'Solar' by Ian McEwan

7 April 2011

Reading Ian McEwan’s latest novel ‘Solar’, I found I had to keep reminding myself that it wasn’t a work by David Lodge. McEwan seems to have parked himself squarely in Lodge territory with a comic novel about a frustrated, aging male academic. The theme here is climate change and the potential of solar power to solve our enegergy crisis and the book was inspired by a trip to the Arctic that McEwan made as part of a group of artists – a version of which provides a significant episode in the first part of the novel. ‘Solar’ is clever and well-constructed but not half as funny as David Lodge would have made it. Having created an unlikeable protagonist – the Nobel prize-winning scientist Michael Beard, through whose eyes we see events unfold – the challenge of the comic novel is surely to make us, against our better judgement, come to sympathise with him. I didn’t feel McEwan entirely achieved this – though I think we are supposed to see Beard’s bloated, dysfunctional body and his consistent refusal to seize any of the opportunities for redemption which present themselves to him, as an analogy for the failing health of the planet. Having said all that, I enjoyed the way McEwan pulled together all the threads of his somewhat non-linear narrative towards its inevitable climax.

Manhattan School of Music Symphony concert

7 April 2011

We were fortunate to be able to round off our New York holiday with a concert at the Manhattan School of Music. The MSM Symphony, conducted by Philippe Entremont, played ‘Appalachian Spring’ by Copland before giving the New York premiere of ‘Souvenirs’, written by MSM Professor Richard Danielpour as a tribute to the musical life of Philippe Entremont. This engaging and entertaining piece consists of five movements, each reflecting a place where Entremont has been a resident conductor: New York, Tokyo, New Orleans, Paris and Vienna. The second half of the concert was a performance of Bernstein’s Symphony No 2 ‘The Age of Anxiety’. Based on WH Auden’s poem ‘The Age of Anxiety: a Baroque Eclogue’ this powerful work showcases Bernstein’s unique mix of serious, lyrical, playful, dramatic and jazz-inspired and features a fiendishly difficult role for solo piano, here played by the impressive young Egyptian pianist Mohamed Shams. The student orchestra was fantastic, reaching a very high standard and creating and electrically exciting atmosphere. Great concert.

'Freud's Last Session' by Mark St Germain

7 April 2011

New York is home to a huge number of theatres and Broadway has a very similar feel to London’s West End (and seemed to be featuring many of the same shows). We sought out the delightful off-Broadway Marjorie S Deane Theater to see a new play by Mark St Germain called ‘Freud’s Last Session’. This two-hander imagines a meeting between Sigmund Freud and CS Lewis, shortly after the outbreak of the Second World War. Freud is 83 and approaching the end of his life while Lewis is half his age and a recent convert to Christianity. Their debate of religion, psychoanalysis and more was engaging and thoughtfully staged, with the interruption of radio updates on the war providing breaks in the dialogue. It was excellently acted by Martin Rayner as Freud and Mark H Dold as Lewis. An enjoyable and thought-provoking piece of theatre.

New York

7 April 2011

We had a brilliant week in New York. It was my first time there and we did just about all the main tourist attractions – and walked for miles! We stayed in an apartment in the Upper West Side with views over Central Park and quickly got the hang of the grid system and the subway. Manhattan is an amazing place – self-contained and small enough to find your way around easily but littered with iconic landmarks and a sense of familiarity from hundreds of movies. At the end of our first, exhausting day we collapsed into a cinema for a rest and chose the first available film which was ‘The Adjustment Bureau’ starring Matt Damon and Emily Blunt, only to discover that not only was it set in downtown Manhattan but that we had just visited most of the places featured mere minutes before! We had great weather for most of the week – glorious sunshine and cloudless blue skies but extremely cold (even for New York). I think our highlight was the boat trip to the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island: the Museum of Immigration is fantastic, particularly with the audio tour which puts the voices of people who passed through the entrance hall and tiled corridors to secure their American citizenship in your ears as you tread in their footsteps. And it was amazing to discover that this huge operation of screening people for suitability to enter the USA resulted in just 2% being turned back to the ships that had brought them. We enjoyed the views from the ‘Top of the Rock’ (the roof of the Rockefeller Center) and the Empire State Building, the tackiness of Times Square and the preponderance of excellent cheap cafés, each with an enormous range of fresh food. We visited Ground Zero, though there is not much to see at the moment as new buildings are well under way and the area is now a fairly inaccessible building site. The Frick Collection – a relatively small but elegant art gallery with a passing resemblance to London’s Wallace Collection – was charming and the massive Metropolitan Museum of Art was awe-inspiring. To cap it all, as we approached the Met we noticed crowds gathering outside and police positioning barriers along the side of Fifth Avenue. We asked a police officer what was happening and she told us that President Obama was about to drive past so we joined the crowds and caught a fleeting glimpse of the President as his motorcade sped past. Manhattan felt very safe and clean and we found most New Yorkers extremely polite and welcoming. We had a great time.

'King Lear' by William Shakespeare

21 March 2011

Week three of my theatrical hearing test: last Thursday we were back at Milton Keynes Theatre to see the Donmar production of ‘King Lear’ with Derek Jacobi, directed by Michael Grandage. We were sitting right at the back of the upper circle, even further from the stage than for ‘Hamlet’ a couple of weeks ago. Concerned about whether we would again have difficulty hearing the actors, we were delighted to discover that the performance was to be captioned by Stagetext, only to realise that we were sitting so far back that we could barely read the captions! Once the play got underway, however, we realised we needn’t have worried: the acting was excellent and we could hear everything without any difficulty (though the Stagetext captions were incredibly helpful in identifying which character was which). This production used a bare, boarded set with hardly any props or furniture – the changes of scene being signified by a very creative use of lighting. Inventive as this was, towards the end of the play (which ran for just under three hours) the scenes did begin to blur together. But the storm scene – conjured by flashing lights shining through the gaps between the boards on the floor and walls of the stage and freezing to silence for Lear’s spookily amplified whispered speech – was great. Derek Jacobi was fantastic as Lear – playful, spritely and capricious: a relatively young old man whose descent into madness was believably painful. And Gina McKee was stunning as Goneril – commanding the stage with an icy determination.

'Frankenstein' by Nick Dear based on the novel by Mary Shelley

17 March 2011

On Saturday we were at the National Theatre in London to see ‘Frankenstein’ – a new play by Nick Dear based on the novel by Mary Shelley and directed by Danny Boyle. This certainly felt like a major theatrical event – a complete sell-out with a real buzz in the foyer and high expectations all round (we were feeling very smug having booked our tickets months ago!). Inevitably it was always going to be difficult for the show to live up to all the hype but it was very impressive. The set, lighting and effects on the massive revolving stage in the Olivier Theatre were amazing and there were some truly jaw-dropping moments. The acting was excellent: we saw Benedict Cumberbatch as The Creature and Jonny Lee Miller as Victor Frankenstein (the two actors are alternating the parts). Benedict Cumberbatch’s physical performance, particularly in the opening scene where The Creature comes to terms with his new body and gains control of his limbs, was amazing. The care given to making this opening realistic and believable did, however, make it quite a slow start and it felt like the show only really got going when Jonny Lee Miller’s Frankenstein became involved. I thought he very effectively made Victor Frankenstein obsessive and unfeeling while also making us sympathise with his impossible moral dilemma. The decision to run for two hours without an interval seemed odd – I think the play could have taken a break without too much detriment. Some of the set-piece scenes – Frankenstein confronting The Creature on the mountain-top, the Frankensteins’ bedroom on their wedding night etc – were thrillingly handled. And Naomi Harries played Elizabeth as intelligent and brave – no hysterical screaming here. The fact that the play was fairly faithful to the original novel, rather than following the melodramatic horror of the Frankenstein films, strangely seemed a bit of a missed opportunity given the scale of the production which could have produced something spectacularly scary. It also suffered from the fact that, although Mary Shelley came up with a brilliant concept, her novel isn’t the greatest narrative. The plot is very episodic and Frankenstein does seem to spend half the novel being pursued across Europe by The Creature and the other half pursuing The Creature. But it was a stunning theatrical experience – and we could hear every word!

'Hamlet' by William Shakespeare

7 March 2011

On Saturday we were at Milton Keynes Theatre to see the National Theatre production of ‘Hamlet’, directed by Nicholas Hytner and starring Rory Kinnear. When I bought our tickets, the girl at the box office looked nervously at me and said “I have to warn you, it’s in modern dress – is that okay?” I’m not sure what they would have done if I had said no but actually it was very okay. The modern setting (early 1990s I would say, from the size of the computer monitor on Polonius’s desk and the absence of mobile phones) worked well with Elsinore crawling with suited secret agents wearing dark glasses and walkie-talkie headsets. And the sight of soldiers flooding into the palace firing machine guns was thrilling and quite scary. The set and lighting were great – in the opening scene the ghost miraculously disappearing into the shadows was stunning. And Rory Kinnear was a wonderful Hamlet – more cerebral than soldierly. He reminded me of Simon Russell-Beale’s interpretation of the part for the National Theatre some years ago. Rory Kinnear was a frustrated and irritated Hamlet, toying with the fools around him and managing to turn his mood on a sixpence. I also liked Patrick Malahide’s sinister Claudius and David Calder was particularly good as Polonius, reminding us that there is much more to the character than the bumbling fool we often see him as. This was a substantial Hamlet – running at more than three and a half hours – and I did feel the pacy contemporary style, set and music might have better fitted a shorter version of the text. We also had some difficulty hearing a lot of the dialogue. Maybe the National Theatre has better acoustics (and fewer people coughing!) than the Milton Keynes Theatre – and admittedly we were in the cheap seats at the back – but it’s quite difficult to sustain your attention for more three and a half hours when you can’t hear what the actors are saying. This was a shame as the production looked great and started thrillingly. But I did very much enjoy Rory Kinnear’s performance.

'Great Expectations' by Charles Dickens adapted by Tanika Gupta

4 March 2011

Last Saturday we were at the Watford Palace Theatre so see the Engish Touring Theatre production of Tanika Gupta’s stage adaptation of ‘Great Expectations’ by Charles Dickens. Relocating the story to India (though without changing the late Victorian period), Tanika Gupta emphasises the class divisions by making the villagers Indian while Miss Haversham, Jaggers and Herbert Pocket embody different aspects of the British Raj and Magwitch is a black convict from Cape Colony. This cleverly both simplifies the story and adds new elements of racism and colonial oppression. I thought it worked well and the set, costumes and music were spectacular. The decision to have the same adult actor play Pip as man and boy made the initial childhood scenes a little cartoonish but the second half of the play was darker and more realistic. Inevitably, dramatising a long and complex novel results in a rapid procession of short scenes and it was hard to forget that this was the play of the book. But it was an enjoyable and epic production.

Northampton Symphony Orchestra concert

25 February 2011

Most amateur orchestras rehearse for months to prepare for a single performance. The logistics of bringing together (in the case of the Northampton Symphony Orchestra) 84 performers plus conductor and soloist make repeat performances impractical. Yet it is disappointingly rare that the concert performance proves to be the best the orchestra has played the works in question. All too often the combination of nerves, the need for prolonged intense concentration and either lack of familiarity or over-familiarity with the music leaves us feeling that the concert wasn’t quite as good as the standard we had achieved in rehearsal. But last Saturday’s Northampton Symphony Orchestra concert definitely bucked this trend with our performance, in particular, of ‘Harold in Italy’, Berlioz’s Symphony in Four Parts with Viola Obbligato, more delicate, more playful, more perfect than it had ever been in rehearsal. Former NSO member Becci Dyson played the solo viola part beautifully. ‘Harold in Italy’ is a jigsaw that requires every part to be in exactly in the right place. The tune flits rapidly between soloist and orchestra and between instruments within the orchestra. I think this is why it seemed to take us a while to get the point of the work in rehearsal: only when everything falls into place does the picture become clear and the piece really grew on me as we got closer to the concert. The rest of the concert continued the theme of works about Italy by non-Italian composers (and a sub-theme of viola solos!) with Elgar’s ‘In The South (Alassio)’ – a wonderfully Straussian piece – and ‘Capriccio Italien’ by Tchaikovsky, the end of which was definitely faster in performance than we had ever played it in rehearsal! It was an ambitious programme but the orchestra rose to the occasion and gave one of its best concerts for some time.

'Blithe Spirit' by Noel Coward

25 February 2011

Last Friday we were at Milton Keynes Theatre to see ‘Blithe Spirit’ by Noel Coward. This Theatre Royal Bath production, directed by Thea Sharrock, brought together an impressive cast, including Robert Bathurst, Hermione Norris, Ruthie Henshall and Alison Steadman as Madame Arcati. ‘Blithe Spirit’ is an enjoyable romp about the perils of allowing your present and former wives to meet – even if one of them is dead. The play lacks the witty word-play of ‘Private Lives’ but it was a high-quality production with a great over-the-top performance from Alison Steadman.

Hornroh

18 February 2011

Listening to last week’s Music Planet programme on BBC Radio 3, I was literally stopped in my tracks by the weird and wonderful use of Alpenhorns by the Swiss group Hornroh. Having reached my destination I had to sit in the car for five minutes until the end of the track. It is a hauntingly beautiful sound, reminiscent of whalesong, but played about as far from sea level as you can get, Hornroh create a wonderful, unique music. You can listen to free mp3 samples at http://www.hornroh.ch/en/music/

‘The Years Between’ by Daphne du Maurier

11 February 2011

Daphne du Maurier is probably best known now for two novels, ‘Jamaica Inn’ and the marvellous ‘Rebecca’, but she was a prolific novelist and short-story writer and also wrote two original stage plays. After the success of its revival of Tennessee Williams' first play 'Spring Storm' (reviewed here in October 2009) which subsequently transferred to the West End, the Royal Theatre, Northampton, has now revived Daphne du Maurier’s similarly neglected wartime play ‘The Years Between’ and we went to see it last Saturday. ‘The Years Between’ is the painful tale of a woman who believes her husband to have been killed in active service and, after several years of mourning, plans to marry again only for her husband to return from the war expecting everything to be as it was when he left. Apart from the emotional human story this creates, the play also highlights the tension between soldiers who feel they are fighting on foreign fields to preserve a way of life while those left at home feel they are fighting for change and a better world. It’s a clever and moving play and the Royal Theatre production, directed by Kate Saxon, was impressive and well-cast with Marianne Oldham excellent as the lead character.

Free Peace Band concert

4 February 2011

On Saturday we were at St James Church in New Bradwell, Milton Keynes, for a concert by the Free Peace Band – a three-piece band (see what they did there!) comprising Marcus Armstrong , Rebecca Parmer and Duncan Barnes, who perform to raise money for the i:peace charity. This concert celebrated the music of Simon and Garfunkel – for which the Free Peace Band’s gentle, three-part vocal harmonies, acoustic guitar and bass were perfect. It was lovely to hear all those familiar 1960s classics but I particularly enjoyed Simon’s ‘The Boy in the Bubble’ from his 1986 ‘Graceland’ album (more my era!) and was reminded me of Peter Gabriel’s haunting slowed-down cover of this track which I heard him perform at WOMAD (July 2009).

'The King's Speech'

28 January 2011

A couple of years ago I heard a really good BBC Radio 4 Afternoon Play about King George VI working with Australian speech therapist Lionel Logue to conquer his stammer ahead of a live broadcast. I was intrigued to learn that this story was to be filmed and last weekend we went to see ‘The King’s Speech’. Tom Hooper’s film broadens the tale to encompass the abdication crisis and the outbreak of war. Colin Firth rightly deserves all the plaudits he is receiving for his performance as the King, Helena Bonham-Carter is great as Queen Elizabeth and Geoffrey Rush is very funny as Logue – I particularly enjoyed his audition for a local amateur theatre group – “too Australian” (which is all the more amusing as we then see Australian Guy Pearce playing Edward VIII). ‘The King’s Speech’ is one of those films where you can have lots of fun just spotting the well-known British actors in minor roles. It was lovely to see an all-too-rare appearance by Colin Firth’s ‘Pride and Prejudice’ co-star, Jennifer Ehle (here playing the Australian Mrs Logue). It’s a very enjoyable film which manages to be gripping even though you know what’s going to happen. Historically fascinating, emotionally engaging and often extremely funny – bring on the Oscars!

'Music Planet'

21 January 2011

It’s great to hear Andy Kershaw back on the radio after a long absence, co-presenting the Radio 3 series ‘Music Planet’ – a parallel project to the BBC 1 series ‘Human Planet’. In last week’s opener Andy was shark fishing in Papua New Guinea and dropped in on the Deep Sea Canoe Movement in the Solomon Islands who have been singing gospel music as an act of ‘continuity worship’ 24 hours a day (in 3-hour shifts) since 2006. Great radio journalism and great music – make your way to iplayer and turn up the volume!

'We Are All Made of Glue' by Marina Lewycka

14 January 2011

I really enjoyed Marina Lewycka’s debut novel ‘A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian’ (reviewed here in April 2006) and I had been looking forward to reading her latest book ‘We Are All Made of Glue’. It’s great fun – a similar contemporary domestic setting, easy to read with a cast of entertainingly comic characters (and cats!) who are all too believable. The setting and tone reminded me of David Lodge or Anne Tyler and Marina Lewycka has a similar ability to weave serious themes into an apparently light comic novel. In ‘We Are All Made of Glue’ the cartoon battles that the first person narrator, Georgina, wages with social services and estate agents on behalf of her elderly neighbour, Mrs Shapiro, form the backdrop for a much darker tale about battles between Jews and Palestinians and the impending apocalyptic end of the world.

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1'

7 January 2011

A trip to the cinema over Christmas to see the new Harry Potter film has very quickly become such a seasonal fixture that, as with the Doctor Who Christmas special, it's hard to remember what we used to do before. In the case of the Harry Potter films we will soon be forced to remember but we enjoyed going to see the penultimate episode 'Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1' last week. "These are dark times, there is no denying" but there's little sign of austerity in this blockbuster. As I felt when reading the book (reviewed here in August 2007), freed from the formulaic strictures of another school year at Hogwarts, 'Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows' is a thrillingly unpredictable ride. It felt like a more grown-up film and was often genuinely scary. I'm not sure whether you would be able to follow the incredibly complex plot if you were unfamiliar with the books but this has been a problem for all the HP films. This one feels like Emma Watson's movie with Hermione really coming of age - though, once again, in a few brief scenes Evanna Lynch's Luna Lovegood threatens to steal the show. The adult supporting cast is a veritable Equity directory of British acting talent: it's now much easier to name the prominent British actors who are not involved. And it's an amazing testament to the financial clout of the franchise to see how many really big name stars make incredibly fleeting, often wordless cameos: Miranda Richardson appears once in a newspaper photograph (albeit a moving one). Interesting also to see Bill Nighy doing a Welsh accent and Rhys Ifans doing an Irish accent. But as with the previous films it is to the director's credit (David Yates in this case) that the adults play second fiddle to the young leads. Any film which sets out to tell half a story feels a little unsatisfying but I felt this was one of the best of the HP series and I'm looking forward to the final instalment.

Northampton Symphony Orchestra concert

17 December 2010

On Sunday I was in Northampton to take part in the Northampton Symphony Orchestra’s Christmas Cracker Concert. It was a real ‘something for everyone’ programme including excerpts from Handel’s ‘Messiah’ (with the Daventry Choral Society) alongside Kleinsinger’s ‘Tubby the Tuba’ (expertly narrated by Graham Padden and featuring NSO tuba player Nick Tollervey). We contrasted the ‘Sleigh Ride’ by Delius with the one by Leroy Anderson. And amid all the Christmas carols there was an explosion of piracy with Klaus Badelt’s music for ‘Pirates of the Caribbean’ which prompted the appearance of pirate hats, eyepatches and hooks amongst the Santa hats and tinsel. A good time had by all!

‘The Pirate Princess’ by Lea Pryer

17 December 2010

Last weekend had a distinctly piratical flavour: On Saturday we were in Toddington at the TADS Theatre to see ‘The Pirate Princess’, a new pantomime by TADS member Lea Pryer – ‘Treasure Island’ combined with ‘Twelfth Night’. It was a swashbuckling performance incorporating all the standard pantomime conventions – principal boy, a dame, sing-along audience participation, slapstick cookery scene etc – but with a rather cute dragon in place of the usual pantomime horse or cow. It was lots of fun and very impressively performed. TADS regular Rachel Birks was great as Princess Aliyah – the serious, romantic centre to the story amid all the cartoon chaos. But what really set ‘The Pirate Princess’ apart from other amateur productions was the work of professionally trained choreographer James Sygrove. He created four fantastic song and dance numbers on the tiny TADS stage, culminating in a wonderful ‘Bollywood’ finale (to AR Rahman’s ‘Yo Ho’ obviously!)

'The Trip'

10 December 2010

I know ‘The Trip’ – the BBC2 series directed by Michael Winterbottom and starring Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon which finished this week – has divided opinion but I thought it was wonderful. Building on the fictional relationship developed through improvised scenes in Winterbottom's 2005 film, ‘A Cock and Bull Story’, Coogan and Brydon play "loose versions of themselves" as they embark on a tour of restaurants across the North England, ostensibly for an article for The Observer Magazine. The wintry northern scenery was beautifully shot and the series has already, apparently, created an increase in visitor numbers. The blurring between reality and fiction was unsettlingly achieved: I had to remind myself constantly that we were watching Coogan and Brydon playing characters based on themselves and that each of their friends, relations and colleagues that we encountered were actors rather than the real people. Part-way through the series I began to worry that, enjoyable as it was, the format was a little formulaic with each episode reprising the same scenes in slightly different locations. But as we approached the final half-hour I began to notice the subtle story arcs that had been carefully hidden in the background. Like the best dramas it was both incredibly funny and painfully sad, saying much about ambition, relationships, male friendship and mortality. Despite the verbal jousting and subtle wordplay that characterised most of the series, or perhaps because it came so unexpectedly in this context, a couple of pieces of physical slapstick in the final episode provided a fantastic comic climax. And the recurring references to Rob Brydon’s impression of a ‘Small Man Trapped in a Box' led to a brilliant pay-off in this week’s finale. A very classy piece of television.