The White Devil at The Swan Theatre, Stratford

For my annual summer visit to Stratford it had to be the latest play directed by Maria Aberg. After loving her King John and As You Like It, this time it was a modern dress version of John Webster's revenge tragedy The White Devil. The play itself is pretty ordinary and predictable. Two adulteress lovers plan the deaths of their spouses, only for the ensuing carnage to raise the body count higher than anything Tarantino could imagine.

What elevated the production above the ordinary was, yes, the production by Maria Aberg and her team. One reviewer remarked that this was "high-concept, director-driven theatre" but not in a good way. But I'm all for it. The staging, the choreography (applause please for movement director Ayse Tashkiran), the set (I cannot think of one better than that designed by Naomi Dawson), the costumes and the music all contribute hugely to our enjoyment.

We basically have three separate stages. The main floor and the two levels at the rear. Most of the time there are actors situated on all three. It is the two rear stages (the ground level with it's glass screen) complete with their own curtains (see below), separate lighting and occasional back projection that make the difference. It's a shame that the acting did not reach the same heights. OK, Kirsty Bushell in the lead role of Vittoria is terrific. However the change of gender for Flaminio seemed strange. This role is the conduit for the whole play and Laura Elphistone does the best she can, but her northern androgynous character seems out of place. The rest of the cast are adequate, it's probably the text that does them no favours.

A Spell of Winter, Ladder of Years and The Goldfinch

Helen Dunmore is one of my favourite authors, and I went back to a novel she had written in 1995. A Spell of Winter is about a family in turmoil in the early part of the twentieth century. It won the 1996 Orange Prize and therefore it is no surprise that the writing that is so moving. Narrated by Catherine on the verge of womanhood, we explore why, as we are lead to believe in the introduction, she has been left alone. Sometimes the story of her relationship with her brother, grandfather, governess, housemaid etc. is a little slow, but I found the whole book wholly engrossing. It is beautifully structured and the characters are very well drawn. Every couple of pages there is a sentence you want to read out loud. "Miss Gallagher could make a sunny day look like a funeral"..... "She wears a hat that looks more like a testament of respectability than an ornament".

Ladder of Years was the best Anne Tyler novel I have read so far, which says a lot. She not only writes my favourite kind of book (family dramas) but her prose and dialogue are perfect. And this time we have a brilliant story about Cordelia (Delia, Dee?) Grinstead, forty years old and mother of three grown up children and a doctor husband, who walks away from a family beach holiday and keeps on going. The characters she meets and her family back home are so wonderfully described, and places so real you can touch them. Reading an Anne Tyler is like slowly savouring your favourite meal. I mentioned the book to a sister in law and she said she loved it wanted to read it again. I have just ordered "Breathing Lessons" but will save it for another day. 

I could have given The Goldfinch a posting of it's own. Not quite as good but longer (800 plus pages) than her brilliant "The Secret History", Donna Tartt's latest novel is extremely intense, highly literate and totally engrossing. I don't think I have read so many pages in such a short time; this is a book that keeps you hooked from the first page to the last. Like "The Secret History" it is narrated by a young man. Theo Decker is not what you would want as a friend but his story is quite remarkable. And at the soul of this book is the piece of art that gives it it's title. There are times when our involvement with the main character takes us to places that are so nerve wracking that when they are over you shut the book with relief. And there are times when you get so angry for Theo that your sympathy for him is entirely inappropriate. The main part of the book is located in New York and her name checking of places and streets will mean much more to other people. But her mentioning Central Park, Paragon Sports and Union Square as well as Mulberry Street brought back memories of my two visits to the city.The only reservations I had were that the story turns into a run of the mill thriller three quarters through, although this does have meaning for the conclusion. And one fundamental plot point that I still find unbelievable. Otherwise this is at least a five star novel. The book has so much to say about life and death and the randomness of chance that impact on our existence, as well as love and beauty and how they can influence a life for better or worse. It has a lot to say about the paradoxes of good and bad. Yes, there are lots of philosophical questions that punctuate the story in great chunks. But these are so well written that the long paragraphs sweep over you like elevator music. A wonderfully gripping story.

Dawn of the Planet of the Apes, The Two Faces of January and What If

The only summer blockbuster that I found enticing was Dawn of the Planet of the Apes. And now, some weeks later, the most memorable part of this film was the music composed by Michael Giaccino. There are so many sequences that involve just the apes and where dialogue is at a minimum that the music is so important. It doesn't disappoint. For the film to remain interesting for these vast chunks of what is almost a throwback to a silent movie is a credit to both the director Matt Reeves, and the huge (and I mean huge) team working on special effects and creating the apes. If only the actors could have matched Andy Serkis in bringing them to life. He deserves an Oscar.

In the midst of a summer of blockbusters, super hero, childrens movies and gross out comedies, I found a promising thriller on Wednesday morning Senior Screen that I had missed first time around. I never did work out why it had the title "Two Faces of January". It had the making of a very good movie. A popular novel by Patricia Highsmith, was adapted by herself with a  experienced screenwriter Hossein Amini. A good cast with Kirsten Dunst, Viggo Mortensen and Oscar Isaac (unrecognisable from Inside Llewyn Davis) and a perfect setting of Greece and it's islands. So why was it so boring? One reason may have been that the direction was handed to Amini, his first film in that role. So whether he had problems with the adaptation with Highsmith, or his relationship withe the actors, but the outcome was the dialogue was really poor when it could have been great. At least there was a visit to the ruins of Knossos on Crete where we went all those years ago.

What If was the opposite. The play Toothpaste and Cigars (???) by T.J. Dawe and Michael Rinaldi has been perfectly adapted by Elan Mastai. I guess it was a bit of a gamble picking Daniel Radcliffe for the lead role but he does pretty well despite the very mixed reviews. Comparisons have been made with High Grant, but Radcliffe is different. not such a good actor, but projects a strange goofy warmth that has you smiling most of the time he is on screen. Weird? The rest of the cast is OK. Zoe Kazan playing the female lead is OK, somehow it felt like her heart wasnt quite with it. Maybe she should stick to writing. Michael Dowse directs with gusto and there are plenty of amusing situations to make the most of. A quite reasonable result.

A Career in Construction - Part 17

The Holiday Inn, Croydon. Famous in construction legal circles for a judgement about the protection of retention monies. But I'm getting ahead of myself. We should have known at that first meeting in July 1981 what we were in for. For the contractor to be lambasted before we had even put a shovel in the ground was unprecedented then and since. If I remember correctly, Tony Whale had a hard job getting the tender through adjudication at head office. And the MD only relented as Tony was so keen on winning his first big contract. Mike Ellis became resident Project Manager and I got to know the route through south London pretty well.

I was enjoying my role as Divisional Quantity Surveyor. I had a dozen or so surveyors reporting to me, the Division was in reasonably good shape with a number of contracts on the go. As a result, the meetings of the four Divisonal Qs's and Chief QS every month at head office in Dronfield went very well. So the second half of 1981 was a good time. Except nothing is ever perfect, and at Croydon the cracks were beginning to show.

Mike Ellis, having previously managed Cheshunt and then the three phases of White City Industrial Park was involved in the most memorable moment on Croydon when the groundworks foreman entered his office holding a second world war bomb and asked what he wanted doing with it. It had been uncovered during excavations and the digger driver had stupidly not left it where it was. The upshot was that the site was closed, as were all the neighbouring streets while the bomb squad made it safe. It was much later the next day that we were allowed back on site. Needless to say, it made the evening news.

The problems on Croydon escalated during the first half of 1982. There were major problems in the construction of the substructures which the client was unwilling to pay for. We put together a reasonable claim document that we presented to the client and when it was rejected, we were taking legal advice. We were not only losing a lot of money in the groundworks but site overheads were also running at a loss. Some of the other contracts we inherited from the Brian Warren days were also in trouble, especially the apartment complex at Nine Elms and the Alexandra Pavilion in the grounds of Alexandra Palace. Given that it was he that pushed so hard to win the Croydon contract, it was not that big a surprise when Tony Whale decided to leave. On the 2nd June John Marshall, formerly head of Management Contracting at Head Office, took over as Divisional Director, and I was onto boss number six.

Family Connections with the First World War

As a family, we have few connections with WW1. The nearest relative who died was Charles Herbert Gordon Roberts, the nephew of my great Grandfather Vincent Littlewood Roberts. Charles was the son of Charles Augustus Roberts whom prepared the "Genealogy of the family of Roberts of Sheffield 1937". Charles Herbert must have resided in Canada at the outbreak of war as he joined the Canadian Infantry (Saskatchewan Regiment) 5th Battalion. He died on 11th December 1916 and is buried in Villers Station Cemetery, Pas de Calais, France. Grave Reference 1V.C.1. Villers-au-Bois is a village 11 kilometers north west of Arras. His parents, Charles Augustus Roberts and Emily Marianne Roberts (ne de-Castro) were living in Birkenhead, England. This information was found on the Canadian Virtual War Memorial.

My grandfather Stanley Boyd Roberts was 24 at the outbreak of war. As far as I can tell, he never enlisted, possibly because of his eyesight, or his profession of solicitor.

When I found a website on Sheffield Local History (http://history.youle.info/), one item was particularly interesting. It was a booklet called "Lest I Forget. My First Experiences At The Front" written by an Eric S Roberts about his experiences in the First World War and published on 23rd May 1918. He was a Lieutenant in the Yorks and Lancaster Regiment. This must be the same Eric S Roberts who appears on the family tree in the 1971 Edition of "Some Memorials of the Family of Roberts" where it shows he was born on 17th May 1893. He was the youngest son of Sir Samuel Roberts 1852-1926. The full text can be found by searching "Eric S Roberts Lest I Forget".

He also signed a copy (along with all the other members of the Repertory Theatre, Sheffield) of "The Works of William Shakespeare" that was presented to my father after the production of "Sing a Song of Christmas" 1930-1931. He was 13 years old. Fourteen years later, he also was commissioned as a Lieutenant in ..... The Yorks and Lancaster Regiment.

As for my mother's side of the family, her father Ralph and his brothers James, Thomas and George were all coal miners so they were never joining up.

Tring Book Club - Burial Rites and Jamrach's Menagerie

Burial Rites is an amazing book. Iceland in the nineteenth century and Agnes has been found guilty of murder. This means only one thing, execution. Whilst waiting for the approval of Denmark, Agnes is sent to live with the family of a District Officer. (There are no prisons in Iceland.) While she is there, her story gradually unfolds and the literary device used by the author works superbly well. The book is based on a true story but it is the dramatic licence adopted by first time novelist Hannah Kent that works better than what is actually recorded about the events of 1829. Agnes is a wonderfully sad character and her relationships with the family and those involved with the deaths are expertly drawn. The hard life on the farms of northern Iceland is beautifully described, and so is the landscape. The last few chapters are very powerful but are written with care and humanity. A terrific debut.

The other choice for Book Club turned out to be a bit of a disappointment. Jamrach's Menagerie by Carol Birch started off so well. So I enjoyed Parts 1 and 3 set near the docks in Victorian London. The life of young Jaffy Brown is a very good read. But the long Part 2 is about his adventures at sea and this I found quite boring. It is only when he returns to dry land for the shorter conclusion that I the story is so much better. Although what happened to him on his voyage does make the last section so poignant it was worth the wait.