, we actually remember from more than 20 years ago, gives the book a strangely sophisticated feel. The inclusion of a (very funny) birth scene in the first chapter made me think of Laurence Sterne’s ‘Tristram Shandy’, perhaps intentionally as Steve Coogan starred in Michael Winterbottom’s 2005 film of Sterne’s novel, ‘A Cock and Bull Story’. ‘I Partridge’ is much harder to describe than it is to read: I found myself picking it up at every available opportunity and loved every minute.

Northampton Symphony Orchestra concert

11 May 2012

I’ve played in loads of amateur orchestras and performed in countless concerts over many years. As a French horn player, I have particularly enjoyed playing music by the great Romantic composers of the 19^th and early 20^th centuries. But I have played hardly any music by one of the most popular and most romantic of all composers, Giacomo Puccini. Puccini was primarily a composer of operas and wrote very little for the concert hall. Our latest Northampton Symphony Orchestra concert last Saturday was ‘A Night at the Opera’ – a programme of overtures, interludes and arias from some of the best known operas. This provided a rare opportunity for the orchestra to play some Puccini, specifically ‘Un bel di’ from ‘Madam Butterfly’, ‘Nessun Dorma’ from ‘Turandot’ and ‘Vogliatemi bene’, the Finale to Act One of ‘Madam Butterfly’ which I particularly enjoyed – it’s gorgeous music to play. We were joined by two operatic soloists, the soprano Sally Harrison and the experienced tenor John Hudson. John is a former Principal with English National Opera who we were incredibly lucky to secure as a last-minute replacement when our original tenor came down with flu the day before the concert. The singers were both great and very entertaining and it was interesting for the orchestra to experience the very different discipline of playing for opera. Because each aria is literally telling a story, accompanying the singers is quite different from playing with a concerto soloist. The ebbs and flows of speed and volume are different every time you play the piece and you need to pay incredibly careful attention. By contrast, Verdi’s overture to ‘La forza del destino’, with which we opened the concert, felt like a very conventional orchestral piece. The programme also included pieces from Bizet’s ‘Carmen’, ‘Cosi fan tutte’ by Mozart and ‘The Merry Widow’ by Franz Lehar, finishing with ‘Brindisi’ from Verdi’s ‘La Traviata’. It was a fun concert which went down well with the audience and we returned to Puccini for an encore of ‘Vogliatemi bene’.

'Silver: Return to Treasure Island' by Andrew Motion

2 May 2012

It was interesting reading Andrew Motion’s novel ‘Silver: Return to Treasure Island’ immediately after Robert Louis Stevenson’s original story. ‘Silver’, which I read as an unabridged audio book, narrated by David Tennant, tells the story of Jim Hawkins’ son and Long John Silver’s daughter returning to the infamous island to recover more of the treasure. Initially the story appears to follow a parallel path to ‘Treasure Island’ but with very little of the original’s menace. I think you can tell this is the work of a poet – beautifully written with every word carefully chosen – but it feels a bit slow and lacks the thrill and adventure of its predecessor. Once we arrive at the island the narrative twists in a new direction and becomes less predictable and much more interesting – less ‘Treasure Island’ (reviewed here in April 2012) and more ‘The Lord of the Flies’ (reviewed here in June 2006). ‘Silver’ is a clever, thoughtful book but whereas Stevenson continually ratcheted up the levels of evil, Motion’s tale feels too safe to be truly scary or thrilling.

'Wonderful Town' by Leonard Bernstein, Betty Comden and Adolph Green

2 May 2012

Since visiting New York last year (which I wrote about here in April 2011), I have become much more aware of quite how many films, books, plays and musicals are set in Manhattan – and much more interested in the geography of these narratives. So it was fascinating to discover Leonard Bernstein’s ‘Wonderful Town’ which forms the centrepiece of his trilogy of New York musicals and is, to some extent, the missing link between the more celebrated shows, ‘On The Town’ and ‘West Side Story’. The new production of ‘Wonderful Town’ – a collaboration between The Royal Exchange Theatre, The Hallé Concerts Society and The Lowry, directed by Braham Murray, which I saw at Milton Keynes Theatre – is a rare revival of a largely forgotten work. While the story is very slight and the songs didn’t escape to take on a life of their own, nevertheless it was a very enjoyable experience. And it was really interesting to spot little ideas and motifs that were recognisable precursors of ‘West Side Story’. The music was great – though I am sorry I didn’t have the opportunity to see the show at The Lowry in Salford where it was accompanied by the entire Hallé Orchestra, conducted by Sir Mark Elder: that must have been something to behold. I am glad I spent some time listening to recordings of the music beforehand so that it felt reasonably familiar. There were some wonderful big production numbers with great dancing, choreographed by Andrew Wright. For me, the showstopper was ‘Pass the football’ sung by Nic Greenshields as Wreck – an unusually structured chorus, “like nothing you have ever seen”. ‘Wonderful Town’ had a lot of similarities with ‘Guys and Dolls’ (reviewed here in February 2007) in its set, characters and score. But it was the hints of what was to come, not just in ‘West Side Story’ but also in ‘Candide’ that made it particularly compelling.

'The Tempest' by William Shakespeare

27 April 2012

On 25 June 1992 I made the mistake of going to see the Peter Greenaway film ‘Prospero’s Books’. With hindsight this was a mistake for two reasons: firstly, having never seen ‘The Tempest’ I found ‘Prospero’s Books’ incredibly difficult to follow and didn’t enjoy the experience at all; and secondly, it put me off seeing ‘The Tempest’. Last Saturday, nearly 20 years later, I braced myself finally to face a production of the play for the first time. Inevitably, I was very pleasantly surprised. We were at the Royal Shakespeare Theatre in Stratford-upon-Avon to see the Royal Shakespeare Company production of ‘The Tempest’ as part of the RSC’s shipwreck trilogy, ‘What country friends is this?’. It was particularly fascinating, so soon after seeing ‘Twelfth Night’ (reviewed here in March 2012), to see the identical cast and director (David Farr) tackling this later work. Even the set (by Jon Bausor) was recognisably the same, albeit playing a slightly different part – the wooden ‘wave’ of floorboards having evolved into a more decayed version of its earlier self and now housing the giant perspex cube that formed Prospero’s cell. I really enjoyed discovering the play, which was funnier and with more of a plot than I had expected from my experience of Peter Greenaway’s adaptation. It was a great production, with Jonathan Slinger a wonderful Prospero and Sandy Grierson also standing out as an extremely eerie and unsettling Ariel. These two characters looked remarkably alike and there was a great moment when we were watching Prospero’s back as he was sitting as his desk only for him simultaneously to appear on the other side of the stage – the seated figure briefly turning around to show us Ariel’s face. Having the brother of the King of Naples, Sebastian, played as a woman (by Kirsty Bushell) added a layer of intrigue to Sebastian’s alliance with Prospero’s brother Antonio (played by Jonathan McGuinness). The conspirators here clearly appeared to be lovers – especially as we remembered the actors as Orsino and Olivia in ‘Twelfth Night’. The water tank at the front of the stage – used to such great effect in ‘Twelfth Night’ had been emptied – emphasising the dry, dusty exile of this desert island – so there were no further dramatic entrances from the water. But Ariel’s plunge from the skies, wearing angel wings, was a similarly stunning moment.

'Freedom' by Jonathan Franzen

20 April 2012

As I have said here before, I think Jonathan Franzen’s 2001 book, ‘The Corrections’, is one of the best new novels I’ve read in recent years. It took Franzen nine years to complete his next novel, ‘Freedom’, which I have just finished reading. A worthy successor to a modern classic, ‘Freedom’ is a mammoth work that once again addresses the state of the nation (and the world) through the minutiae of family life. As in ‘The Corrections’, the reader is shown events, in turn, through the eyes of each of the main characters. But whereas the earlier book pulled off the trick of making you sympathise simultaneously with people who held completely opposing points of view, in ‘Freedom’ I found all the principal characters fairly unlikeable. This didn’t stop me appreciating and enjoying the book – though it has to be said it’s quite a depressing tale of the breakdown of relationships. It is wonderfully written: the very first chapter in particular is a masterpiece which swiftly sets the scene and introduces the Berglund family through the curious observation of their neighbours – who then don’t feature again in the story (apart from a brief cameo towards the end). This approach bookends the novel which concludes with the introduction of a new nosey neighbour to update us on where Walter Berglund has ended up. Having just read ‘Treasure Island’ which has a fantastic plot driving it forward, ‘Freedom’ did, at times, seem to lack any clear plot and takes a very long time to develop its characters and relationships. Then, all of a sudden, Jonathan Franzen throws in major shocking plot developments, often happening off stage or between chapters. His focus is clearly on the people, the ties that bind them and the behaviour that drives them apart. Amongst the pain and sadness there is humour – particularly when certain people get their deserved comeuppance – but I felt the lack of the great comic set-pieces of ‘The Corrections’. There is an obsession amongst some male American authors (and critics) about ‘the great American novel’ and ‘Freedom’ certainly seems to be aiming for this territory. It’s an impressive book but my suspicion is that it is Franzen’s earlier work that will truly stand the test of time.

'Treasure Island' by Robert Louis Stevenson

13 April 2012

In preparation for reading Andrew Motion’s ‘Silver: Return to Treasure Island’ I have been reading Robert Louis Stevenson’s original novel (as an unabridged audio book read by Michael Page). It’s always interesting to go back to the original version of a story you think you know well. The first thing that struck me was how short ‘Treasure Island’ is: the plot, particularly in the first half of the book whips along at a frantic pace with all those iconic moments (the black spot, the apple barrel, the discovery of Ben Gunn) appearing to pass in the blink of an eye. It’s a gripping adventure which is all the more exciting as we see it through the naïve eyes of the young Jim Hawkins (though narrated in hindsight by in his adult voice). And Stevenson very cleverly creates a mythic quality to his story by constantly suggesting that the main events were those that happened before this novel begins (Captain Flint acquiring and hiding the treasure and slaughtering his crew). George Lucas did something similar in the first ‘Star Wars’ film, making you feel you were coming in halfway through the story, but then made the mistake of trying to tell us the backstory through the prequels. Stevenson also constructs a magnificent set of colourful characters, building the excitement by continuously trumping the level of evil: when Jim first encounters Billy Bones at the Admiral Benbow he finds the old pirate terrifying, but the arrival of Black Dog makes Billy Bones seem tame by comparison, and then the tap tap tapping of a blind man’s cane heralds the arrival of an even scarier figure. All this is before the appearance of the main villain, Long John Silver, and in a league table of evil, the ghost of Flint seems to loom above them all. Silver is a wonderful invention – the loveable rogue who is constantly swapping sides. For Jim and his audience it is impossible to know whether to admire or revile his guile and duplicity. Like Fagin, Silver is a despicable figure but one whom you are pleased to see escape the gallows. Despite the thrilling plot and wonderful characters, ‘Treasure Island’ is not a great work of literature. The writing is difficult at times and the second half of the book seems to drag a little. Like Mary Shelly’s ‘Frankenstein’ (reviewed here in May 2007), Stevenson seems to have hit upon a great story but one that has really found its best expression in some of its many later versions, adaptations and continuations. I look forward to seeing what Andrew Motion has done with these legendary events and characters.

'1Q84' by Haruki Murakami

5 April 2012

Any author who references George Orwell in the title of their novel risks inviting unfavourable comparisons. But Haruki Murakami clearly knows exactly what he is doing in ‘1Q84’, his mammoth new 3-volume novel. This is the work of an author at the top of his game: not content with drawing analogies with ‘1984’ he goes on to cite Dickens, Chekov and others as well as providing expert analysis of the music of Janáček, Duke Ellington etc. Despite this complexity of cultural context there’s a deceptive simplicity to Murakami’s writing: it’s sometimes difficult to tell whether this is high literature or crowd-pleasing popular culture. There’s certainly a lot of sex in his books but all described, like everything else he writes about, in slow, careful, precise terms. There might be a degree of the emperor’s new clothes about all this but it feels to me that Murakami is in total control and that it is the reader rather than the author who risks being left naked. I’ve just finished reading ‘1Q84’ as an unabridged audio book translated by Philip Gabriel and Jay Rubin and read by Alison Hiroto, Marc Vietor and Mark Boyett. Each chapter is told, in the third person, from the point of view of one of the main characters so having alternating narrators really helped to emphasise this contrast. ‘1Q84’ is a very slow, painstakingly clear narrative but always felt gripping and compelling. Murakami’s trademark magical realism is used very sparingly and is all the more effective for appearing out of a very real and precisely drawn world. I enjoyed the book and it held my attention throughout but ultimately I felt a little disappointed by it. Despite its length the novel didn't seem to have the complexity, substance and humour of some of Murakami's best earlier works. I think my favourite is still ‘'Kafka on the Shore’ (reviewed here in October 2006).

'The Winter's Tale' by William Shakespeare

5 April 2012

The thing most people know about ‘The Winter’s Tale’ is that it’s the Shakespeare play that contains the infamous stage direction “Exit, pursued by a bear”. Last week we were at the splendid new Marlowe Theatre in Canterbury to see the Propeller production of the play, directed by Edward Hall. From the opening scene, when the infant prince enters in his pyjamas clutching a teddy bear, and the moment a little later when we see him draped in a bearskin rug, you can tell this is going to be a playful production, toying with our expectations. I really enjoyed Propeller’s ‘Henry V’ (reviewed here in December 2011) and ‘The Winter’s Tale’, which the company is touring with ‘Henry V’ and features the same cast, was even better. It’s very much a play of two halves and the contrast between the grim seriousness of the scenes in Sicilia in the first act and the comic slapstick of the rural scenes in Bohemia after the interval was emphasised in this production by the set, lighting and costumes. This contrast between the scenes at court and the pastoral setting reminded me of ‘As You Like It’. Propeller really take these two worlds to extremes: we feel the angst and pain driven by the jealousy of Leontes in the first half of the play but suddenly, in Bohemia, the sun is out and the mood is transformed by singing sheep (‘The Bleatles’), beatboxing shepherds and a wonderful pickpocketing scene (by Tony Bell as Autolycus). All the cast are strong but there was a particularly fine comic performance by Karl Davies as the Young Shepherd. It was a fantastic production.

Kent

5 April 2012

We certainly chose the right week for our holiday in Kent: the weather was glorious and we had a lovely time. We stayed in the village of Ringwould near Deal and did lots of walking: the coastal paths were great but we particularly enjoyed our inland walks around the pretty villages of Barham and Bishopsbourne and the Elham Valley. The castles at Deal, Walmer and Dover were impressive and interesting and we enjoyed visiting Canterbury, Broadstairs and Sandwich. I was delighted to discover that the village next to Sandwich is called Ham! And the new Turner Contemporary gallery in Margate is stunning and well worth a visit.

'Twelfth Night' by William Shakespeare

23 March 2012

To extend Chekhov’s maxim that if a gun appears in a story it has to be fired, surely any play in which the stage incorporates a large tank of water will inevitably involve someone falling into it. The Royal Shakespeare Company’s new production of ‘Twelfth Night’ has a huge pool of water embedded into the front of the stage and I don’t think it’s too much of a spoiler to reveal that someone does indeed take a tumble into it, completely soaking several members of the audience. (In the spirit of Douglas Adams I will preserve some element of mystery by not revealing which character this happens to!) But much more impressively, the play begins with Viola suddenly entering the water from beneath the stage and clambering coughing and spluttering onto the stage like a Houdini escape. It’s a stunning opening and sets the standard for a wonderful theatrical experience. David Farr’s production of ‘Twelfth Night’ at the Royal Shakespeare Theatre in Stratford-upon-Avon is part of ‘What country friends is this?’ – the RSC’s trilogy of Shakespeare’s shipwreck plays (with ‘The Comedy of Errors’ and ‘The Tempest’) and is the first RSC offering within the World Shakespeare Festival 2012. The last time I saw ‘Twelfth Night’ was Greg Doran’s 2009 RSC production (reviewed here in November 2009) which completely gripped me, despite my familiarity with the plot. Again this week, I wondered whether I had seen ‘Twelfth Night’ too many times to enjoy it afresh but, on the day that Doran was announced as Michael Boyd’s successor as Artistic Director of the RSC, David Farr’s staging completely bowled me over. The two female leads, Kirsty Bushell as Olivia and Emily Taaffe as Viola, were excellent. In the 2009 production, I thought James Fleet was the best Sir Andrew Aguecheek I had seen but this week Bruce Mackinnon proved equally worthy of the title. I enjoyed the songs of Feste, played by Kevin McMonagle as an ageing crooner carrying a tiny electronic keyboard held together by gaffer tape. And Jonathan Slinger (who I last saw as Macbeth in Michael Boyd’s theatre-opening production, reviewed here in April 2001) was hilarious as Malvolio – with wig and double-breasted suit, looking uncannily like Mark Williams in the “suits you, sir” sketches. The set by Jon Bausor was amazing, with all the components of a dilapidated hotel foyer set at eccentric angles. He created some lovely gimmicks but resisted the temptation to overuse them. It was an excellent show – five stars: do go to see it but don’t sit in the front row, because “the rain it raineth every day”.

Reasons to be Cheerful’ by Paul Sirett

23 March 2012

We were back at the Watford Palace Theatre on Saturday to see ‘Reasons to be Cheerful’ – a play-come-musical written by Paul Sirett, featuring the music of Ian Dury and The Blockheads. This was the first time I had seen Graeae – the acclaimed theatre company that boldly places disabled artists centre stage. ‘Reasons to be Cheerful’ was directed by Graeae’s Artistic Director Jenny Sealey, who is Co-Artistic Director of the London 2012 Paralympic Games Opening Ceremony. The first impression was of a stage packed with people – the cast of disabled and non-disabled actors indistinguishable from an excellent Blockheads tribute band. The framing device was that we were in a pub in 1981 to watch a play about events in the summer of 1979, performed by the people whose story they told. (With some exceptions – I liked the fact that Vinnie’s obnoxious boss Dave was played by Vinnie’s friend Nick because Dave obviously wouldn’t have been invited to take part in this performance. Amid the rumbustious energy of the play there was a nice level of internal logical consistency.) The acting and the characterisation were great – with lots of clever little touches going on in the background across the crowded stage. I loved the enthusiasm of the Musical Director of the band – Robert Hyman – who was also Vinnie’s Uncle Harry. It took me some time to work out that Pickles (Wayne ‘Pickles’ Norman) who appeared to have wondered onto the stage from the audience, joining in the dancing but having no dialogue, playing no real part in the story and spending most of the evening speaking into a payphone in the corner of the pub, was actually doing the audio description for those audience members who couldn’t see the action. The signer, Jude Mahon, was very much part of the action, singing and dancing with the rest of the cast and occasionally acting a part (at which point someone else would seamlessly take over sign language duties). There was also inventive use of a large video screen – both to provide captioning for those who couldn’t hear the dialogue and to illustrate the colourfully surreal world of Ian Dury’s songs. Bring able to read Dury’s incredible lyrics as they whizzed past at high speed was a fantastic addition for all members of the audience. The songs were wonderful – delivered with massive energy and enthusiasm and truly getting the whole theatre rocking. John Kelly’s lead vocals were Ian Dury to a T – without descending into parody or impression. Alongside the music, the performances and the inventiveness of the production, the story seemed a bit weak and disappointingly light on the politics of 1979. But by the time we got to several encores the audience was on its feet and we left humming “Sex & Drugs & Rock & Roll”.

'The Taming of The Shrew' by William Shakespeare

14 March 2012

On Saturday we were at Milton Keynes Theatre to see Lucy Bailey’s Royal Shakespeare Company production of ‘The Taming of the Shrew’. This was the first time I had seen a production designed for the thrust stage of the new Royal Shakespeare Theatre performed in a more conventional proscenium arch theatre. The set is a gigantic bed – the shape of the thrust stage reproduced as a padded sloping surface covered by an enormous sheet. It’s a striking sight and emphasises the framing device for this difficult play: it is always clear that the battle between Petruchio and Kate is taking place within Christopher Sly’s dream and should be viewed in that context. Christopher Sly spends most of the play lying beneath a corner of the giant sheet while the players perform upon it. This allows for some lovely comic moments between scenes where Sly is pursued across the stage under the bed-sheet like the bump under the carpet in a Tom and Jerry cartoon. It’s always hard to judge ‘The Taming of the Shrew’ against modern standards: having recently seen ‘The Comedy of Errors’ it struck me that both are early Shakespeare works and lack some of the sophistication of his best plays. They both provide opportunities for slapstick and broad comedy but don’t have the verbal dexterity and deeper meaning of the later works. The RSC production was excellently acted: David Caves and Lisa Dillon were very strong in the leading parts and I also particularly enjoyed the clowning of Gavin Fowler as Lucentio. But the play didn’t grab my attention as strongly as I had hoped and we felt a long way from the action compared to the intimacy of the Royal Shakespeare Theatre.

'Neighbourhood Watch' by Alan Ayckbourn

14 March 2012

For some of us Matthew Cottle will always be the weedy ginger-haired one in the Andrew Davies sitcom ‘Game On’, but more recently he seems to have been specialising in the work of Alan Ayckbourn. When we saw Ayckbourn’s ‘Just Between Ourselves’ at the Royal Theatre Northampton in May 2009, I realised we had seen Cottle play the same part in a 2002 production of the play at the Theatre Royal in Bath. Last Saturday we were at the Palace Theatre in Watford to see the original Stephen Joseph Theatre Scarborough production of Alan Ayckbourn’s latest play ‘Neighbourhood Watch’ with Matthew Cottle as Martin. This is Ayckbourn’s 75^th professionally produced full length play and a very good example of his work. As usual with Ayckbourn there is a simple, single set – a domestic setting that would be easy for an amateur theatre company to reproduce. The action takes place in a middle class home where new residents Martin and his sister Hilda help to establish a neighbourhood watch scheme. Initially this seems very similar to the Esmonde and Larbey sitcom ‘Ever Decreasing Circles’ but there is always a darker side to Ayckbourn’s comedy and soon the neighbourhood watch is taken to extremes that veer closer to martial law. It’s a very funny, poignant and nicely observed play. Ayckbourn’s characters are slightly cartoony versions of reality but eminently recognisable: not least amongst the play’s audience!

Northampton Symphony Orchestra concert

8 March 2012

Rimsky Korsakov’s ‘Scheherezade’ is a lovely piece of music with some wonderful melodies but seems to me (particularly in the second movement) not to represent 1001 tales told by a single storyteller but a succession of storytellers presenting their own versions of the same story. This procession of soloists within the orchestra stepping into the limelight and taking their turn to outdo each other provides a great opportunity to show off the talented players in every section of the orchestra. And, in the Northampton Symphony Orchestra’s performance last Saturday, each of our home-grown soloists excelled. To be completely honest, and without any false modesty, the horn solos are much easier than most of the woodwind solos that precede them, but nonetheless I was glad that I managed to perform them fairly cleanly. Amid all this self-congratulation most praise must go to our leader, Trevor Dyson, who gave an excellent account of the violin cadenzas that hold the work together. These virtuoso challenges must be a terrifying prospect but Trevor gave a great performance. In the first half of the concert we tackled the ‘Four Sea Interludes’ from Benjamin Britten’s ‘Peter Grimes’. I hadn’t played these before and it took me a few weeks to get to grips with the music but I found it very rewarding. Each movement has a completely different style and feel. We also tackled the second Piano Concerto by Shostakovich with the pianist and composer Huw Watkins. This is a playful and relatively short concerto which is enjoyable but somewhat slight – until you get to the slow movement which is achingly beautiful and worth the price of admission on its own. It was a lovely programme and a great concert.

'Our Father' by Charlotte Keatley

2 March 2012

Anton Chekhov said that if a gun appears in a story it has to be fired: that’s the point of a story. So when the curtain opened on Charlotte Keatley’s new play ‘Our Father’ at the Palace Theatre in Watford last Saturday, to reveal a dam, high on a hill in the Peak District, there was an ever-present inevitability that this dam would burst. Adam Wiltshire’s amazing set was the star of the show and the flood was a real coup de théâtre. Charlotte Keatley is best known for her 1987 play ‘My Mother Said I Never Should’ – a clever and moving tale of four generations of women that fast became a modern classic. She is clearly an accomplished writer and ‘Our Father’, directed by Brigid Larmour who directed the original Contact Theatre production of ‘My Mother Said I Never Should’, was a well-acted, polished piece, but somehow it seemed to amount to slightly less than the sum of its parts. The device of a young woman in the present day hearing the voice of a young woman talking to her from centuries earlier in the same location reminded me of Tom Stoppard’s ‘Arcadia’. But, for me, the play failed to really come to life: there seemed to be a strong story bursting to get out but the narrative dam was possibly too securely built to allow it to flow.

'Oedipussy' by Spymonkey

20 February 2012

One of the most difficult challenges for any artist is how to respond to a particularly bad review. Australian comedian Tim Minchin (reviewed here in November 2008) famously wrote a vitriolic song about the Guardian reviewer Phil Daoust ("occasional Guardian newspaper journal-oust"). Now physical theatre company Spymonkey’s response to a bad review by Joyce McMillan in The Scotsman (and particularly her reference to them as a “bunch of middle-aged actors”) is to create a gloriously silly rendering of ‘Oedipus Rex’ in the style of a 1970s James Bond film which plays on the theme of ageing. As they say at the beginning of ‘Oedipussy’ - “this one’s for you Joyce McMillan!”. We were at the Royal Theatre in Northampton on Saturday to see the last night of ‘Oedipussy’ – a Spymonkey production in association with the Royal & Derngate Northampton, written by Carl Grose and the cast and directed and adapted by Emma Rice. I had loved the visual humour and stagecraft of two previous Emma Rice productions – ‘A Matter of Life and Death’ at the National Theatre (reviewed here in May 2007) and ‘Brief Encounter’ which I also saw at the Royal Theatre, Northampton and this show (her first with Spymonkey) had a similarly inventive approach. Spymonkey are a wonderful quartet of physical actors and clowns who spend much of the show stepping out of character to complain about their aliments and moan about their colleagues. Their re-telling of ‘Oedipus Rex’ (I loved that Sophocles gets a biography in the programme which says he “has several projects in development including a rock opera of his ‘Philoctetes with Einsturzende Neubauten and a sitcom treatment for Baby Cow”) is chaotic and confused with the actors often arguing amongst themselves. This is a physical theatre version of The National Theatre of Brent. There were some great visual gags: why is there nothing so funny as someone trying to walk through a narrow space while wearing headgear that is too wide for the space?! And the show finishes with the most hilarious suicide by hanging that you are ever likely to see on stage! ‘Oedipussy’ was incredibly silly and I suspect most people would either love it or hate it but I was grinning throughout, except for when I was laughing raucously – and many of the audience ended the evening in unstoppable hysterics.

'Our Version of Events' by Emeli Sandé

17 February 2012

Another week, another eagerly-anticipated debut album by a much-hyped young female singer songwriter. But it's not every week that the young woman in question is a former medical student from rural Aberdeenshire with English and Zambian parents. As you start to listen to 'Heaven', the opening track of Emeli Sandé's album 'Our Version of Events', it's easy to leap to the assumption, guided by the rapid background beats, that you're squarely in dance music territory. But the emergence of brass chords, leading to an epic orchestral backing, seems to take you into more of an R&B feel. And Sandé's voice is a powerful, soulful instrument. The further you travel into the album the less sure you are of where you would pigeon-hole this music. It's a clever and impressive collection of pop songs, ranging from the delicate simplicity of 'Where I Sleep', to the whispered vocals of 'Mountains' to the piano ballad 'Clown'. There's a particularly strong strand of sad but gorgeous songs such as 'Daddy' and 'Maybe'. 'Our Version of Events' is a cool, varied and sophisticated first album: it will be interesting to see what Emeli does next.

'The Comedy of Errors' by William Shakespeare

7 February 2012

‘The Comedy of Errors’ is a very early Shakespeare play and not one of his best. Even within the parameters of silly farce, the plot doesn't entirely make sense and several of the characters you are meant to care about are less than sympathetic. But it still provides solid material for an enjoyable romp if handled well. Dominic Cooke’s new production for the National Theatre is a very modern take on the play. Set in a seedy, urban, contemporary world it makes good use of the massive stage in the Olivier Theatre, incorporating three-storey buildings which use the full height of the auditorium. I loved the way the passage of years was indicated by the changing sponsors’ names on Dromio’s Arsenal football shirt! The star attraction here is Lenny Henry who gives an impressively restrained performance as Antipholus of Syracuse, with the occasional hysterical outburst, wide eyed astonishment and manic energy all the funnier for their sparing use. Antipholus and Dromio are a classic simpleton double act along the lines of Don Quixote and Sancho Panza (though ‘Don Quixote’ was published more than 10 years after the first performance of ‘The Comedy of Errors’) and Lenny Henry and Lucian Msamati make a great team: it is fascinating to see Lenny Henry more often playing the straight man. As the farce begins to take off in the second act there are some great comic moments with crowds of actors pursuing each other around the set. Claudie Blakley and Michelle Terry deserve a particular mention for managing to negotiate the chase scenes in vertiginous high heels!  

‘Born To Die’ by Lana Del Ray

3 February 2012

I’ve been listening to the most anticipated debut album of recent years, ‘Born To Die’ by Lana Del Ray, which was released on Monday. I haven’t really been following all the hype, which seemed to centre on outrage in the media that Lana Del Ray turned out to be a character rather than a real person – which doesn’t seem a terribly newsworthy scandal in the world of pop music. I came to the music without much of the backstory and have been enjoying the album on its own merits. This is incredibly catchy pop with a hint of dreamy strangeness.  It’s lusciously produced with soaring strings, gentle piano chords, drums and electronic beats, plenty of echo, some light rapping and Lana Del Ray’s haunting, very slightly slurred vocals. It’s the tunes and their delivery that make ‘Born To Die’ addictive pop. The lyrics don’t bear too much scrutiny but there are some great singalong choruses. ‘Video Games’ is a wonderful song – slow, gentle, littered with harp arpeggios and low, sultry vocals with a weirdly compelling melody that seems to twist sinisterly in unexpected directions. ‘Diet Mountain Dew’ feels completely different – trip hop meets cheerleader with a minor key feel that sounds a lot like early Oi Va Voi. ‘National Anthem’ clearly borrows from ‘Bitter Sweet Symphony’ by the Verve but takes us on into a memorable chorus. Cleverly manufactured pop music.

‘Man with a Love Song’ by James Hill

25 January 2012

The humble ukulele has undergone a renaissance in recent years, with its notable appearances including ‘Bang Goes the Knighthood’ by The Divine Comedy (reviewed here in June 2010), the eclectic music of Beirut (reviewed here in November 2006 and October 2007), the phenomenal posthumous success of the late Hawaiian singer Israel Kamakawiwo’ole and the ubiquitous Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain (reviewed here in July 2010). James Hill is a Canadian singer, songwriter and ukulele player and his latest album ‘Man with a Love Song’ is a lovely, varied set of songs – laid-back, gentle and playful tunes. James Hill also plays banjo and piano and is joined by the cellist Anne Davison. He uses the ukulele thoughtfully and sparingly: there is little of the clichéd frantic strumming here. And the pick of the tracks, for me, is the haunting, moving ballad ‘High Demand’ – a beautiful song.

'The Awakening'

20 January 2012

We made a rare trip to The Castle in Wellingborough last Saturday to see ‘The Awakening’, a British film that came out last November but had passed me by. It’s a ghost story, set just after the First World War at a boarding school in Cumbria where professional hoax exposer Florence Cathcart is called in to investigate the death of a boy who has apparently been scared to death. It’s a spooky tale, atmospherically filmed in a constantly gloomy light with muted colours, allowing half-seen images to lurk in the shadows. The most scary ghost films are those that don’t show too much but play upon the audience’s imagination. ‘The Awakening’ pulls off that classic trick of showing you a scene in which the heroine walks through a room without noticing anything unusual, while a ghostly figure appears very briefly in the background in a way that ensures all the audience see something but no-one is quite sure whether they really did. Rebecca Hall is great as Florence Cathcart, her rational determination gradually unwinding in the face of increasingly unexplainable happenings. And there is good support from Dominic West and Imelda Staunton. It’s a nicely made film that doesn’t outstay its welcome and confirms that there is nothing so scary as children!

‘The House of Silk’ by Anthony Horowitz

13 January 2012

It’s been confusing, over the past couple of weeks, to be watching the excellent new series of ‘Sherlock’ by Steven Moffat and Mark Gatiss whilst I have also been reading ‘The House of Silk’ by Anthony Horowitz – the first new Sherlock Holmes novel to be officially approved by the Conan Doyle estate. Both are lovingly reverential to the original Sherlock Holmes stories and knowingly playful with the genre. In ‘The House of Silk’ (I read the unabridged audio version, read by Derek Jacobi) an elderly Dr Watson, living in a nursing home many years after Holmes himself has passed away, recounts one last case which he was unable to tell at the time it happened – and will be consigned to his solicitors' vaults for 100 years. All the familiar Holmesian elements are present – 221B Baker Street, Mrs Hudson, Inspector Lestrade, the pipe, the violin, the Baker Street Irregulars etc. There’s a wonderful laugh-out-loud encounter between Sherlock and Mycroft Holmes where they exchange a rapid series of elementary deductions about what they have each been up to since they last met – like an intellectual tennis match. The narrative style is faithful to Conan Doyle and Watson’s voice is completely recognisable. Watson himself comments on his tendency to preoccupy himself with plot and laments his inability to comment on the social conditions of Victorian London in the way Gissing or Dickens had. He then attempts the occasional foray into Dickensian description but Horowitz’s main focus is also on the puzzle of the case (or cases). It’s hard to know whether to criticise the occasional clumsiness of the writing or to attribute this to an accurate reproduction of Conan Doyle’s narrator but ‘The House of Silk’ works better as a thriller than a literary period piece. It’s a marvellously complex mystery: being much longer than Conan Doyle’s original stories allows the novel to weave an extensive web of plotlines, while the relentless pace of the adventure drives the confused reader continually onward. The trick of a Sherlock Holmes story is to leave the reader always slightly ahead of Watson but slightly behind Holmes – and Horowitz achieved this admirably as far as this reader was concerned. The novel builds to a truly thrilling conclusion – I was completely hooked.

‘You Can’t Take It With You’ by George S Kaufman and Moss Hart

5 January 2012

Last Friday we were at the Royal Exchange Theatre in Manchester to see ‘You Can’t Take It With You’ by George S Kaufman and Moss Hart. This production by the Royal Exchange Theatre and Told By An Idiot of the 1936 Broadway comedy, was extremely silly, incredibly funny and joyously life-affirming: I loved it! Kaufman wrote for the Marx Brothers (including the screenplays for ‘A Night at the Opera’ and ‘A Day at the Races’) and ‘You Can’t Take It With You’ displays a similar zany humour. Set in New York in the 1930s, Alice Sycamore (played here by Sarah Ridgeway) brings her new boyfriend home to meet her eccentric family. Here the two lovers are the only ‘normal’ characters with everyone else slightly larger than life – the mother (played by Joanne Howarth) who has spent eight years trying to write a play, purely because eight years ago someone mistakenly delivered her a typewriter, the father (Sam Parks) who spends his days in the attics inventing fireworks, the sister (Sophie Russell) who wants to be a dancer and dances almost continuously around the house, the house guest (Martin Hyder) who arrived six years ago to deliver ice and never left and the grandfather (Christopher Benjamin) who decided that spending six hours a day doing something he didn’t enjoy in order to spend one hour doing the things he liked made no sense and so he stopped going to work or paying income tax. It was a wonderfully silly show, directed by Paul Hunter and making good use of the theatre-in-the-round setting. Everyone left with a smile on their faces.

'The Ladykillers' by Graham Linehan

5 January 2012

Between Christmas and New Year we were at the Gielgud Theatre in London’s West End to see ‘The Ladykillers’ – a new stage version of the classic Ealing comedy, written by Graham Linehan and directed by Sean Foley. It was an all-star cast with Peter Capaldi, James Fleet, Ben Miller, Clive Rowe, Stephen Wight and the wonderful Marcia Warren as Mrs Wilberforce. But the clear star of the show was the amazing set by Michael Taylor. The whole inside of the house is laid out in exaggerated and eccentric angles and perspective – which reminded me of the Stephen Daldry version of ‘An Inspector Calls’ – and this is combined with a revolving stage to take us outside and show us the heist with a series of toy cars and a toy train. Graham Linehan says in the programme that he was influenced by Patrick Barlow’s stage adaptation of ‘The Thirty Nine Steps’ and this was certainly in a very similar style. There were some very funny moments – I loved the tableau of the six faces of the criminal gang crammed into a tiny cupboard – and it was a very enjoyable evening in the theatre but the performances were good rather than outstanding.

'Measure for Measure' by William Shakespeare

5 January 2012

On Boxing Say we were at The Swan Theatre in Stratford-upon-Avon to see the Royal Shakespeare Company production of ‘Measure for Measure’, directed by Roxana Silbert. I’ve seen the play before but this production held my attention better and I felt I properly appreciated it for the first time. Although technically one of Shakespeare’s ‘comedies’, ‘Measure for Measure’ is a dark play. It was good to see the comic moments brought out, without losing the seriousness of its themes. Raymond Coulthard was a mercurial Duke, with a twinkle in his eye, a tendency to break down the fourth wall and a fine line in conjuring tricks. Now that the new Royal Shakespeare Theatre echoes its thrust stage, the Swan, next door, feels very small. We were in the top gallery and could only see the stage by leaning uncomfortably forward. But the quality of the acting overcame these practical annoyances and it was an impressive production.

‘The Ingenious Gentleman Don Quixote of La Mancha’ by Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

5 January 2012

I’ve just finished reading ‘The Ingenious Gentleman Don Quixote of La Mancha’ by Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, as an unabridged audio book translated by John Ormsby, revised, updated and read by Roy McMillan. It’s a massive book – the audio version lasts 36 hours – and I’m afraid it did feel very long. Everyone knows about ‘Don Quixote’ but it was an interesting experience actually reading it. At first it is hard to know how to take it: on the surface Cervantes is clearly parodying a particular style of chivalrous tale of knights of old, but the stories being parodied are now unfamiliar, so the tales of Don Quixote’s mistaken skirmishes with windmills and the like appear to us a simple child-like slapstick. This cartoon narrative is funny but doesn’t seem sophisticated enough to hold your attention over such a long novel. But then you gradually begin to see something cleverer going on in the way the story is told and, in particular, the question of who is telling the story. We appear to be in the hands of an omniscient narrator who knows all that befell Don Quixote and his trusty squire Sancho Panza, even when there was clearly no-one else present. But then there are references to the different versions of Don Quixote’s story, suggesting that he has been written about by many authors and his exploits have become the stuff of legend. ‘Don Quixote’ was published by Cervantes in two volumes, in 1605 and 1615, and in the second part the knight and his squire frequently encounter people who have read the earlier volume and are familiar with their history. This must be one of the earliest examples of meta-fiction and Cervantes proceeds to have lots of fun with the premise: the author himself points out inconsistencies in earlier chapters where, for example, Sancho Panza’s ass is stolen in one scene but he is then described as riding it again in the next. We are told that the author of this account of the Don’s life wrote it in Arabic and that it was then translated into Spanish. The narrator then interjects with comments about the original Arabic author and also about the translator – so who is making these comments? This becomes a very clever, entertaining and rewarding exercise in narrative style. The other thing that Cervantes does very impressively is to construct two classic comic characters, whose influence can be seen to the present day. Don Quixote and Sancho Panza are both deluded simpletons but with their own serious and consistent logic. I worried at first that we were simply being invited to laugh at Don Quixote’s mental illness as he mistakes an inn for a castle or windmills for giants, and even when these obvious mistakes are pointed out to him he excuses them by claiming he has been enchanted by evil forces. But there is much emphasis on the way in which Don Quixote is actually very sensible and logical on every topic except that of knights errant as he has been corrupted by reading too many chivalrous tales. And gradually you realise that Don Quixote and Sancho Panza are wonderfully drawn characters with their own internal logic – exaggerated cartoon creations placed in an otherwise real-world setting. Though set in a different continent at a different time, their picaresque adventures reminded me of the Coen Brothers film ‘O Brother, Where Art Thou’ – itself a loose version of Homer’s ‘The Odyssey’. Cleverly, Don Quixote and Sancho Panza can both see through many of each other’s delusions, while remaining blissfully unaware of their own shortcomings. These are comic simpletons with a serious approach to life – like Laurel and Hardy, Morecambe and Wise or Alan Partridge. I enjoyed reading ‘Don Quixote’: it is too long but you can see why it became so revered and how influential it has been and I will miss The Knight of the Rueful Countenance and his loyal companion with whom I have travelled so far.

Lea Singers Concert

5 January 2012

I can think of few better ways to start the Christmas break than by attending the Lea Singers Charity Christmas Concert, ‘MerryLea’. On 22 December we were back at the Harpenden Public Halls to see this excellent chamber choir entertain us with a festive programme ranging from medieval to modern. Each of Poulenc’s beautiful ‘Four Christmas Motets’ were paired with settings of the same words some 400 years earlier by Palestrina, Orlando Lassus and William Byrd. I also very much enjoyed a modern South African Christmas Anthem by Grant McLachlan, ‘Come Colours Rise’. It was great to see a packed audience helping to raise funds for the Grove House hospice charity and singing the carols enthusiastically and impressively.