Duet For One at the Oxford Playhouse

Duet For One has been a remarkably successful play over the years. It first opened at the Bush Theatre in 1980 after a debut at the fringe, then a long west end run, a transfer to Broadway and a major film with Julie Andrews and Max von Sydow. It has played many times since but I have never manged to see it until last night.

I nearly didnt go. A two hander is never an automatic choice for me, and the sparsely filled Oxford Playhouse showed how many others felt the same.  A pity as they missed something very special. Tom Kempiski has written something quite marvellous as stricken world famous violinist Stephanie Abrahams consults psychotherapist (spellcheck changed this to physiotherapist first time round) Dr Feldman  at the suggestion of her husband, the renowned composer David Liebermann. (Get the names?) The play is extremely clever in that it takes place over six sessions, each having it's own amazing identity, Stephanie's clothes in each suggesting something has changed.

Belinda Land is extraordinary as Stephanie. Taking over on last year's tour when Jemma Redgrave pulled out, she is quite brilliant. Jonathon Coy is quietly inquisitive at first, but this all changes in the second half. Robin Lefevre has brought the best out of the script and the actors and Lez Brotherston's set is perfect. What I couldn't get over was how much I laughed. This is not a comedy, but some of the language and delivery was very funny. Quite a night.

The Meg, The Spy Who Dumped Me and The Children Act

In the middle of the school holidays and lacking classy movies, The Meg is a typical Jason Statham action film, this time with added underwater thrills. What turned out to be just an early rescue attempt, when I thought this was going to be the main sequence, was the first in a series of typical blockbuster set pieces. All good fun, but no Jaws.

Not totally free of embarrassing scenes, Mila Kunis and Kate McKinnon turn the male dominated comedy thriller double act into a surprisingly violent film for the summer holidays. On the run through Europe gives director Sussana Fogel plenty of scope for city centre chases. A buddy movie for the internet generation.

Was it sensible for Ian McEwan to adapt his book The Children Act for the big screen? So much of the screenplay is extracted from the novel that the movie loses some cinematic qualities. But this is a tremendously classy film based upon a real life case from the court of appeal. The crux of the story is when leading high court judge Fiona Maye visits a seventeen year old boy in hospital. He is at the centre of  a case where the hospital authorities want permission to treat the boy against the wishes of his parents.

But why did Fiona Maye make this unusual visit when all along she has already made up her mind on the law. We are left to decide, given what follows. But what is McEwan's fascination with stalkers? I had thought that Enduring Love would have been enough. However, the movie is beautifully filmed and directed by Richard Eyre and has an outstanding performance from Emma Thomson. A very grown up movie in the desert of summer blockbusters.

Brandi Carlile, Lissie, First Aid Kit and Tift Merritt

I wondered if we had heard the best of Brandi Carlile after the dissapointing The Firewatcher's Daughter. But here she is, back on track with By The Way I Forgive You. Not quite up the standard of her best work, but Every Time i Hear That Song and What Ever You Do are classics. The backing of the twins Tim and Phil Hanseroth is as good as ever, this time supplemented by some string arrangements from the late and great Paul Buckmaster. From early Elton John to Brandi Carlile. Wow.

You know from the first few bars of the first track World Away that this is Lissie on form. But then next up is something very unlike her. Crazy Girl has too many co-writers and suffers as a result. We have to wait until the superb Blood and Muscle and Feels Good  to get back to the Lissie we love. Later tracks are just OK, but we want more than that.

Not immediately as good as their first three albums The Big Black & The Blue, The lion's Roar and Stay Gold, but on repeat listens, Ruins gets better and better. Klara and Johanna Soderberg are maturing wonderfully well into songwriters. The first track Rebel Heart is classic folk rock but I preferred the quieter To Live a Life. A superb collection.

Stitch of the World is the latest album form Tift Merritt. The stand out track for me is Heartache is an Uphill Climb. Unfortunately all the other songs, whilst inoffensive, are not in the class of her other albums. But her voice and the storeys behind the songs are as classy as ever. Maybe it will take a few more listens to appreciate them, but I'm not holding my breath.

Tring Book Club - The Gap of Time by Jeanette Winterson

I hadn't read anything by Jeanette Winterson before "The Gap of Time". She is certainly a highly creative and intellectual writer. At the same time she can create passages that race by. Sometimes you end up reading so fast it is almost at a breathless pace. There is something strange about the story, but Shakespeare's "The Winter's Tale" (which is retold here in the Hogarth series) is similarly a little crazy.

The original text has a lot to say about time, and so does this cover version. "Sometimes it doesn't matter that there was any time before this time. Sometimes it doesn't matter that its night or day or now or then. Sometimes where you are is enough. It's not that time stops or that it hasn't started. This is time. You are here. This caught moment opening into a lifetime." There are paragraphs like this one that originally left me baffled. But on typing this now, I get what the author is trying to say.

The gap of 16 years in the play is described by the chorus (Time) in 16 lines:

I, that please some, try all, both joy and terror

Of good and bad, that makes and unfolds error,

Now take upon me, in the name of Time,

To use my wings. Impute it not a crime

To me or my swift passage, that I slide

O’er sixteen years and leave the growth untried

Of that wide gap, since it is in my power

To o’erthrow law and in one self-born hour

To plant and o’erwhelm custom. Let me pass

The same I am, ere ancient’st order was

Or what is now received: I witness to

The times that brought them in; so shall I do

To the freshest things now reigning and make stale

The glistering of this present, as my tale

Now seems to it. Your patience this allowing,

I turn my glass and give my scene such growing

As you had slept between: Leontes leaving,

The effects of his fond jealousies so grieving

That he shuts up himself, imagine me,

Gentle spectators, that I now may be

In fair Bohemia, and remember well,

I mentioned a son o’ the king’s, which Florizel

I now name to you; and with speed so pace

To speak of Perdita, now grown in grace

Equal with wondering: what of her ensues

I list not prophecy; but let Time’s news

Be known when ’tis brought forth.

A shepherd’s daughter,

And what to her adheres, which follows after,

Is the argument of Time. Of this allow,

If ever you have spent time worse ere now;

If never, yet that Time himself doth say

He wishes earnestly you never may.

Having seen the play a couple of times in the last few years, the episode when Hermione's statue comes back to life is both unintentionally comic and silly. However, Winterson has turned this scene into something brilliantly dramatic and emotional. In some ways I thought she actually tried too hard to give us most of the characters and mimic the plot from the original. But in the end she has made something vivid and coherent for the modern reader. 

Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again, Mission Impossible - Fallout and The Bookshop

It's years since I saw a film twice, but I am hooked on the music in Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again. And, for me, this is all down to Anne Dudley. This is someone I had never heard of, but if I had been watching the credits on Poldark, I would have known she wrote the music. Obviously this time the songs are so familiar, but her score is absolutely outstanding.

Lets start with the instrumentals, or what would be sometimes called incidental music as a background to the action. I spent most of the second time trying to spot the song that has been translated into the score and not sung in the movie. According to the website: www.abbaomnibus.net/mammamia/2/songs.htm there are nine of these, but I only remembered "Let The Music Speak", "Chiquita" (twice), "The Day Before You Came", "Does Your Mother Know", "Take a Chance on Me", "Our Last Summer" and "Slipping Through My Fingers". I didn't hear "Honey, Honey" or "Money, Money, Money". But some only last a few moments. So I will just have to go again to find out.

I was surprised that the instrumental title track from "Arrival" was not there. I will listen for it next time. Then there are those instrumentals in the end credits medley for which it is worth staying in your seat. And not just for Omid Djalili at the very end.

Then there are little instrumental gems some time before the main song: "Knowing Me Knowing You", "The Name Of The Game", "Take A Chance On Me", "Thank You For The Music", "Angel Eyes" and "Dancing Queen". But of all the reworked orchestrations, the one that dazzled me the first time and devastated me the second was the introduction to "One Of Us". It is the most heartbreaking few moments I have experienced in a film for a long time. This time there is no vocal over the instrumental opening and those wonderful chords sweep you into what you know is coming next. I have listened to it a few times on YouTube, but it does not match the impact in the cinema.

So thank you Anne Dudley for the score. It is amazing how a new interpretation can sometimes blow you away. What about the rest of the movie? Well, far, far superior to the original. The back story with Lily James and a young cast is well constructed, and their ensemble numbers are brilliant. For me, the film does slightly lag as the fathers arrive and the hotel opening draws near. But the only one hammy moment was when Cher spots an old flame. Otherwise a complete joy.

Mission Impossible - Fallout is all action. Tom Cruise heads his usual crew into some marvellous action scenes in a beautifully filmed Paris. Some of the stunts are ridiculous, but hey, this is Mission IMPOSSIBLE. Well over two hours but the time went so fast. How Tom manages to do so much physical stuff at his age I will never know. Great entertainment.

The Bookshop is a small British movie that I saw in a one off showing for a packed Senior Screen (£3.45!). I loved the book by Penelope Fitzgerald and the best parts of the film were those that adopted her text, particularly the narration. It was such a strange idea to film a book of only 150 pages which is pretty sombre, if not sad. Director Isabel Coixet has changed a few things, thank goodness, but she is reliant on a terrific performance from Emily Mortimer . I still preferred the book.

I am I am I am, A Legacy of Spies and The Party

Seventeen true short stories from the life of Maggie O'Farrell. These brushes with death are interwoven with a proper memoir. The writing, as always from this author, is first class. "That the things in life which don't go to plan are usually more important, more formative, in the long run, than the things that do". It's just a shame that the first of the stories is so truly devastating that those that follow cannot hope to match. But they are all little gems. 

This took me back. I read "The Spy who came in from the Cold" in the mid sixties and that started me off reading every John le Carre novel, and there have been quite a few. Despite his being well into his eighties, he has not lost his touch. It helps to have some recollection of that earlier novel, (I suggest a recap from a plot summary) although my memory is mainly of the movie with Richard Burton as Alec Leamas.

The new book cleverly revisits the ramifications of the plot for Leamas to infiltrate East German intelligence that proved such a disaster. When our narrator, Peter Guillam (one of top spy George Smiley's assistants in those cold war sixties), is summoned from retirement, it is he who faces interrogation about his role in the ill-fated Operation Windfall.

Where are we in time? Not present day certainly. There are computers but no mention of mobile phones. And Smiley is still alive! The story cleverly weaves the inquiry with events and characters from the past. The writing is as great as ever and I raced through the book far too quickly. Will Benedict Cumberbatch be aged to play a much older Peter Guillam in the movie? 

We have to wait until the end to find out what devastating thing happened at the party. The build up is cleverly constructed although the back stories do interupt the events of that night, and whilst these are interesting in their own way, they do create too mant diversions from the main plot.

There are, however, some quite staggering sequences; one towards the end, that is a conversation between two of the main characters, is momentous. The book reads like a thriller , thinly disguised as a character driven drama. I raced through it in no time. 

Garmin Forerunner 35

On the right is my four and a half year old Garmin Forerunner 405 complete with heart rate monitor chest strap. Two buttons but most of the operations are by the touch bezel on the edge. This has always been tricky to manipulate.

On the left my brand new Garmin Forerunner 35. Heart rate monitored on the wrist so no more chest strap! Much lighter and easy to use with the four buttons. Connection to Garmin Express and then Garmin Connect on the laptop straightforward and the data displayed there awesome, especially the splits.

Great piece of technology at a very reasonable price.