English National Ballet's Romeo and Juliet at Milton Keynes Theatre

It's so great that English National Ballet come to Milton Keynes every autumn. We missed last year's Le Corsaire so booked early (May) this year, although we were in the circle for the first time. But this worked out well as there was often so much going on that the higher view came into it's own. The choreography for this Romeo and Juliet had been created by Rudolf Nureyev and the company enthusiastically grabbed their opportunity. Especially James Streeter as a very aggressive Tybalt.

Courtesy of The Northamptonshire Telegraph, I include the following review and photograph.
"Juliet, played by Erina Takahashi, shone as the leading lady, gracefully floating across the stage as the new relationship blossoms before her world comes crashing down around her and she gives everything both physically and emotionally to show the pain when she is betrothed to Paris, the man she doesn’t love.
The part of Romeo, played by Isaac Hernandez, is equally intense and spine-tingling as he gives a powerful portrayal of the highs followed by the lows experienced by Juliet’s lover."

Their dancing at the end of the first act was something else.

I find I sometimes just listen to the wonderful orchestra playing the score by Sergei Prokofiev. Given the size of the orchestra and the ballet company, the tickets are excellent value. And then there are the costumes and lighting which are both fabulous.

I should not have been surprised right at the start when a cart drags the two dead bodies across the stage. This echoes the chorus in the Prologue to Shakespeare's tragedy. I cannot remember a play (and now the ballet) where we are told the ending at the very beginning:

Two households, both alike in dignity

(In fair Verona, where we lay our scene),

From ancient grudge break to new mutiny,

Where civil blood makes civil hands unclean.

From forth the fatal loins of these two foes

A pair of star-crossed lovers take their life,

Whose misadventured piteous overthrows

Doth with their death bury their parents' strife.

The fearful passage of their death-marked love

And the continuance of their parents' rage,

Which, but their children’s end, naught could remove,

Is now the two hours' traffic of our stage—

The which, if you with patient ears attend,

What here shall miss, our toil shall strive to mend.

The Intern, The Martian and Sicario

I had normally avoided movies from Nancy Meyers (Something's Gotta Give, What Women Want and It's Complicated), although I did see The Holiday on TV. So I had no great expectations for The Intern, except Robert De Niro seemed quite funny on the trailer. But a 70 year old intern? I just had to see that. In the end a gentle and witty story (yes, Nancy Meyers can write a good script) with passable performances from De Niro and Anne Hathaway. Not everything came off and I can remember two embarrassing moments in particular, but an enjoyable movie with, at last, an original screenplay. Cute.

The Martian certainly lived up to all the hype. Ridley Scott is back on form. An astronaut stuck on Mars seems an unlikely premise, but the construction of the story is so cinematic. Tense, exciting and moving. The idea of Mark Watney (superbly played by Matt Damon) creating a video diary is brilliant. The alternating scenes between Mars and Earth work really well. A terrific cast, I particularly liked Mackenzie Davis as a young female nerd. To cap it all, the songs were great: "Happy Days", "Starman" and "I Will Survive" and lots more. And I'm glad I didn't see it in 3D.

A violent but thrilling and morally complex story of the fight against Mexican drug gangs is elevated to a spectacular movie through the cinematography of who else but Roger Deakins. Nominated perhaps nine times but never won an Oscar, is this the film that makes it this time. It should. Not just the superb landscapes (day and night) on the American/Mexican border, but the action sequences and indoor scenes too. Emily Blunt is terrific as the FBI officer who joins an elite task force (not FBI so who?). She, like us, is in the dark, and this puts us right in the hot seat. The filming of the four vehicle raid early on is Roger Deakins at his best. Director Dennis Villeneuve and writer Taylor Sheridan have made a powerful and gripping movie with a good cast. At the beginning we have no idea what  the excellent Benicio Del Toro is doing there, and later wished we hadn't.

Hamlet - National Theatre Live

Thank goodness for Benedict Cumberbatch. He is by far and away the best thing about this erratic production. Some things are very good. The set by Es Devlin is extraordinary, I had not remembered the Barbican stage being so big. It's just a shame that outdoor scenes are still shown with that awesome indoor castle backcloth. As I say, erratic. Back to Cumberbatch. Yes, a class act, just a bit too angry and shouty for me, but that would probably have been better in the theatre rather than close up in the cinema.

Then we come to the direction of Lyndsey Turner. Oh dear! There are some truly weird moments and too many silly gimmicks: the toy fortress and Hamlet in scarlet soldier uniform, the awful staging of the play within a play, Ophelia and her piano, Hamlet's jacket with "King" emblazoned on the back. Talk about pandering to newcomers to Shakespeare. But then again there are some superb moments especially early on; the dinner and the ghost come to mind.

The director has obviously concentrated on her lead actor and forgotten the others. They are quite reasonable in themselves but their interaction is scarce. Take Ciaran Hinds and Anastasia Hille as the newly married Claudius and Getrude. Do they ever touch? Very strange. Sian Brooke is a fair actress, just miscast as Ophelia. I wont go on.

I have records of seeing Hamlet twice, once at the Phoenix Theatre in 1988 and on the same Barbican stage in 1993. Both times Hamlet was played by Kenneth Branagh, the first was probably the best acting I have ever seen. But then he was directed by Derek Jacobi.

PS An extract from a national daily follows:

The audience should leave the theatre with the memories of the performance foremost in their minds, not their ears ringing with a lecture about how Britain has a responsibility to do more for refugees. Hamlet is what they paid for, not a party political broadcast on behalf of the Luvvie Party.

Brazzaville Beach, The Taxidermist's Daughter and Upstairs at the Party

William Boyd is one of my favourite authors. I enjoyed "Any Human Heart", "Ordinary Thunderstorms", "Restless", "Waiting for Sunrise" and even "Solo" was OK. But his prizewinning "Brazzaville Beach" was nothing special. Hope Clearwater's back story set in England was good, but the African settings (Boyd's familiar territory) were not. There was also too much showing off about advanced mathematics (Hope's brilliant husband).

However within a few pages over halfway through two staggering events save the story. It was as if Boyd knew where he wanted to get to but didn't bother enough about how to get there. I will have to see what other reviewers thought about the ending and what we ultimately made of the heroine.

Taxidermy has never been so thrilling. It's rather ghoulish techniques permeate this amazing thriller by Kate Mosse set in 1912. But it's the atmosphere of the watery estuary that surrounds Fishbourne in East Sussex that elevates this murder mystery to something very special. Thank goodness for the map at the start. Connie is an interesting heroine as she tries to unravel buried memories of her childhood.

The story is intricately plotted and concentration is needed as there are many secrets that have to be discovered. The dramatic revelations include one on page 160 that bowled me over. Maybe a little light on high class prose and the ending takes a standard thriller route. But a very enjoyable read.

The author (one of my favourites)is Adele (the narrator) in a partly autobiographical novel about her time at a Yorkshire university in the early 1970's. A well written and fast moving story which has a tragedy at it's heart. Adele gradually comes to terms with her involvement in later life, and uncovers the secrets that were hidden in the past.

The book feels like we were one of Adele's set and it's hard to make up our minds if we really had wanted to be there. In fact, I didn't. But that is not to say that I wasn't swept along with their youthful discoveries. It's just my youth was so different.

King Charles III at Milton Keynes Thaetre

Mike Bartlett's entertaining play imagines life for the royals after the death of the Queen. Charles is a king whose principles from his earlier life as the Prince of Wales are more troublesome in his new role. Charles is brilliantly played by Robert Powell ( I cannot see that Tim Pigott-Smith could have been better in the London production). The script is witty, sharp and Shakespearian in it's blank verse. The two hours plus goes so fast.

Rupert Goold has got the most from his cast, I particularly liked Jennifer Bryden as Kate and a hilarious Richard Glaves as Harry. He has his own story within this production, it could have made an equally good  play on it's own.

The only downside was that the plot was fairly predictable, as was the ending. But this did not detract from a very enjoyable evening.

Oxford Half Marathon - Sunday 11th October

I was looking forward to my first half marathon, even more so because my son Michael and his wife Sara were coming all the way from New York to run their first half marathons with me. They came to stay with us on Saturday, the only minor problem that evening was that my car (the one I had registered for the Park and Ride) had a nail in a tyre so the process of registering my wife's car was a little protracted but, in the end, successful.

We left early on Sunday morning and arrived at a quiet Thornhill just after 8am and straight onto a bus to take us into Oxford. It meant that we were hanging around the race village for an hour, but it was soon time to get to our places at the start. After a 15 minute delay we were off.

Michael and I ran together for the whole 13.1 miles (Sara wanted to run a little way behind us) and kept up a nice even pace between 9.35 and 9.37 minutes per mile. It was great to see so many spectators around the course. The weather conditions were practically perfect, a fresh 12 degrees, only a breeze on occasions and some warm sun towards the end. We saw Alison (our wonderful kit lady) at mile two, and then again with Zoe, Peter and Hannah around mile nine.

After mile ten, it was pretty congested on the footpath through the University Parks. We lost a little time but made some up in the last mile or so with a spectacular route around the Radcliffe Camera. Two more corners and the finish was in sight. We had made it round.

Our final chip places were 3924 and 3925 out of 6219 finishers. I was 57th out of 96 runners who were 60 plus. Michael's chip time was 2:06:57 and I was one second slower. We were very pleased with the result, our training had gone well and it paid off.

We met up with everyone after the finish and made our way to Jamie's where Zoe had booked for lunch. It was a brilliant way for us all to be together after the race. One of the best days ever.

Aldous Huxley's Brave New World at the Oxford Playhouse

After the highly succesful production of 1984 (Oxford Playhouse, October 2013) comes another vision of the future in the first stage adaptation of the Aldous Huxley's novel Brave New World. Director James Dacre (Artistic Director of Royal and Derngate, Northampton, a co-production with Touring Consortium Theatre Company) commissioned Dawn King the write the play, and what a great piece of work this is.

The staging is excellent, this director certainly knows what he is doing. All ten members of the cast are terrific, it would be hard to pick out just one. The set is rightly futuristic, as is the original music by These New Puritans. It was good to see the theatre full on a Tuesday evening, it deserved to be.

Fire Within - Birdy

Like many others, I first came across Birdy with her song Wings used for the Lloyds Bank 250th Anniversary advert. No wonder the young Jasmine Van Den Bogaerde shortened her name. Her album Fire Within is the best I have heard this year. The stand out tracks for me are Strange Birds (a far better song for a James Bond film than Sam Smith's), the wonderful No Angel and Standing in the way of the Light. Superb.

Legend, Miss You Already and Macbeth

Who else but Tom Hardy could play both the Kray twins in Legend, this moderately scripted story of the East End gangsters. Except there was very little sign of gangsterism. The film instead concentrated on relationships, particularly between Reggie and Frances Shea who becomes his wife. Ronnie is the more interesting and dangerous character who perpetrates the grimmest violence. A missed opportunity.

The biggest surprise in Miss You Already was that it was set in London and not America. So we were straight into Richard Curtis territory in this story about female friendship. This time we had a decent script from Morwenna Banks who has developed it from her radio play Goodbye. And, I guess, with some help from director Catherine Hardwicke who manages to make it an intelligent and moving movie. Both lead actresses Toni Collette and Drew Barrymore are good, the former deserving praise for an in depth performance as the stricken Milly.

Well the trailer looked great. Unfortunately even Michael Fassbender could not save this movie. He was actually partly to blame, mumbling most of his lines. Marion Cotillard is equally shaky on speaking the verse and seems lost in her shortened role. Far too fragile. I was not surprised that the closing credits showed three scriptwriters who had "based" the screenplay on the original text that was probably cut by half. We get lots of fighting and running at the expense of the story. One of the best characters in Shakespeare, the porter, is entirely absent. The casting is also strange. littered as it is with every Scottish actor imaginable. David Hayman in a monstrous beard, I don't think so. Whoever chose the squeaky voice of Sean Harris as Macduff  should give up. However, the scenery was magnificent but when it upstages the acting, something is very wrong.

Jane Wenham: The Witch of Walkern at Watford Palace Theatre

Walkern, a village in Hertfordshire in 1912. Eleanor Thorn has just been hanged for witchcraft and her daughter Anne is distraught. The new parson is looking to root out more witches, but the Bishop (superbly played by David Acton) believes there is no such thing. Rebecca Lenkiewicz's new play for Out Of Joint is well written and introduces a number of worrying themes that still resonate today.

There may be a a certain lack of plot, but the dialogue of what are mostly two person scenes is crisp and intelligent. The play seems to suffer a little from having no central character, but there are some great performances. Apart from David Acton, Cat Simmons is excellent as his "housekeeper" as is Rachel Sanders as Widow Higgins. And Ria Parry's direction helps to build up the tension. Even before the play starts, the sparse set with only a gallows in the middle of the stage lends a sense of foreboding. That mood never leaves this ambitious production.