Monday 28 March 2016

Gregory Doran - The Richard Dimbleby Lecture 2016


As this year is the 400th anniversary of the death of William Shakespeare, the BBC chose Greg Doran, the Artistic Director of the Royal Shakespeare Company to deliver the annual Richard Dimbleby Lecture. Littered as it was with anecdotes and quotes from the Bard's work, one item stood out.

Doran explained that he joined the RSC in 1987 as an actor playing Solanio in The Merchant of Venice and fell in love with Shylock. He was being played by Anthony Sher and the two are still together. At the top, there they are together on stage. Sher is immediately recognisable but Doran has changed an awful lot.

It was in 1988 (28th May on my ticket stub) that I saw the production with the same cast when it transferred to the Barbican in London. Yes, I still have the programme.


Thursday 24 March 2016

Secret in their Eyes, Hail Caesar! and 10 Cloverfield Lane


A reasonable remake of the brilliant original, Secret in their Eyes had a good enough script and locations to keep me interested all the way through. Julia Roberts excelled as the bereaved Jess, it's just a shame her character was not given the tortuous waiting of the earlier film.


Hail, Caesar promised to be a fun movie and it really was. The Coen brother's homage to the golden age of the movies was littered with the best of Hollywood entertainment. There is a flimsy yet heart warming plot that holds the thing together and a number of fabulous cameos, obviously from George Clooney but more memorable is Tilda Swinton (her pronunciation of Eddie will live long in my memory) and, I never though I would say this, Channing Tatum. Leading it all was Josh Brolin in a career defining performance. Great stuff.


For all but the last fifteen minutes, this could have been a piece of theatre brought to the big screen, the claustraphobic bunker was like a stage set. When the superb Mary Elizabeth Winstead as Michelle finds herself captive there (after being "saved" after a car crash) we wonder if John Goodman's creepy Howard is telling the truth about the apocalypse outside. Thank goodness for fellow "survivor" Emmett. This three hander is so well written that the tension remains throughout, partly due to some extraordinary background music that is scarier than Michelle's predicament. And then we have the ending. Much has been written and I'm glad I didn't read it until after seeing the movie.

Tuesday 22 March 2016

Doctor Faustus at the Swan Theatre, Stratford


"There's always something a bit bonkers about a Maria Aberg production – and this is no exception". So begins one review of the latest RSC performance of this surreal play. Bonkers maybe, but I loved this director's King John, As You Like It and The White Devil and this is what drew me to see her latest play. But as in all things eccentric, modern and brash, sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't and this time it was more of the latter.

The parts of the Doctor and Mephistophilis are shared by Sandy Grierson and Mark Ryan. I say shared, but the play starts with each of them facing each other and burning a match with the first to be extinguished playing Faustus. That was interesting.  But what came next was completely frustrating. It was good to see later that there was complete agreement that the garbled early speeches in their harsh Scottish and Irish accents were almost inaudible. Maybe Aberg had her reasons, but I didn't get it. In fact I was never impressed by the two leads which is not a good start.

However, there are a number of set pieces where Aberg excels as usual. The appearance of the seven deadly sins is more like a pantomime with grotesque characters. And we hear every word. Whenever the performance gets physical, that is when the direction excels. However I'm glad one critic left the production as upset as me when he says "one scene simply goes too far. Helen of Troy (Jade Croot) is portrayed not as a woman but as a pubescent girl in a nightdress who drives Faustus into a frenzy. It makes uncomfortable viewing". Yes, the director always pushes the boundaries, and this is about the Doctor's impending death. But sometimes the urge to leave an impression is over the top when a little sensitivity is required.


One last note about the music. Terrific.

Tuesday 8 March 2016

Tring Book Club - The Daughters of Mars by Thomas Keneally


We hadn't read anything by this prolific and award winning (Schindler's Ark) writer, so I didn't know what to expect.

An extraordinary book in many ways, the story of two sisters (Sally and Naomi) nursing experiences in WW1. A choice for our book club and I have never made so many notes. I much preferred the human stories rather than the descriptions of the nurses attending the wounded or going on expeditions during rest days. There is so much extraneous detail which does nothing for the pace of the story. There are times when the plot seems very contrived, at one time we follow Sally from periods on the ward, to triage, to operating theatre to make sure we see everything. Every facet of war is covered whether relevant to the story or not.

Many of the characters are very well drawn, the nurses, Matron Mitchie and the doctors at Chateaux Biancthun come to mind.

Sometimes the prose is quite unusual: "He therefore gave her a rest from her own unchosen gravity of soul" and later "Sally, who was staring out of the window with the suspicion that the world would look different through the glass of this magnificent mechanism".

We learnt a lot about what happened behind the front, about hospital ships, the dedication of the nurses and the hardship of providing primary care.

I had thought about giving up a third of the way through this sometimes tedious novel. But I'm glad I stuck with it as the second half in France is far better. This would have made a perfectly good book on it's own if it had cut out the last 100 pages. With a forceful editor cutting over 500 crowded pages by half to a less packed 300, there was a five star book crying to get out.

And why no quotation marks? This is a writer who deliberately provokes for no reason. None of us liked the ending, a farcical conclusion to a frustrating novel.

Monday 7 March 2016

Milton Keynes Festival of Running - 10K



A cold but bright Sunday took us to Milton Keynes for a 10 K race. The problem I have with back pain has not completely gone away, but it didn't stop me running.

My chip time of 58 minutes 45 seconds was a little disappointing considering it was slower than my first ever 10 K (at the same course) in 2013 and way off the 56.05 from two years ago and the 55.18 at Eynsham at the end of November. I put it down to the cold and my back.

On the plus side, I actually needed to run at this slower pace as preparation for the Reading Half Marathon. And then looking at the results, 505th out of 1196 runners and I was second out of seven 70+ runners which I'm very pleased about. I guess we all slow down eventually.

Friday 4 March 2016

Hangmen - National Theatre Live



Just before this play closes at the Wyndham's Theatre, last night it was beamed live to cinemas. Martin McDonagh's new play was first performed at the Royal Court Theatre and follows the success of his film screenplays for In Bruges and Seven Psychopaths. 

The first half was a little underwhelming, Harry Wade (England's second best hangman) runs a pub in Oldham. David Morrissey is perfect as this arrogant minor celebrity, angry on the day hanging is abolished. His regulars are a mixed bunch. Enter Mooney (a star turn from Johnny Flynn) a cocky and menacing? young southerner. What exactly is he doing there?

 The second half is fantastic, building to a brilliant climax. All that bluster of the first half is wonderfully realised in the second. This is a pretty vicious stuff, raw and offensively funny, so typical of McDonagh. All the cast do well, it was interesting to see Simon Rouse (famous in our house as DCI Meadows in The Bill) playing the old semi deaf Arthur. Mathew Dunster directs with great relish. A memorable evening.