Disney's Christopher Robin, Searching and The Seagull

I was interested to hear the voices of the animals and whether they sounded anything like those I used in reading the book aloud to my children. Pooh and Eyeore were spot on apart from those awful American accents and you cant go wrong with Piglet and Tigger. I just wish it had been someone posher than Toby Jones as Owl. My favourite was Sophie Okonedo as Kanga. It was such a shame she had so few lines. As for the movie? The sets were the best part, 1950's London street scenes and the station (an old Dover Harbour terminal). Ewan McGregor and Hayley Attwell seemed a little bored with the process, unlike Bronte Carmichael as their daughter who stole the show.

Shown entirely through computer and other video screens, unfortunately these are far too distracting to become engaged in a decent, though generic, tale of a missing daughter. An interesting concept but the script is pretty basic. Harmless fun.

Now here was a big disappointment. I expected something much more from an adaptation of the Chekov classic. On the back of his award winning play "The Humans", Stephen Karam gets the gig to adapt the text. A miserable failure, falling between traditional and modern language, it is a cut and paste of the original's dialogue. OK, this was always going to be better seen in the theatre than on the big screen. They should have employed John Donnelly who wrote such a wonderful modern interpretation for Headlong (seen at the Oxford Playhouse) and Blanche McIntyre who directed. My blog entry gave credit to the casting, something this time was a complete mess. Annette Bening, Elizabeth Moss and Saoirse Ronan are wonderful actresses in their own right, only not this time. And don't get me started on the men. Director Michael Mayer does not help in a very disjointed production. The scenery and sets are great and that is as good as it gets.

V&A Museum, Kensington Gardens, The Barbican and St Pauls Cathedral

It was an article in the Culture magazine of The Sunday Times on 2nd July 2017 that made we want to visit the V & A Museum, the  £49.5 million  Exhibition Road Quarter designed brilliantly by Amanda Levete Architects and built by ace contractor Wates. When I arrived there on Monday, imagine my disappointment when I found the fabulous courtyard fenced off  while an awful piece of structural timber artwork is being built.

Why on earth would anyone want to spoil this wonderful open space. This is what it should have looked like:

More on the rooflights later!

My photo of the pillars and arch does not do justice to frontage on Exhibition Road, with the fencing and crane behind.

This is what it should look like.

I did manage to take a snap of the new (nearly deserted) cafe on the courtyard (but only when I was leaving, as it is not visible through the fencing). It is open to anyone straying from Exhibition Road. The perforated metal screens on either side of the photo close to give security over night.

The perforations give visibility through the screen to the courtyard when closed.

The article in the Sunday Times explains how this area was originally the location of the old boilers, hidden with a screen of columns and solid panels. A forbidding facade. Now the vision of  the original architect Aston Webb has been realised after many studies finally came to fruition with the opening up of the facade.

The courtyard then became the catalyst for a new exhibition space underground, the construction of which can be seen in a marvellous time lapse video at  https://www.vam.ac.uk/info/exhibition-road-building-project under the heading "Exhibition Road Building Project Construction".

Jeremy Melvin in the Sunday Times article is very informative: Putting the gallery underground meant the screen along Exhibition Road could be returned to Webb's original intention, verified by a drawing they discovered, to have openings between the columns. The gallery roof could become the entrance court, with three previously hidden historical facades around its edges, Careful and clever modelling of the roof (the courtyard) into a 3D shape allowed for a cafe, a rooflight to the gallery below, enough flat spaces for a significant sculpture display (oh no!), a ramp and steps to the entrance (of the museum) 7ft below road level, with steps wide enough to double as informal outdoor seating. 

Inside the entrance, the new gallery is reached by a long staircase.

The subterranean gallery goes right to the edges of the courtyard, giving a 12,000 square feet space .... a large 125 feet long column-free space. The structure is amazing. Four columns and spanning between are huge steel beams. 

A remarkable space, with daylight flooding in from those in the courtyard. It is the fourteen steel trusses that give the sawtooth effect inside.

But here was my second disappointment of the day. Amanda Levete was convinced that curators could successfully match the light and dark for their exhibitions. Unfortunately those installing "The Future is Here" were not interested and their dummy ceiling might have been better in an aircraft hanger!

THE FUTURE IS HERE

The only way I could see the new gallery was to buy a ticket for this exhibition. There were a few interesting pieces: 

The world's first portable computer from 1982, the Epson HX-20

A map of submarine cables

The Facebook Aquila solar powered drone that spans the whole of the ceiling. Two of the four yellow propellors are seen above. A wingspan longer that a Boeing 747 but weighing less than 1,000 pounds, it is designed to bring internet connection to remote parts of the world.

"Wearable tech from ancient Rome" is a ring key ring.

However, I was far more impressed with the cafe. Here is the Gamble Room by James Gamble 1865-78.

Next to my table were some of the ceramics that decorated the walls.

Leaving the V & A, I made my way up the length of Exhibition Road, past the V&A Henry Cole Wing and, below, the "Geological Survey and Museum" entrance of the Natural History Museum.

Then into Kensington Gardens and Hyde Park. First of all the Serpentine Pavilion.

Then the Serpentine Gallery.

Crossing into Kensington Gardens I found the Princess Diana Memorial Fountain which I had never seen before. What a brillaint piece of engineering.

In the distance was the The London Mastaba on the Serpentine.

Then the Serpentine Sackler Gallery.

Nearly at the end of a long walk from one end of Kensington Gardens to the other side near Lancaster Gate is the newly refurbished Italian Gardens.

With a view across to Buck Hill where on Saturday afternoons when I was ten or eleven, there would have been a large number of cub football matches being played.

 In those days there were many  Kensington packs playing in a league run by volunteers. My father ran the 37th Kensington pack and carried the poles for goalposts from his shop on Kensington High Street when it closed at lunchtime on a Saturday. We would meet him there with our gear and take the bus up to the far end of Kensington Gardens. Somehow we usually managed to mark out the same pitch every week, even though it was on a pronounced slope. In my final year in the cubs, we played "away" in our last game against the only other pack in the running for the league. We came out winners, me with a badly bruised toe. 

It was time to take the underground from Lancaster gate to Barbican Centre where I was meeting up with Alison, Richard and Karen for refreshments in the outdoor cafe.

Then it was off to St Paul's Cathedral for Choral Evensong at 5 pm. A good friend of Alison was singing in the choir and, as it turned out, another three people she knew including the conductor and his wife. It is free entry to the cathedral for this event which is good to know. We were one of the first in and took our seats in the front row with a great view of the choir.

At the end of the service we said goodbye to Richard and Karen and made our way home. An enjoyable, if tiring, day. After runs on both the previous days, being on my feet most of the day on Monday meant my legs were objecting the next day.

Julie - The National Theatre Live

Never having seen Stringberg's Miss Julie, I did see Patrick Marber's wonderful version called After Miss Julie at the Donmar Warehouse in 2003. But here we are, fifteen years later and a Julie for today. And a very short and sharp drama it was too. Cutting out (to my ears) the dreadful modern party dance scenes, would have brought the running time down to a little over the hour. 

This modern interpretation by writer Polly Stenham (her first adaptation) and director Carrie Cracknell works really well as an up to date version of the classic original. You do get what they were trying to say about the latest dynamics of power, money, race, immigration and sex. The heart and soul of this play is the damaged anti-heroine Julie. However, my big problem (not that which most of the critics found in their disappointment) was the drugs Julie was sniffing and swallowing throughout. Her constant scratching tells it's own tale. To me, this was the whole problem with her character which overwhelmed and, crucially, explained her situation. No wonder she complains of having no money. Her wealthy father knows what she would have spent it on.

So no poor little rich girl, but a drug fuelled, smart, arrogant, stupid, wilful, damaged, gorgeous, confident thirty something as she tries to find some interaction with the help in the form of her father's chauffeur and the maid, both immigrants, both educated, attractive and clever. But we never know enough about them. Surely we needed more from the two of them early on in the proceedings, even though it was obvious there was a need to get Julie on stage. So what are we left with? Good dialogue and a splendid presentation.

Then the performances. Vanessa Kirby is outstanding as Julie. Do we feel sympathy for her? All the time I just wanted to get her in rehab. Her sparring with the terrific Eric Kofi Abrefa as Jean is well done and is definitely convincing. I just wished we had seen more of the only other member of the cast. Thalissa Teixeira is excellent as the Brazilian maid Kristina. If only we had more of her interaction with the other two. An actress with a bright future.

The set is almost too good and too fancy for such an intimate play. The screen in the top picture occasionally lifts to reveal the party dancing. You would think these "friends" would damage the place, but you would not want to tangle with Eric. More muscle than Anthony Joshua. But I found it too distracting from the drama. I was glad when the background hum finished with the reveller's departure.

Cut out the drugs and the party, find an small theatre (The Donmar again?), write a lot more stuff at the start, use the same actors and bingo. That would be a superb prospect. But what was strange on the night was that the huge Screen 1 was almost deserted, probably just a couple of dozen in the audience. It should have been shown in one of the smaller screens. I just hope this does not reduce the number of live screenings.

The Music Shop and Memento Mori and Flaubert's Parrot

After reading Julian Barnes' challenging novel "Flaubert's Parrot" I wanted something lighter. This book was certianly that. A heartwarming story about a parade of shops in a run down city centre where Frank's music shop only sells vinyl. He finds the music you need not what you want. Amongst the numerous examples are some that are new to me including Samuel Barber's wonderful "Adagio for Strings". It was also nice to revisit Duke Ellington's instrumental version of "Satin Doll" and finding out why "Wild Thing" by the Troggs is a lullaby.
The introduction of a mysterious German woman Ilse Brauchmann into the life of Frank takes the novel into different territory, but the other characters on Unity Street are never far away. Well written and never boring, the book is only let down by the strange final section. Otherwise it was a joy. 

This was a big disappointment. After loving "A Far Cry from Kensington" and "Loitering with Intent" by Muriel Spark, I found this earlier novel became quite tiresome. it started off fine, having got used to the multiple characters. It had typical Spark witty dialogue, this time between the aged friends and relations. The writing is sharp and witty. Godfrey complains:" It was an instinctive reaction to the years of being a talented, celebrated woman's husband, knowing himself to be reaping continually in her harvest which he had not sown".

But after half way things became quite boring and there is a nasty event quite out of keeping with the rest of the book. Then the introduction of a main character towards the end seems silly. After all the critical acclaim, I was left cold.

When I first started this book some weeks ago, I found it too obscure for my taste and gave up after a few pages. But persevering this time, I gritted my teeth and eventually I realised what the author was trying to do, and I was glad I stuck with it. 

A (retired?) doctor (we know he is 60 plus and a widower) called Geoffrey Braithwaite sets out to tell us what he has found so far in his obsessive researches into the nineteenth century writer Gustave Flaubert. Is he writing a biography? Maybe he wants to do more than that as he digresses into his own philosophies on life, art and (for heaven's sake) literary criticism. In doing so, he tells us something about his own life, his wife Helen and why the parrot is so important.

Occasionally hilarious, ("Not sufficient study, to my mind, has been made of the pets which were kept at (Flaubert's home) Croisset"), sometimes baffling (a section on the study of coincidence and irony) and often philosophical (quoting Flaubert: "The whole dream of democracy is to raise the proletariat to the level of stupidity attained by the bourgeoise").

So I wont pretend that I understood everything in the book, but Barnes' writing is always clever and fun. It is actually one of the most unbelievable books I have ever read, completely original in the mix of fact and fiction.

The book starts with a Contents page. There part 14 is called "Examination Paper". You may want to head off to take a degree in English and Philosophy before trying your luck. So in the spirit of the author's test, the remainder of this review is my own set of questions:

1. "Orchidaceous Romanticism at one end (of the century) and gnomic symbolism at the other". EXPLAIN. (Top marks if the examiner understands your answer).

2. "The past is autobiographical fiction pretending to be a parliamentary report". WITTY OR NOT?

3. The author describes ten fictional devices that should be banned from novels. AGREE OR DISAGREE WITH EACH. WHICH ARE THE FUNNIEST.

4. "The past is a distant receding coastline, and we are all in the same boat". THE AUTHOR HAS OTHER THINGS TO SAY ABOUT THE PAST. THREE EXAMPLES PLEASE.

5. Geoffrey Braithwaite tells us "I live in Essex, most characterless and therefore most acceptable of the Home Counties". DESCRIBE WHY YOUR COUNTY SHOULD BE INCLUDED. IF YOU LIVE IN ESSEX, HARD LUCK.

6. "Philoprogenitive". MEANING WHAT?

7. The author uses fifteen very different and original parts to the book as listed under Contents. WHICH WORKED AND WHICH DIDNT.

8. "Gustave's preferred form of travel was to lie on a divan and have the scenery carried past him". WAS THIS QUOTATION FROM HIS "FRIEND" DUCAMP THE FUNNIEST LINE OR ARE THERE OTHERS.

9. What quotation from Flaubert's books, letters or diary has inspired your greatest admiration or disgust. DISCUSS

10. It would have been better to read the last part first. AGREE OR DISAGREE.