'The Hanging Tree' by Ben Aaronovitch

17 August 2022

It was 2018 when I discovered Ben Aaronovitch’s series of novels about London police officer Peter Grant who is seconded to the Metropolitan Police’s secret division of wizards dealing with magic and supernatural crimes. ‘Rivers of London’ (reviewed here in June 2018) was a very entertaining blend of real-world policing and fantasy that was clever, thrilling and very funny. Since then I’ve been gradually working my way through the other books in the series and I’ve just finished the sixth novel ‘The Hanging Tree’, which I read as an unabridged audio book, narrated by Kobna Holdrook-Smith. I think this was the best yet - beginning to bring together the historical backstory of magical practitioners that Peter Grant has been trying to understand, and taking Peter and his wizard boss, Detective Chief Inspector Nightingale, ever closer to their arch-enemy – The Faceless Man. It’s a peculiar combination of crime fiction and fantasy, rooted in a very real contemporary London but forever slipping into the magical demi-monde - and never taking itself too seriously.

'Prima Facie' by Suzie Miller

12 August 2022

On Tuesday we were at the Curzon Cinema at Milton Keynes Gallery to see the NT Live screening of 'Prima Facie' by Suzie Miller from the Harold Pinter Theatre in London. This new play is presented as a partnership with the charity The Schools Consent Project which was set up in 2014 by barrister Kate Parker to send lawyers into schools to teach 11-18 year olds the legal definition of consent and key sexual offences. 'Prima Facie' looks at the issue of consent through the story of Tessa Ensler, a young barrister who has made a name for herself defending men accused of sexual assault. It's a remarkable one-woman play which marks Jodie Comer's West End debut. Justin Martin's production uses an inventive set by Miriam Buether framed with towering bookshelves filled with legal ring binders, and features music by Rebecca Lucy Taylor AKA Self Esteem. Suzi Miller's script is powerful, witty and cleverly constructed. But this is very much Jodie Comer's show and she is superb. Like many monologues, the script would make a good radio play. But Jodie Comer's physical acting is fascinating, constantly moving the furniture to construct different scenes in her story, leaping onto the desk to deliver a speech and pouring a full glass of water perfectly without looking. And her facial expressions, wonderfully clear in close-up in the cinema screening, tell much of the story by themselves. She has an incredible skill for accents (as she demonstrated in 'Killing Eve'), here seamlessly switching between two characters when recounting a conversation. It's a captivating, compelling masterclass in dramatic storytelling which reminded me of Kizzy Dunn’s brilliant one-woman performance of ‘Henry V’ that we saw at the Edinburgh Fringe four years ago (reviewed here in August 2018). 'Prima Facie' is an amazing show - funny, distressing and enraging: an extraordinary solo performance by Jodie Comer.

'As You Like It' by William Shakespeare

9 August 2022

Last Friday evening we were at Wrest Park in Silsoe to see an outdoor performance of ‘As You Like It’ by the Lord Chamberlain’s Men who specialise in very traditional productions of Shakespeare plays, with an all male cast and Elizabethan costume – giving you a good idea of what it must have been like to see the plays when they were first performed. A year ago, at the same venue, we saw their production of ‘Macbeth’ (reviewed here in August 2021). ‘As You Like It’ provided another opportunity to see one of Shakespeare’s gender-swapping comedies making much more sense than it usually does - as we experienced with the Lord Chamberlain’s Men production of ‘Twelfth Night’ (reviewed here in August 2009). Somehow, with a female actor playing a woman pretending to be a man you never believe anyone would actually fall for the disguise. But when (as it would have been in Shakespeare’s time) it is a male actor playing a woman dressed as a man, it is easier to suspend your disbelief and go with the plot. Peter Stickney’s production of ‘As You Like It’ was great fun, with a very impressive cast including stand-out performances by Ben Lynn as Rosalind and Jonny Warr as Celia.

WOMAD 2022

1 August 2022

Last weekend saw the return of the WOMAD Festival after a two-year break for the pandemic, and celebrating 40 years since the first ‘World of Music, Arts and Dance’ Festival in Shepton Mallet in 1982. I first went to WOMAD in 2003 and I’ve been at every UK WOMAD Festival since. WOMAD moved to its current home - the enormous Charlton Park, near Malmesbury in Wiltshire - in 2007, and it was lovely to return there last Friday in glorious sunshine. Over the weekend I managed to see 16 full performances, and caught snippets of many others. I enjoyed Khiyo, a band from Bangladesh and the UK who play a rock-version of Bengali folk and film songs. Sam Amidon from Vermont USA gave a stunning performance on the Charlie Gillett Stage, reinterpreting early 20th century American folk music for a contemporary audience. It was lovely to see the Gambian kora player Sona Jobarteh talking about her music and playing duets with her 15-year-old son on balafon in the intimate World Rhythms tent. And it was a real treat to finally get the chance to see the poet and rapper Kae Tempest (whose recordings I have written about here before - in October 2014, October 2016 and August 2019) performing the new album ‘The Line Is A Curve’ in its entirety, to a packed Siam Tent. I liked Afghan singer Elaha Soroor’s collaboration with the group Kefaya - turning Afghan folk songs into rock, electronica and dub. It was wonderful to see Nitin Sawhney again - the highlight of my first WOMAD in 2003 - giving a brilliant performance on Saturday evening. But my pick of WOMAD 2022 was the amazing Korean band ADG7 (Ak Dan Gwang Chil). The group consists of six traditional musicians playing acoustic Korean instruments, accompanying three flamboyantly dressed female vocalists with impressively choreographed routines. They take Korean shamanic folk traditions and present them in a catchy K-pop style. The concept sounds horrendous but the result is surprisingly wonderful. To give you a flavour, here is a clip of the band performing at Womex in 2019: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r9XTmH8U4nA You can see a selection of my photos from this year’s WOMAD Festival at: https://culturaloutlook.blogspot.com/search/label/WOMAD2022

David Sedaris

27 July 2022

When we last saw the American humourist David Sedaris at the Derngate in Northampton (reviewed here in June 2015) he was careful to avoid using any material that had previously been used on his BBC Radio 4 show, treating us to new writing and work in progress. Last Sunday we were at the Corn Exchange in Cambridge for another evening of David Sedaris reading his essays, and almost all the pieces he read were written since he finished his latest book in February this year. It still seems odd sitting in a theatre watching a writer simply reading aloud - but he does it so well! I was struck by how many of his anecdotes seem to come from things people say to him at his book signings. So it was fascinating to see the enormous queue in the foyer at the end of the evening as everyone waited for their moment with David Sedaris, and their opportunity to be featured in his next collection.

'Great Circle' by Maggie Shipstead

22 July 2022

I bought Maggie Shipstead’s novel 'Great Circle' purely on the following short recommendation in The Guardian: "shortlisted for the Booker and now the Women’s prize, this is the story of an early female aviator and the Hollywood star who investigates the mystery of her disappearance. A gloriously immersive historical epic." I wasn’t disappointed: ‘Great Circle’ is a compelling saga covering more than 100 years, beautifully written and elegantly constructed. The central tale of the life of aviator Marion Graves is framed by the modern-day story of the making of a film about her. We also see Marion’s life through the perspectives of some of her closest friends and family and through the ‘found narratives’ of letters, diaries and memoirs. It’s an engaging and wide-ranging journey through the first half of the 20th century, interspersed with factual accounts of the achievements of other early aviators. Marion faces some grim challenges - both in her chosen profession and her personal life - which are not always easy reading. But there’s a lightness and wit to Maggie Shipstead’s writing and there is fun to be had for the reader in knowing more about what actually happened to Marion than those making the film have discovered. ‘Great Circle’ feels like an instant classic: I didn’t want it to finish.

‘Wrong Place Wrong Time’ by Gillian McAllister

15 July 2022

When we saw the thriller writer Erin Kelly at the Ampthill Literary Festival earlier this year (reviewed here in April 2022), one of the authors she recommended was Gillian McAllister. I have just finished reading ‘Wrong Place Wrong Time’ - the new novel by Gillian McAllister (as an unabridged audio book, narrated by Lesley Sharp) and I loved it. This is a crime thriller with a twist. Jen - a successful Liverpool solicitor - witnesses an horrific murder directly outside her house. This traumatic experience has a profound effect on her and when she wakes up the following morning she discovers that it is actually the previous morning and the murder hasn’t happened yet. Armed with her knowledge of the future could she prevent the crime from being committed? The device of travelling back in time to relive the same events in order to try to change their outcome reminded of ‘The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle’ by Stuart Turton (reviewed here in April 2019) and the Netflix series ‘Russian Doll’. But ‘Wrong Place Wrong Time’ is less concerned with the science fiction of time travel and more an exercise in searching your own memory for clues that were there all the time but that you hadn’t noticed before. There were multiple twists in Jen’s story, almost all of which caught me completely by surprise. But the really clever thing about Gillian McAllister’s novel is how it manages to replicate Jen’s experience for the reader, showing you that you had read the clues to each unexpected twist earlier in the book without noticing their significance. I had no idea where the plot was taking me and this made it a very enjoyable and ultimately satisfying read.

'The Importance of Being Earnest' by Oscar Wilde

13 July 2022

On Saturday we were at the Roman Theatre of Verulamium in St Albans to see the OVO Theatre open-air production of Oscar Wilde’s ‘The Importance of Being Earnest’. Like their adaptation of ‘The Merry Wives of Windsor’ which we saw at the same venue in 2020 (reviewed here in September 2020) the play was interspersed with live music performed by the cast, this time featuring a jazz band interpreting modern pop songs in a 1920s swing style. The production, directed by Adam Nichols and Matt Strachan and musically directed by Tom Cagnoni, was great fun. ‘The Importance of Being Earnest’ is such a brilliant play it would be hilarious if you just read the words directly from the script but an excellent cast added a real panache. Charlie Clee was perfect as Algernon Montcrieff but I thought Paul Manuel almost stole the show as Lane the butler - all the funnier for playing it very straight and drole in the manner of Jeeves, and joining in the musical numbers in a bemused expression. It was a lovely afternoon but the heat was hard work for an outdoor audience with no shade to shelter in. By the second half we had retreated to the back row so we could try to escape the sun under an umbrella - feeling like Cecily and Gwendolen in the garden of Jack Worthing’s country house.

‘The Southbury Child’ by Stephen Beresford

13 July 2022

Last Thursday we were back at the Bridge Theatre in London to see ‘The Southbury Child’ - a new play by Stephen Beresford, directed by Nicholas Hytner. Alex Jennings plays a Church of England vicar who provokes hostility in his rural Devon parish by not allowing a young mother to decorate the church with Disney balloons for her child’s funeral. The drama takes place around the kitchen table of the vicarage as various local residents plead with the vicar to relax his principled stand in sympathy with the emotional devastation of the family dealing with the loss of a child. Stephen Beresford’s script finds gentle humour within a tragic situation and has the feel of an Alan Bennett play. ‘The Southbury Child’ is entertaining and thought provoking, with an impressive cast including Phoebe Nicholls as the vicar’s wife.

Wimbledon 2022

13 July 2022

We had a fantastic day at Wimbledon on the middle Saturday of the Championships on Court Number One. We saw Nick Kyrgios beat Stefanos Tsitsipas in what many commentators said was the game of the tournament and was certainly the most exciting match we have ever seen in many years of going to Wimbledon. It was a high-quality, but extremely bad-tempered, battle which ended just after 9pm under the roof - making the final set even more dramatic and incredibly noisy. Our seats were high up in the stadium and at times it was quite difficult to know what was going on between the players and the umpire without consulting the BBC Sport app. But it was an electric atmosphere: a genuinely thrilling experience. Earlier we had seen the impressive run of British player Liam Broady come to an end in straight sets against Alex de Minaur. We also witnessed Alize Cornet completely outplaying the World No. 1 and No. 1 seed Iga Swiatek - which was set to have been the story of the day before Kyrgios vs Tsitsipas.

Spiers & Boden

1 July 2022

Last Friday we were at the Stables in Wavendon to see English folk duo Spiers & Boden. John Spiers (melodeon) and Jon Boden (fiddle) are the founders of the wonderful folk big band Bellowhead (reviewed here on many occasions, most recently in December 2020). We last saw them as a duo in 2008 (also at the Stables, reviewed here in December 2008) and it's wonderful to see the two of them touring together again after many years devoted to Bellowhead and their own individual projects. Friday's concert mainly featured tracks from their 2021 album 'Fallow Ground' - a great collection of traditional songs and their own new tunes. Spiers & Boden do sound (unsurprisingly) like Bellowhead without the other instruments, and Jon Boden is a brilliant front man, even when his band is simply John Spiers. Here’s one of the tracks from their new album: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=poFJINnaA4w

'Lockdown in Little Grimley' and 'Murder in Little Grimley' by David Tristram

23 June 2022

We had only recently discovered the TADS amateur theatre group in our neighbouring village, Toddington, when we saw their hilarious production of David Tristram's wonderfully silly detective spoof 'Inspector Drake and the Black Widow' in 2009 (reviewed here April 2009). Since then we've been back to the lovely little TADS Theatre to see three more 'Inspector Drake' plays. On Saturday we were at TADS to see two one-act plays by David Tristram from his Little Grimley series about a less than perfect amateur theatre group. 'Lockdown in Little Grimley' saw the fictional company's four actors reuniting to work on their first post Covid production (complete with plenty of jokes about toilet rolls and facemasks). And 'Murder in Little Grimley' further stretched the boundaries of meta fiction with the Toddington amateur theatre group playing the Little Grimley amateur theatre group devising a new murder mystery play about the death of a sweet shop owner whilst also becoming implicated in the actual death of a sweet shop owner. These plays reminded me of The Farndale Avenue Housing plays (such as 'The Farndale Avenue Housing Estate Townswomen’s Guild Dramatic Society’s Production of Macbeth’ - a comedy by William Shakespeare, David McGillivray and Walter Zerlin Jnr, reviewed here in November 2016). Both Little Grimley plays had the characteristic David Tristram zany surreality and corny gags, though they felt a bit slight compared to the Inspector Drake plays. But David Sachon's production was great fun with a very strong cast and it was lovely to see some TADS regulars again after the long break imposed by the pandemic.

Canada and Alaska

17 June 2022

We had an amazing holiday over the past couple of weeks - driving through the Canadian Rockies, followed by a cruise from Vancouver to Alaska. We visited Canmore, Banff, Lake Louise, Jasper, Golden, Kelowna and Vancouver in Canada, including two journeys along the incredible Icefields Parkway - which must be one of the most stunning drives in the world. We had some lovely weather but it was still cold in the mountains, with many of the lakes frozen. We were fortunate to see black bears on six separate occasions (and fortunate that all were from a safe distance!). On our cruise we sailed around the Glacier Bay National Park - one of the most beautiful landscapes I have seen, but it was sad to see the extent to which climate change is affecting the glaciers. One of our highlights was a boat trip along the Tracy Arm Fjord near Juneau during which we saw lots of wildlife and got a close-up view of the deep blue colours of the South Sawyer Glacier. You can see a very small selection from the thousands of photos I took at: https://culturaloutlook.blogspot.com/search/label/Canada-Alaska2022

Northampton Symphony Orchestra concert

24 May 2022

Our Northampton Symphony Orchestra concert last Saturday was dedicated to the memory of Luke Roskams, a long-time member of the orchestra who died suddenly and unexpectedly in April 2021. Luke was a violinist who played for many years with the Orchestra of the Welsh National Opera before moving to Northampton. Our concert featured Luke’s son Benjamin Roskams playing Max Bruch’s ‘Violin Concerto No. 1’ - a gorgeously romantic work that felt particularly poignant. Ben had previously played Bruch's 'Scottish Fantasy' with us (reviewed here in June 2015) and the ‘Romantic Fantasy’ by Arthur Benjamin (reviewed here in February 2019) and it was great to have the opportunity to hear him again. It was a stunning and very moving performance. We started the concert with another emotional piece, the orchestral rhapsody ‘A Shropshire Lad’ by George Butterworth - a young English composer who was killed by a sniper at the Battle of the Somme in 1916 at the age of 31. It’s a beautiful pastoral piece in the style of Vaughan-Williams, which we last played in a NSO concert in 2014 (reviewed here in October 2014). Our performance on Saturday featured some wonderfully delicate playing by the violas and clarinets. We started the second half of the concert with Samuel Barber’s haunting ‘Adagio for Strings’ - a piece that has become increasingly used in memorium. The concert finished with one of the works we played during lockdown in the NSO online rehearsals using Jamulus (open source low latency software), the ‘Symphony in D minor’ by Cesar Franck. This symphony was incredibly popular with audiences in the early twentieth century but then fell out of fashion and is now rarely performed. It’s a very likeable, tuneful piece and our performance featured impressive solos by Jo Bell on cor anglais, Rowena Bass on harp and Ian Jones on horn. It was a lovely concert.

'Lucky Stiff' by Lynn Ahrens and Stephen Flaherty

19 May 2022

On Friday we were back at the tiny TADS Theatre in Toddington for the first time since October 2019 - not for a TADS performance but to see another very impressive amateur theatre group, St Andrew’s Players from Luton. They were performing the 1988 musical ‘Lucky Stiff’ with book and lyrics by Lynn Ahrens and music by Stephen Flaherty, based on the 1983 novel ‘The Man Who Broke the Bank at Monte Carlo’ by Michael Butterworth. ‘Lucky Stiff’ is a very silly farce about the battle to inherit the fortune of a distant uncle, which involves taking the uncle’s corpse on holiday to Monte Carlo. It’s a nicely constructed plot, with slightly more to it than first appears. The songs have a narrative style which reminded me of Stephen Sondheim and were excellently performed by a cast full of strong singers, led by Musical Director Richard Cowling and accompanied by Martin Hart. The leads, Barry Hyde and Jo Yirrell, managed to make their ridiculous characters surprisingly sympathetic. Dee Lovelock’s production was a hoot. You can see the St Andrew’s Players trailer at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Am2WFLpEe_w

Tom Robinson

13 May 2022

We really enjoyed Tom Robinson’s wonderful solo gig at the splendidly refurbished Drapers’ Hall in Coventry last year (reviewed here in November 2021). But last Friday it was even better to finally see his twice-postponed appearance at The Stables in Wavendon (our tickets having been carried forward twice from the originally planned date in 2020 because of lockdown). This was a concert with his full band - including long-time collaborators Adam Philips and Lee Forsyth Griffiths - and it was great to see them back together. Having followed Tom Robinson for almost 30 years, it always surprises me how many people in the audience say they have never seen him before (about a third of this sold-out crowd). It is great that he is still picking up new fans at this late stage of his career. And Tom was in good voice, showcasing updated verses for several of his classic songs to rage against the ‘beyond parody’ behaviour of current politicians.

'Don Quixote' directed by Orson Welles

6 May 2022

This week’s ‘The Signal From David Katznelson’ newsletter describes how Katznelson has been meaning for many years to read ‘Don Quixote’ by Miguel de Cervantes and has now finally done so. His experience of tackling this genius “first modern novel” sounds remarkably similar to my own (described at length in my review here in January 2012): it was a bit of struggle but the transition into meta-fiction in the second part of the story (when the knight and his squire encounter people who have read the earlier volume and are familiar with their history) is fascinating. David Katznelson also makes the point I did in my review of James Fenton’s stage adaptation of ‘Don Quixote’ (reviewed here in January 2019) that the laughs at the expense of what is effectively mental illness feel a bit uncomfortable at times. Best of all The Signal provides a link to Orson Welles’ unfinished film of ‘Don Quixote’ - which Welles started in 1955 and was working on intermittently until his death in 1985. It’s a bizarre curio, well worth a look: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2RZaalXvhIk

Amp Literary

29 April 2022

On Saturday we made the short journey to the Parkside Community Hall in Ampthill to attend ‘Amp Literary’ - the Ampthill Literary Festival - an event postponed from 2020. The journalist and Sunday Times bestseller Erin Kelly spoke about her ‘psychological gothic’ novels and explained the process of writing her latest book ‘Watch Her Fall’ during lockdown. ‘Watch Her Fall’ is a thriller about a dancer, which uses ‘Swan Lake’ as its inspiration and structure. It was fascinating to hear how she had used the ballet to develop the novel. Erin Kelly was one of the most engaging, articulate and well-prepared authors I have seen at a book festival: we really enjoyed her session. It was also wonderful to rediscover the poet/comedian Henry Normal who I first saw live at a comedy club in Peterborough nearly 30 years ago. Henry Normal disappeared from view as a performer when he set up Baby Cow Productions with Steve Coogan and spent 17 years as its Managing Director. During this time he focussed on writing (he co-wrote ‘The Mrs Merton Show’ and ‘The Royle Family’) and producing shows including ‘Gavin and Stacey’, ‘Red Dwarf’, ‘The Mighty Boosh’, ‘Nighty Night’ and ‘Alan Partridge’. Since retiring from Baby Cow in 2016, Henry Normal has written and performed a lovely occasional series of BBC Radio 4 shows (all still available on BBC Sounds: https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/brand/b09rwvwt) which showcase his brilliant poetry. His poems are alternately childishly silly, beautiful, hilarious and breathtakingly poignant. The Scotsman newspaper called him "The Alan Bennett of poetry". I still treasure my copy of ‘Nude Modelling for the Afterlife’ - Henry Normal’s 1993 collection which I bought after seeing him at the Edinburgh Book Festival. It was very exciting to see him again after so long, in the intimate setting of the Ampthill festival. He is a brilliant performer and had the audience in the palm of his hand. He was there to promote his new book ‘The Escape Plan’  which includes all of the poems from his Radio 4 shows, together with the most popular poems from each of his previous collections. I’m looking forward to reading my signed copy! We finished our visit to Amp Literary with a very enjoyable performance from The Antipoet - an anarchic duo with their own unique blend of poetry, comedy and music.

'Henry V' by William Shakespeare

22 April 2022

On Thursday we were at the Odeon in Milton Keynes to see the NT Live screening of Max Webster’s new production of ‘Henry V’ recorded live at the Donmar Warehouse in London, starring Kit Harrington. This modern dress production creates a disturbingly realistic picture of war in Europe. The intimate setting of the tiny Donmar auditorium gives a claustrophobic feel to the battle scenes. Kit Harrington is very impressive as the King, showing his transition from party animal to inspirational patriotic leader to a cruel victor, guilty of war crimes. Andrew T Mackay’s excellent original music uses a quartet of operatic voices within the cast to evoke an eerie melancholy. And Millicent Wong is great as the Chorus, joining in as part of Henry’s army rather than standing aloof from the action.

'Straight Line Crazy' by David Hare

21 April 2022

Robert Moses was a legendary urban planner in New York State during the first half of the twentieth century. He invented the concept of the State Park, transforming Long Island into a series of parks to provide leisure opportunities for the workers of New York, to the annoyance of the wealthy families who owned large swathes of the area. He achieved his vision with determination and impatience that didn't wait to be given permission to proceed, often literally bulldozing through, ignoring legal obstacles. And his obsession with the motor car as the vehicle of liberation (despite not driving himself) made many of his developments inaccessible to the poorest communities, with no rail or bus provision. Moses was a fascinating, controversial, larger than life character and I can see the attraction for David Hare, whose new play 'Straight Line Crazy' we saw at the Bridge Theatre in London last Friday. Hare has chosen to dramatise two particular incidents from the life of Robert Moses - in 1926 and 1955 - which form the two acts of his play. Both stories would have made brilliant episodes of the design podcast '99% Invisible' or BBC2 documentaries but they don't quite add up to a completely satisfying stage play. The writing is witty and entertaining but it often feels a bit too much like a George Bernard Shaw play where the characters have unrealistically lengthy conversations about ideas. Nevertheless, we enjoyed Nicholas Hytner's production and its great cast, which included Samuel Barnett, Siobhan Cullen and a show stealing turn from Danny Webb as the sweary, cigar smoking New York Governor, Al Smith. But the main attraction was the chance to see Ralph Fiennes as Robert Moses. I had seen Fiennes in the live broadcasts of Simon Godwin's National Theatre productions of 'Man and Superman' (reviewed here in May 2015) and 'Antony and Cleopatra' (reviewed here in December 2018) but I had never seen him in person before. He didn't disappoint: Fiennes is a compelling presence, a very physical actor whose movement reveals the mood and thinking of his character. His careful attention to gesture and stance reminded me of seeing Kenneth Branagh on stage in 'Ivanov' (reviewed here in September 2008). And his transformation into the older Moses of Act 2 is subtle and convincing. 'Straight Line Crazy' was obviously conceived as a star vehicle for Ralph Fiennes. It's not a perfect play but well worth seeing as an acting tour de force.