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Theatre Review: The House of Bernarda Alba (Almeida)

2012-02-01T05:04:00.001-07:00

The last time The House of Bernarda Alba was seen in London it came complete with song and dance: Triptic’s dynamic production of Michael John LaChiusa’s musicalisation of Lorca’s 1936 play was one of the highlights of the Union Theatre’s programming last year. Now the play returns to London, again in an adapted form. Bijan Sheibani’s new production at the Almeida relocates the action from southern Spain to rural Iran, in an attempt to give Lorca’s classic about a tyrannical matriarch maintaining a stranglehold over her five daughters a fresh, contemporary context.

It’s a transition that promises more than it actually delivers, though. The play’s engagement with issues of gender and oppression can’t be said to be illuminated by the location shift, which, if anything, feels entirely cosmetic: a little light name-changing here, some Dashti song there. Otherwise, Emily Mann’s translation stays close to the structure and imagery of the original, including its none-too-subtle sexual symbolism. (Yep, that ol’ stallion is still out there in the corral, seeming to grow to “twice its size, filling the darkness!”)

Aided by a nicely-detailed set by Bunny Christie, an excellent sound design by Dan Jones and evocative lighting by Jon Clark (plus an effective visual flourish that concludes each Act as a photographic portrait) Sheibani’s production has atmosphere and visual richness. What it doesn’t quite have is the sustained, tightly-coiled intensity that the piece really requires. The drama seems set at an oddly low temperature here, and never reaches boiling point. Key elements - from Bernarda’s face-off with her servant to the passion of Adela (Hara Yannas) for her half-sister's fiance Pepe el Romano (renamed Parviz Rumani here) - feel muted; they lack bite. LaChiusa’s adaptation dug out the feminist underpinnings of the piece, locating a withering critique of patriarchy and its tendency to pit women against each other. Here, in contrast, the play seems considerably less radical, a minor ode to the neuroses of “women without men.”

One of the production’s primary draws is the casting of the Iranian-American actress Shohreh Aghdashloo - so memorable in House of Sand and Fog (2003) and The Stoning of Soraya M. (2008) - in the title role. It’s an absorbing performance because Aghdashloo brings an entirely unexpected quality to Bernarda: namely, sexuality. Whether this makes much sense in terms of the character as written is debatable. But it does set up an intriguing tension between the character’s statements on women’s propriety and the languid, sultry cadences in which she delivers them. (This Bernarda’s case for female repression is undermined every time she opens her mouth.) Aghdashloo's Bernarda doesn’t quite have the fearsome authority that actresses such as Glenda Jackson, Lynn Farleigh and Beverley Klein have brought to the role, since Aghdashloo's voice can’t help but seduce: it turns curses into caresses. (It’s the exact opposite of a Jackson voice.) But she still provides the production with its primary source of interest, though Jane Bertish is shrewd as Bernarda’s servant, and, of the daughters, the always-inventive Amanda Hale as Elmira (Matirio) makes a strong impression, externalising her character’s distress with the unnerving transparency that she brought to her Laura in Rupert Goold’s 2007 Glass Menagerie. Still, this production - elegant as it undoubtedly is - never truly ignites.

The production runs until 10th March. Further information at the Almeida website.

Theatre Review: Shallow Slumber (Soho Theatre)

2012-01-27T09:18:00.001-07:00

The slumber may be shallow but the drama cuts deep. Based upon his own experiences as a practising carer in an inner London borough, and also informed in part by the Baby P case, Chris Lee’s pungent new play is a taut two-hander that explores the relationship between a young mother, Dawn, and her social worker, Moira, teasing out issues of dependency, trust and the challenges of intervention through the women’s interactions over a number of years.

The premise sounds worthy: “topical” in the worst way. But what’s admirable about Shallow Slumber is its eschewing of an obvious, journalistic approach. Distilled and apparently modest, the play manages to subtly gesture outward to a range of wider social and philosophical concerns, constructing in Moira and Dawn’s encounters a scenario that feels archetypal (the play is set simply in “one of our cities”) and yet specific enough.

And playing out in the claustrophobic confines of the Soho Theatre Upstairs, Mary Nighy’s sparsely-staged production takes on a genuine intensity and cumulative power. The structure of the piece borrows from Pinter’s Betrayal, with the action unfolding backwards. The play opens with Moira and Dawn’s re-encounter after some evidently traumatic experience and climaxes years earlier, on that day of revelation. The staccato style of the women’s opening exchanges feels excessively Pinteresque, too, but gradually both play and production establish their own mood and rhythm, as they work backwards - inexorably and inevitably - to a moment of horror that elicited groans of dismay from some audience members.

Lee is content to leave certain details of the women’s histories ambiguous. This, coupled with the year-spanning, reverse-chronology structure, means that elements of the play feel sketchy. But the upside of his approach is that the viewer is allowed plenty of interpretive space. Dedicated to “all social workers everywhere,” the play actually extends a clear-eyed, not-uncritical sympathy to both parties, offering a perceptive portrait of the two women’s predicaments and the shifts in power between them.

Ultimately, though, the success of such an intensely concentrated piece as Shallow Slumber rests in large part upon the quality of the performances and it’s hard to see how these could be bettered. Responsible for two of last year’s most memorable supporting turns as the outwardly cheerful mummy-in-meltdown in the Royal Court’s The Village Bike and as a passionate Emilia in the Sheffield Crucible Othello, Alexandra Gilbreath delivers once again here as Moira, offering a superbly astute characterisation. She starts (or rather ends) crumpled, hunched and wary, as a woman whose survival has taken a palpable toll; this gives particular poignancy to the final scene in which she arrives at Dawn’s flat for a visit, all professional eagerness and affability (with an occasional undertone of threat).

Gilbreath’s detailed and affecting work is matched by Amy Cudden’s startling performance as Dawn, which combines vulnerability and volatility, neediness and defensiveness, shrewdness and self-loathing, to devastating effect. The force of Cudden’s interpretation carries us through occasional moments in which Dawn is endowed with an awareness that seems somewhat unlikely, and the actress is especially impressive in her delivery of a long central monologue in which Dawn recalls her encounter with a couple so absorbed in their own quarrel that they left their baby on a train.

It’s fair to say that Shallow Slumber won’t be the jolliest night that you spend in a theatre in 2012. But, offering no pat solutions, this unsettling, insightful and haunting play certainly deserves to be seen.

Running until 18th February. Further information at the Soho Theatre website.

Reviewed for British Theatre Guide.

CD Review: Hello Cruel World (Gretchen Peters, 2012)

2012-01-27T09:18:00.000-07:00

2010 was by all accounts a challenging and dramatic year for Gretchen Peters, one in which, as she puts it, “the universe threw its best and its worst at me.” As its wry title suggests, Peters’s new album Hello Cruel World takes its inspiration from some of those upheavals. But it does so in a manner that’s suggestive and oblique rather than obvious, cloaking its revelations in carefully drawn character sketches that, for the most part, transcend standard-issue soul-baring. The result is an accomplished album that ranks as one of Peters’s most satisfying releases to date.

Drawing together a classy group of collaborators including guitarists Doug Lancio and Will Kimborough, bassist Viktor Krauss, trumpeter Vinnie Ciesielski and keyboardist (and new Mr. Peters) Barry Walsh, Hello Cruel World sounds assured and confident from the off. Blurring genres - folk, country, jazz and rock - with consummate ease, the record flows smoothly but not blandly, its textured arrangements sometimes incorporating unexpected touches. Themes of survival in adversity are established on the assertive and surprisingly sultry opening title track, which cruises in on a background of sturdily thwacked drums, twangy guitar, tinkling piano and dramatic strings, all complementing Peters’s seductive vocal. The first of several songs addressing spiritual matters, “St. Francis” is an elegant Tom Russell co-write featuring McGarrigle-worthy harmonies from Kim Richey, while the superb “The Matador” is a shrewd musing on love and art that would’ve sounded right at home on One to the Heart, One to the Head, the excellent collaboration album with Tom Russell that Peters released in 2009.

More up-tempo moments such as the ineffably catchy Rodney Crowell duet “Dark Angel” and the ringing “Woman on the Wheel” are also enjoyable. But ultimately it’s the quieter, lower-keyed character sketches that really hit home, showcasing the empathy and humanity of Peters’s song-writing at its very best. “Five Minutes” (itself a neat five minutes in length) finds its waitress-heroine carving out a brief space for reflection on her cigarette break, recalling a lost love, musing on her current routine and ruefully spotting her own youthful waywardness in the actions of her teenage daughter. Woozy trumpet and spare, jazzy piano add late-night ambience to “Camille,” co-written with Peters’s frequent collaborators Suzy Bogguss and Matraca Berg, in which the misery of the protagonist’s downward spiral is mitigated, perhaps, by her apparent inability to completely numb herself.

And the stunning, atmospheric “Idlewild” brilliantly charts a loss of personal and national innocence, broadening out from a childhood memory of a tense car journey to collect an ailing grandparent into a fairly devastating assessment of American arrogance and loss of direction. The chiming closer “Little World,” meanwhile, extols the comforts of home - however humble - as a retreat from a threatening “big and lonely world.” It could be a sickly, isolationist vision, but the heartfelt warmth of Peters’s delivery and the adroitness of her lyrical imagery means that the song rings touchingly true.

Peters is one of those singer-songwriters who, despite a loyal following - plus acclaim as a writer for others -, has never quite broken through to the wider recognition that she deserves. Whether or not Hello Cruel World will be the album to change that remains to be seen, but, if not, it won’t be due in any measure to the quality of the material that it contains. Rooted in concrete, lived details and specific histories, the best songs here constantly gesture outwards into wider, more universal terrain, making of the “little world” an everywhere.

Reviewed for Wears the Trousers.

Film Review: Coriolanus (Fiennes, 2011)

2012-01-18T06:42:00.002-07:00

Ralph Fiennes’s Coriolanus gets its UK release this coming weekend. I had the pleasure of seeing the film at the London Film Festival last year, and it made my Top 10 Films of 2011 list, just. Here’s what I wrote about it after the LFF screening.

Seldom regarded as one of Shakespeare’s most profound or popular tragedies, Coriolanus is a work that has, nonetheless, frequently been raided for contemporary parallels by directors and adaptors across the centuries. The play’s slippery dissection of democracy - its concern with “people power,” the challenges of leadership and what constitutes “good” rule - has left it open to multiple, often contradictory interpretations. Nahum Tate’s 1682 adaptation was set against Whig-Tory rivalry, while later adaptations referred to the 1715 and 1745 Jacobite Rebellions. In the 20th Century, the Nazis extolled the heroism of the protagonist and drew favourable comparisons with Hitler, while Brecht’s 1953 version surprised no-one by portraying the masses as heroes.

Ralph Fiennes’s big, brawny new film adaptation strives - sometimes astutely and sometimes ham-fistedly - to chime with the times. The tale of the warrior-hero who, when conspired against, turns his back on Rome to join forces with his arch-enemy, the Volscian general Aufidius, is the tragedy of a man who, though a notable success on the battle-field, is entirely unable to flatter or charm the populace. Tipping its hat to the title of John Osborne’s 1973 adaptation, Fiennes’s film locates the action in “a place calling itself Rome” - a Balkan war-zone - and the early scenes in which the citizens besiege the Senate and are beaten back by riot-police certainly gain an extra frisson in the light of recent uprisings and anti-capitalist demos.

Making his directorial debut here, Fiennes has done a mostly commendable job of work. And returning to a role that he first played on stage in 2000, he also delivers a compelling central performance that has genuine gravitas. But his approach sometimes betrays a certain amount of insecurity in relation to the material. The film strives so hard to be cinematic - jittery camera-work? check; ear-splitting sound? check - that it’s occasionally a little embarrassing. The opening scenes suggest a particularly hyperbolic advert for a Panorama Special, and the decision to present the conflict between the Romans and the Volscians through the language of TV news media (yawn) feels all too predictable. (How fresh this device seemed when it book-ended Baz Lurhrmann’s 1996 Romeo + Juliet; how totally shop-worn now. The nadir here is a Jon Snow cameo.) As director, Fiennes also seems to have taken instruction from some of his previous collaborators: the over-wrought action scenes find him doing his best Kathryn Bigelow impersonation (Barry Ackroyd, who shot The Hurt Locker [2008], is the movie’s cinematographer), while the presentation of the Citizens as a very motley crew recalls the 2005 Deborah Warner production of Julius Caesar in which Fiennes played Mark Antony.

This tendency towards over-emphasis does result in admirably lucid story-telling, though. The film is thoughtfully paced and structured, with Coriolanus’s rejection of Rome taking place almost exactly at the movie’s mid-point. Hollywood’s favourite screenwriter-for-hire John Logan has done a skilful job of paring back (and simplifying) the text, although some elements and supporting roles do suffer the consequences of his tinkering. While Brian Cox is able to come through with a finely modulated performance as Menenius, the work of Paul Jesson and James Nesbitt as the conspiring Tribunes ends up seeming obvious at times. And, more problematically, the association between Coriolanus and Aufidius (Gerard Butler, adequate) never quite strikes the sparks that it initially promises to. The homoerotic implications of the relationship which have been highlighted by some directors aren’t stressed here, although the movie does boast a slightly bizarre night-time sequence in which the Volscian camp seems momentarily to have morphed into a gay club.

The most genuinely exciting moments are those in which Fiennes stops proclaiming “Look! I’m making a MOVIE!” and opts for more sparsely staged scenes that allow Shakespeare’s language to do the work. Coriolanus then offers some memorably taut encounters, and some eloquent and expressive images, too. Fiennes’s scenes with Vanessa Redgrave’s strong, seductive Volumnia are especially fine; Redgrave (who gave even her hokey dialogue in Letters to Juliet [2010] the weight she might give to a spot of prime Shakespearean verse) delivers her best screen performance in years as the ambitious, manipulative matriarch. And she and Fiennes look wonderful together - a pair of Roman statues in the making, indeed - their intense close-ups offering the thrill that the theatre can’t provide. Volumnia’s final supplication scene is brilliantly sustained - the movie’s highlight - and its impact mitigates some of the more questionable, obvious ideas that mar the film’s opening sections. This Coriolanus isn’t, overall, everything that it could have been. But at its best it’s a vivid and gripping account of this now seldom-staged play.

Theatre Review: The Art of Concealment (Jermyn Street Theatre)

2012-01-12T03:44:00.003-07:00

Last year, as part of its season to celebrate Terence Rattigan’s centenary, Chichester Festival Theatre staged Nicholas Wright’s Rattigan’s Nijinsky, a new play that combined scenes from a never-produced Rattigan screenplay with a biodrama focusing on the playwright’s later life. The result was a somewhat awkward hybrid that flitted unsatisfactorily between the two narrative strands, precluding full involvement in either.

Rattigan-as-protagonist now returns in Giles Cole's The Art of Concealment, a play that was originally commissioned for last summer’s Brighton Festival Fringe and which now takes up residence at the Jermyn Street Theatre. Drawing upon the two major Rattigan biographies by Geoffrey Wansell and Michael Darlow, Cole’s play is a more satisfying and insightful piece of work than was Wright’s, fashioning what is in essence a memory play from the details of Rattigan’s life. The action begins on the eve of the opening of Cause Célèbre in 1977 and finds the ailing, elderly Rattigan reflecting upon the direction of his life, his relationships with his parents and his lovers, and his painful fall from critical and commercial favour.

Although the flashback structure, and the device of having Rattigan act as a commentator on his own experiences, results in some clumsy moments of excessive editorialising, the material feels more elegantly worked than in Wright’s play, and Knight Mantell’s tightly-controlled production holds the interest. As its title indicates, the play zeroes in on the notion of “concealment” as it applies both to Rattigan’s personal and professional life. “Concealment” is indeed a word that forms a refrain in the Darlow text, the biographer summarising Rattigan, finally, as “a man whose life had been devoted to forms of concealment and role-playing.” Given Rattigan’s reticence there is at times an uncomfortable suggestion of invaded privacy about the enterprise, as well as the feeling that the play may to some extent perpetuate a sentimentalised image of the playwright as a victim - of English sexual intolerance on the one hand and of the Royal Court revolution on the other.

The spelling-it-out obviousness of some moments here also suggests that the play has less to offer those already familiar with the facts of Rattigan’s life. But what the production does offer that the biographies don’t is the pleasure of performance. Dominic Tighe brings his customary grace and matinee-idol appeal to the younger Rattigan (what a great Freddie Page in The Deep Blue Sea he’d make!), skillfully presenting the protagonist as a man of both kindness and coldness. Even at his liveliest - when entertaining his chums with a Gielgud impersonation, say - Tighe keeps a tantalising aura of guardedness about him, that of a man who learnt early on to compartmentalise his life because “one has to be so careful about the things one reveals.” As the older Rattigan, Alistair Findlay is stuck with the play’s clunkier dialogue (“A Taste of Honey! To me it was a slap in the face!”). But the performance deepens in the later stages when he becomes a participant rather than a commentator on the drama.

Graham Pountney does amusing work as Rattigan’s philandering, philistine father Frank and in the (invented) role of Freddie Gilmour, a queeny director with a neat line in put-downs, while Judy Buxton is touching and vivid as Rattigan’s mother Vera who’s more generously portrayed here than she was in Rattigan’s Nijinsky. Buxton also gets a good late scene as “Aunt Edna” - the archetypal theatregoer evoked by Rattigan in his Prefaces - who here appears to confront the playwright about the ways in which he may have underestimated his audience. And there’s well-judged support from Daniel Bayle as Kenneth Morgan, and from Charlie Holloway as Michael Franklin, the volatile young man dismissed by Rattigan’s friends as a chancer but who ended up staying with Rattigan until the end of the latter’s life.

What Cole’s play doesn’t quite do justice to, perhaps, is the function that Rattigan’s emphasis on discretion - his mastery of the art of concealment, as it were - served for him as a dramatist. The abiding fascination with falsity and its revelation is part of the extraordinary tension that Rattigan’s best work can still generate in a theatre, an emotional charge that Cole’s play, for all its engaging moments, doesn’t manage to match.

The production runs for 2 hours 15 minutes and is booking until 28th January.

Reviewed for The Public Reviews.

Film Review: The Artist (Hazanavicius, 2011)

2012-01-11T10:27:00.001-07:00

Watching Guy Maddin’s great silent-influenced fantasias I’ve sometimes wondered to myself why more directors aren’t returning to the language of early cinema, in all its vital expressiveness, as Maddin does so dynamically in his work. Well, with The Artist (2011), the French filmmaker Michel Hazanavicius has done just that, producing a heartfelt homage to silent cinema that is (slightly gallingly) receiving much more widespread kudos and acclaim than Maddin’s work has done to date. Indeed, word-of-mouth on The Artist has been strong ever since its premiere at Cannes last year, and, helped along by a never-to-be-underestimated Weinstein marketing push, the movie seems to be winning friends and admirers all over the place. It’s not hard to see why, for Hazanavicius’s movie - less quirky and obsession-packed and more obviously audience-friendly than Maddin’s offerings - is a most delightful thing: clever, funny, touching and as irresistible as its leading man and lady’s (oft-displayed) winning smiles.

Opening in Hollywoodland 1927, The Artist focuses on the contrasting fortunes of two performers: George Valentin (Jean Dujardin) and Peppy Miller (Bérénice Bejo). When we meet them George is an adored silent film actor, basking in the glow of success, while Peppy is an aspiring actress who, bumping into George at a premiere, is helped by him into minor screen roles. But, with the coming of sound, the pair’s fortunes are reversed, with Peppy’s star going into the ascendant while George, unable and unwilling to adapt to the new technology, fades.

Best known for his spy spoofs, Hazanavicius opts for a fonder approach here, and, as such, the movie that The Artist most recalls in some ways is Todd Haynes’s Far From Heaven (2003): it’s a throwback that favours affection and respect for its sources over po-mo knowingness and one that wins its way through to a surprising amount of emotion as it progresses. It helps that, as in Haynes’s movie, the cast seem exactly right for the archetypes they’re incarnating. Dujardin and Bejo couldn’t be bettered, and there’s well-judged support from John Goodman’s studio boss to James Cromwell’s butler, while in Uggie the movie boasts the most scene-stealing pooch to grace the screen in many a year. Offering the considerable pleasures of spot-the-reference, the movie flows beautifully, providing a myriad of pleasures sequence-by-sequence: George's "sound" nightmare and a delicious coat-rack love scene win out as my two favourite moments.

Unsurprisingly, perhaps, The Artist’s popularity has resulted in a backlash mounting in some quarters. I’ve seen the film dismissed as “a whiff of a movie”; a work that lacks substance and bite and that doesn’t play fair with the histories of the stars it evokes, while issue has been taken with elements from the cutesy canine to the crowd-pleasing feel-good finale. Such complaints seem a tad churlish, the reaction of cineastes irritated that the picture is engaging a mass audience. The Artist is a confection and crowd-pleaser, to be sure (indeed it’s about the pleasures of being crowd-pleasing), but it’s to Hazanavicius’s credit that the movie doesn’t feel calculated. It may disappoint those who, to borrow Margaret Atwood’s analogy, persist in considering “excellent pastry [to be] a facile creation when compared with raw meat on skewers.” But the rest of us will find it hard not to succumb to the charm and delight on offer in this cinephile’s wet dream.

DVD/CD Review: Joan Baez - How Sweet the Sound

2012-01-09T04:07:00.000-07:00

Given Joan Baez’s centrality to American cultural and political life over the past five decades, the greatest surprise about this documentary is that it wasn’t made much sooner. While Bob Dylan’s career has been the subject of a multitude of docs and bios, essays and retrospectives, Baez’s work - both as artist and activist - has received comparably little scrutiny or contextualisation. While her classic Vanguard albums have been carefully and conscientiously re-issued and re-mastered (and supplemented by comprehensive liner notes by Arthur Levy), it’s still been over 20 years since the publication of Baez’s autobiography, And A Voice To Sing With (1987), and that book is not widely available now. This lack of attention means that Baez - despite her continued vibrancy as a live performer, her ongoing campaigning work and the overall excellence of her recent recorded output - has arguably risked being fixed in the popular imagination as a worthy but dull crusader. A 60s icon, to be sure, but also, to some extent, a footnote in Dylan’s life-story, an emblem of the “protest” stage that he had to transcend before going on to create his most dynamic and experimental music.

In a pleasingly low-key and unassuming way Joan Baez: How Sweet the Sound puts this situation to rights. Produced by Mark Spector and Mary Wharton, and directed by Wharton, this American Masters documentary premiered on PBS on in 2009 and is available in an excellent CD/DVD package which supplements the film with bonus content and a soundtrack disc of performances. Stylistically, the documentary is conventional: a linear journey through Baez’s life and times, comprised of archive footage, concert outtakes (from Baez’s earliest and most recent live shows), and present-day interviews, with Baez and a selection of talking-heads, among them David Crosby, Roger McGuinn, Jesse Jackson and Dylan himself. (The bonus content adds conversations with Steve Earle, Dar Williams and Vaclav Havel, though the latter’s contribution is disappointingly brief.)

For those hoping for a more idiosyncratic I’m Not There -ish take on Baez, How Sweet the Sound is not the place to come. But it’s a clear, well-made and thoroughly enjoyable documentary, respectful in tone, but rarely hagiographic. Baez’s characteristic wry humour and sly self-mockery deflect such a response. Musing with wit and candor on the shock of her early fame, her musical heritage, and her politics, Baez is great company - not to mention a living, breathing witness to some of the most important events in 20th century culture and politics. The archive footage that Spector and Wharton have amassed to illustrate her recollections is superb, and encompasses family home movies and footage of wider political significance, showing Baez in the thick of Civil Rights and draft-resistance protest, and capturing her visit to North Vietnam, where she is seen praying with the residents of Hanoi during the heaviest bombardment of the war.

Perhaps the most affecting anecdote, because somewhat lesser known, is the story of the concert Baez performed at Stillman College in Tuscaloosa in 1964, at which she succeeded in creating a peacefully integrated show in a bitterly segregated town. Baez’s conversation with her co-conspirators at this event, Professor Bill Fegan and Bishop Ernest Palmer (presented in full as one of the bonus interviews), adds further context and insight. (As well as humor. When Fegan presents Baez with a scarf that she left behind at a party in ’64 Baez deadpans: “I’ve been looking for that!”)

Baez states frankly that her political activities sometimes took precedence over her music and her personal life; her conversation with her ex-husband David Harris - two 60s warriors surveying their “tumultuous times” as “Mr. and Mrs. Peace In America” with perspective and good humour - addresses some of these issues in a particularly engrossing way. Dylan’s contribution is similarly affectionate; he speaks with palpable warmth about his early collaborations with “Joanie”, and offers his take on the 1965 British tour - described by Baez here as a “hideous” experience. Superb footage of the pair gleefully duetting on "I Pity The Poor Immigrant" (from the Rolling Thunder Review tour in the mid-70s) captures the dynamism of their renewed rapport.

In a life-story as rich as Baez’s, some elements, inevitably, get merely sketched in here. Baez’s family background could have been examined in more depth, while the coverage of her campaigning activities in the 1980s and 90s becomes a whistle-stop tour of war zones. Condensing her wide-ranging work onto one CD must have been similarly challenging, but the 15 songs selected (mostly live or rare performances) do a pretty good job of showcasing Baez’s genius for inhabiting songs both ancient and contemporary, and also highlighting some of her rare forays into original composition. It’s also moving to hear Baez’s voice deepen and develop from its early stark power to its now richer, womanly present-day tone.

As CD and film, what Joan Baez: How Sweet the Sound conveys, finally, is the interrelatedness of Baez’s activism and her artistry, and her inspiring commitment to music as a bridge to others, a means to integration and understanding. As the song advises: “Carry it on.”

2012 Arts Anticipated, and New Year Blogging Activity

2012-01-03T04:42:00.006-07:00

With the review of 2011 taken care of, and the new year upon us, now seems a good moment to take a look forward, and to list just a few of the theatre productions, films and albums that I’m especially excited for in 2012.

Theatre

Long Day’s Journey Into Night (Apollo)

O'Neill's masterpiece, perhaps the greatest of all American “family” plays, was last seen in London in 2000, in an intense and beautiful production by Robin Phillips that starred Jessica Lange, Charles Dance and Pauls Rudd and Nichols as the tormented Tyrones. Anthony Page's production may have to go some to top that one. But with the quartet headed by David Suchet and Laurie Metcalf (making a much-anticipated return to these shores following her performance in the 2001 NT All My Sons) this time around, the prospect of seeing what Richard Eyre calls “the saddest play ever written” once again makes me very, very happy indeed.

The Winter’s Tale (Propeller)

“A sad tale’s best for winter”… Not too long to wait now for the opening of Propeller’s production of the Bard’s most gorgeously confounding late romance, the second part of the company’s 2011/12 double-bill.

Sweeney Todd (Adelphi)

Having missed the production in Chichester I very much look forward to seeing the goriest musical in creation when it settles into the West End in March. Trailer below.

(The Musical Formerly Known as) The Light Princess (National Theatre)

After a few delays - mostly occasioned, perhaps, by the tendency of one of its collaborators to dash off on lengthy world tours - here’s hoping that Tori Amos and Samuel Adamson’s adaptation of George Macdonald’s wonderful fairytale makes it to the stage this Christmas - and that the magnificent “Winter’s Carol” is to be heard “ringing out” at the National Theatre at long last. My interview with Samuel Adamson is here.

Also: Constellations (Royal Court), The Duchess of Malfi (Old Vic), The Changeling (Young Vic), The Lady from the Sea (Rose Kingston), Hay Fever (Noel Coward Theatre).

Films

The vagaries of film distribution being what they are these days, it’s doubtful that all of these movies will appear on British screens this year. (Or, in some cases, ever.) But these are some of the things I’m most excited to see, if possible.

The Artist (Michel Hazanavicius), Keyhole (Guy Maddin), The Kid With A Bike (Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne), Once Upon A Time In Anatolia (Nuri Bilge Ceylan), The Beloved (Christophe Honoré), The Great Gatsby (Baz Luhrmann), The Sleeping Beauty (Catherine Breillat).

Music

With the disgraceful amount of 2011 releases I still have to catch up on, it’s actually fine by me if no new music gets released this year. But since the great Leonard Cohen’s Old Ideas is already done and dusted, it would be churlish not to check it out. And should Iris DeMent feel like getting around to recording something new anytime soon, I can be trusted to find some time to listen to that too.

Now is also a good time to flag up that posting on this blog may take a dip in frequency over the next few months, due to my need to make serious headway on a second book project this year. I’ll aim to check in a few times a month, at least, and to write on occasion for other sites as well. But, in the interests of keeping up a semblance of what passes for “quality control” (ahem) here, posting may be a little less frequent for a while. For those of us who work in academia - where laboured-over articles and reviews can sometimes take months and even years to see the light of day after submission - the “quick fix” of blogging is incredibly seductive (not to say addictive), and is something that I’d never turn my back on entirely. In the meantime, thanks as always to everyone* who’s stopped by this blog in the past year to cast an eye over these musings on topics cinematic, theatrical and musical. Your readership and comments are very much appreciated indeed.

*Even Neil LaBute.

A Little Light Linkage (IV)

2012-01-03T03:52:00.001-07:00

A few favourite recent dispatches from the blogosphere.

At Fandor, via Last Seat on the Right, the ever-estimable Michał Oleszczyk’s Top 10 films of 2011, plus his fantastic piece on Brian Kellow’s Pauline Kael biography.

Mike Lippert ponders two years of blogging at You Talking to Me?

Mr. Popsublime recalls the 2007 Broadway production of Spring Awakening.

Tom Clift's Top 10 films of 2011.

Surrender to the Void weighs in on my favourite Mike Leigh film, Topsy- Turvy.

And you thought you knew everything there is to know about Going Gently’s John Gray by now, right? Well, think again.

Review of 2011: Cinema - 10 Favourite Films

2011-12-24T03:39:00.005-07:00

Cinema-memories, 2011.

Texan boyhoods. Parisian chimes at midnight. The end of the world. On Tresco, a painter gives a young man some advice. In Nottingham, two men meet, connect, part. Somewhere, a wedding reception goes off the rails. A Roman hero in a Balkan warzone. A novel use for Viagra. A mother and daughter ponder loss. A portly fantasist turns up in someone else’s fantasy. A waiting cat gets philosophical. Christophe Honoré goes p*rn... Not quite a movie year to match 2010 for me, but, even so, 2011 offered some incredible cinema experiences, many of which demonstrated film’s ability to encompass the domestic and the cosmic as no other medium can do.

Archipelago (dir. Joanna Hogg)

Joanna Hogg’s tender, funny chamber drama, revealing under-the-surface tensions (and under-the-surface love) on a family vacation on Tresco, makes most other films this year look heavy-handed and overstated by comparison. Beautiful work from Tom Hiddleston, Kate Fahy, Lydia Leonard, Amy Lloyd and Christopher Baker.

Weekend (dir. Andrew Haigh)

Well, here’s a surprise. Not one but two British films ending up on this year’s list... Haigh’s Nottingham-set boy-meets-boy romance is perfectly scaled, beautifully observed, brilliantly acted, and convincing in every detail.

Elena (dir. Andrei Zvyagintsev)

Oh boy. My favourite film of the London Film Festival was Zvyagintsev’s third movie, a subtle but bracingly intense drama that explores issues of class and social status in contemporary Russia through the story of the title character (brilliantly played by Nadezhda Markina). A Tarkovsky for those of us who (confession time) have been bored by the majority of Tarkovsky’s work, Zvyagintsev is as philosophically-inclined as his illustrious predecessor but without losing sight of character and narrative. Elena is a marvellously assured piece of filmmaking: beautifully rhythmed, rich in unstressed details, and full of spaces for the viewer’s involvement and interpretation.

A Separation (dir. Asghar Farhadi)

I don’t know anyone who didn’t love and admire this: Farhadi’s splendid, complex drama seemed to grip and involve everyone who saw it.

Melancholia (dir. Lars von Trier)

It’s the end of the world as they know it. And Lars’s characters feel… well, not exactly fine.

The Tree of Life (dir. Terrence Malick)

As divisive as Melancholia. Sure, “that” montage is a chore and the ending is soggy. But Malick’s grandiose evolution opus has the most wonderful stretches: piercingly evocative scenes of Texan boyhood that strike many deep chords. Risible at its most expansive, then, but singularly affecting at its most personal and intimate.

Midnight in Paris (dir. Woody Allen)

At which American audiences finally renewed their love affair with Woody Allen. And indeed who could resist Allen’s completely charming and generous-spirited time-travel comedy, a valentine to Paris, an ode to living in the now? Less loved, Allen’s You Will Meet A Tall Dark Stranger (2010), which got its British release this year, also had its merits, not least a lovely performance from Gemma Jones.

The Future (dir. Miranda July)

A few very inventive and original movies emerged from America this year, among them Miranda July’s The Future, a brilliant meditation on time that made me exclaim an enthralled “Wow!” on two occasions.

Dark Horse (dir. Todd Solondz)

Toning down the misanthropy and the shock value a notch Todd Solondz produced in Dark Horse one of his most involving and resonant films, one that follows its portly protagonist into a very odd liaison - and even further into his even odder fantasy life. Its narration unravelling as the protagonist unravels, Dark Horse takes some wonderfully confounding twists and turns as it progresses, culminating in an exquisite final shot. And few filmmakers can match Solondz’s unnerving ability to capture the sheer awkwardness of human interaction on screen.

Coriolanus (dir. Ralph Fiennes)

And wait a minute ... is that a third British film on the list? Ralph Fiennes’s big ‘n’ brawny adaptation of one of Shakespeare’s least-loved tragedies doesn’t win many points for subtlety. But it's still one of the most memorable Shakespeare adaptations seen in many a year.

Honourable mentions and 2010 releases not seen until this year:

Rabbit Hole, True Grit, Homme Au Bain, A Simple Life, Li and the Poet, Bal, A Screaming Man, Farewell, Animal Kingdom, Potiche

Review of 2011: Theatre - 10 Favourite Productions

2011-12-23T03:33:00.007-07:00

Make of it what you will, there was a hell of a lot of theatre that polarised people this year, and several of those productions seem to have ended up on this list. You didn’t hear many theatre-goers saying that they “quite liked” I Am the Wind or The School for Scandal or the Young Vic Hamlet - and the diversity of responses kept post-show debates lively, both in the Twittersphere and in what used to be known as the real world. The difficulty I had in whittling this list down to just ten shows (note the unseemly amount of "Honourable Mentions") confirms that 2011 was, overall, an excellent theatre year with many a welcome revival, a few strong new plays, and some great Shakes, plus a few inevitable disappointments, of course. And, most memorably perhaps, the work of actors, giving performances of sometimes startling originality and inventiveness. Max Reinhardt: “We can telegraph and telephone and wire pictures across the ocean; we can fly over it. But ... the human being next to us is still as far away as the stars. The actor takes us on this way.”

The Comedy of Errors (Propeller; Sheffield Lyceum)

“Madam, do you have a Devil inside you? …Would you like one?” So enquired Tony Bell’s exceedingly cheeky Dr. Pinch - Robert Duvall’s Apostle via Les Patterson - to a rather startled woman on the third row, having just led the assembled company in a raucous gospel number entitled “He Was Saved!” That sequence was the exhilarating highlight of Propeller’s altogether miraculous version of one of Shakespeare’s creakier comedies, a production that, along with their stunning Richard III (which made my list last year), constituted one of the company’s greatest-ever double-bills. Propeller’s Comedy was the feel-good show of the year for me, exemplifying the particular brand of lyricism and wild inventiveness that characterises the work of our best (fact!) Shakespeare company. What pleasure and insight these guys offer - even when they choose to draw attention to certain audience members’ bald spots. Bonus points to Henry V as well.

A Delicate Balance (Almeida)

Existential angst in a well-appointed drawing-room is something I can’t seem to resist. Especially when we’re talking about Edward Albee’s maniacally convoluted, Henry-James-goes-Pop dialogue being immaculately delivered by a brilliant cast including Penelope Wilton, Imelda Staunton, Tim Pigott-Smith and (intoning my favourite line of the year) Diana Hardcastle. By turns funny, moving and chilling, James Macdonald’s production didn’t delight everyone. But to me it seemed perfectly attuned to the play’s own, very delicate balance between comedy and tragedy, philosophy and bitchery, craziness and calm.

Flare Path (Theatre Royal Haymarket)

Trevor Nunn’s season at Theatre Royal Haymarket disappointed, in the end, but it opened with a gem: a production of Terence Rattigan’s Flare Path that had all the human drama, poignancy and humour that you could wish for. Few would call this WWII drama about a group of RAF pilots, crew and their wives holed up, between raids, in a Lincolnshire hotel one of Rattigan’s finest or most penetrating works. And yet in a year that saw a fair number of productions staged to mark the centenary of the playwright’s birth this is in some ways the one that I recall with the most affection. In a sterling ensemble, Sienna Miller failed to shine, but there were beautiful characterisations elsewhere, especially from Harry Hadden-Paton, James Purefoy and (star of the show) Sheridan Smith who, with Purefoy, shared one of the year’s most touching scenes. A bit of all right, all round.

Anna Christie (Donmar)

“Don’t talk dat vay, Anna!” Look - or, rather, listen - past those accents and you’ll find in Rob Ashford’s atmospheric production as strong and sensitive account of O’Neill’s hoary drama as you could ever hope to see. A strapping Jude Law - as beefy of bicep as of brogue - gave a memorable performance, but the evening belonged to Ruth Wilson, goose-bump-inducingly good in the title role.

Grief (National Theatre, Cottesloe)

Quiet heartbreak in a suburban living room. Its understated tone and measured pace proved a turn-off to many. But I found Mike Leigh’s latest to be one of the most emotionally affecting experiences of the year. (And after the disappointment of his last film Another Year, for me, this came as something of a relief.) As memorably as any other production I saw in 2011, Grief succeeded in putting an emotional state on the stage. There was something about the languid-yet-taut rhythm of this production that I found completely immersive: watching it felt like being placed, ever so gently, into a vice. Superb performances, too, especially from the amazing Lesley Manville, here the beating heart of one of the most humane and tender dramas Leigh has ever produced.

Hamlet! The Musical (Richmond)

"Where else? Where else? Where else? ELSINORE!" Very silly but also very smart, this was one of the happiest nights I had in a theatre in 2011, so happy, in fact, that I went to see the show again three days later. Here's hoping for a 2012 revival. Altogether now: "The question is to be or not to be..."

The Golden Dragon (Arcola)

A (warmly appreciated) gesture against what its director Ramin Gray termed “crawling realism,” Actors Touring Company’s excellent production of Roland Schimmelpfennig's play anatomised economic migration and its resultant exploitations through exciting anti-naturalistic means. But as its cast crossed lines of gender, age and even species to create the diverse protagonists of the establishment of the title, the humanity of Schimmelpfennig's writing - and, ultimately, its emphasis upon theatre as a site of empathy and imaginative transformation - rang as clear as a bell.

The School For Scandal (Barbican)

Too cool for School? It’s a funny thing about Deborah Warner: there’s no director whose ideas seem more questionable, to me, in theory, but whose productions I find so totally thrilling to watch. Approaching Sheridan’s classic comedy through all kinds of self-consciously quirky means - rock and fashion show, a touch or two of Brechtian distanciation left over from her great Mother Courage - Warner’s po-mo mash-up of a production was sometimes heavy-handed but it succeeded in giving the play the shock of the new. And the themes emerged with surprising clarity, helped by great performances from Alan Howard, Leo Bill and John Shrapnel. Torture for those who didn’t respond, apparently, but a deep pleasure for those who did.

Much Ado About Nothing (Globe)

Wa-hey! They say the first time can be a disappointment, but I’m proud and pleased to have - shockingly belatedly, for shame - lost my Globe virginity to Jeremy Herrin’s joyous production of Much Ado About Nothing. Very funny, the production also succeeded in doing justice to the play’s undertow of sadness and rue. With solid work from the cast across the board (sorry, naysayers, but I even liked Paul Hunter's Dogberry), it boasted an especially delightful Benedick in Charles Edwards, while, as Beatrice, the highly-anticipated return of a certain Eve to the London stage proved conclusively that you cannot beat the Best. David and Catherine Who?

Othello (Sheffield Crucible)

Wired! The estimable Dominic West delivered two of my favourite performances of the year: first as the acerbic academic-in-meltdown in Lindsay Posner’s pitch-perfect West End revival of Simon Gray’s Butley, and then as a chillingly hale-and-hearty Iago in Daniel Evans’s Othello in Sheffield, an altogether excellent production in which Desdemona's handkerchief saw alot of exciting action indeed.

Honourable Mentions (in very rough order of preference): Mary Broome (Orange Tree), Butley (Duchess), Eden End (Richmond), Salt, Root and Roe (Trafalgar), The Deep Blue Sea (Chichester), Richard II (Donmar), The Tempest (Cheek by Jowl/Barbican), The Children’s Hour (Comedy), Korczak (Rose Kingston), Bernarda Alba (Union), Journey’s End (Richmond), Richard III (Old Vic), The Village Bike (Royal Court), How To Be Happy (Orange Tree), Beasts and Beauties (Hampstead), The Government Inspector (Young Vic).

Disappointments: Twelfth Night (NT), Cause Célébre (Old Vic), Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead (TRH), The Kitchen (NT), Doctor Faustus (Globe), Driving Miss Daisy (Wyndham's).

Nightmare: I Am the Wind (Young Vic)

Sorry to have missed: London Road (NT)

Yet to see: Matilda (RSC/Cambridge)

Unexpected bonus: Annoying Neil LaBute.

Review of 2011: Music - 10 Favourite Albums

2011-12-19T09:07:00.019-07:00

2011 turned out to be a year in which the majority of my most beloved artists put out an album (or even two). This meant that I didn’t end up making many new musical discoveries this year - and still have many 2011 releases to catch up on (Ryan Adams, M83, St. Vincent, Metronomy, Camille... I'll get to you). But it did offer the very great compensatory pleasure of finding old favourites continuing to surprise, delight and inspire by producing some of their best-ever work. What’s more, in their attention to structure, transitions, pace and song-by-song flow, most of the records featured here prove conclusively that there’s plenty of life in the album-as-art-form yet, despite claims to the contrary. To quote the venerable Mr. Sexsmith: “This ain’t no random shuffle/There’s reason in these rhymes …”

Night of Hunters, Tori Amos

Tides and waves. Fires and storms. A relationship hitting the rocks. A 3,000 year flashback. Epiphanies. Imperatives. Blood by your thorn. A fox, a fire muse, and a constellation show the way. Adapting classical pieces by composers including Schubert, Granados, Bach and Satie and recruiting a select band of collaborators to help realise her vision (including the phenomenonal Apollon Musagete Quartett, currently ripping it up with her on tour every night), Amos’s latest opus of empowerment is a stunning thing: by turns dramatic and delicate, full of grit and grace. One of her finest achievements, it's an exquisite long night’s journey into day - and one that might just have created a few new classical music converts as well. Full album review here. Live review here.

Ashore, June Tabor

Ragged Kingdom, June Tabor and Oysterband

"If you don’t like June Tabor then you should just stop listening to music," advised Elvis Costello. A little over-zealous, perhaps, but 2011 certainly proved to be a rather good year to be a Tabor fan. An appropriately immersive experience, Ashore, Tabor’s brilliant album on maritime themes, requires and deeply rewards the listener’s commitment. The choice of material is superb (a seamless mix of the political and the personal, the ancient and the contemporary, the intimate and the epic), the singing characteristically sublime, and the spacious arrangements so richly evocative that you may feel the need to bundle up in a big cuddly warm jumper every time you put this album on. If I had to pick just one song for the ages it would be the dolorous, windswept take on Cyril Tawney’s “The Oggie Man,” an indelible vision of human transience compressed into a chorus and two crisp verses. But from the stately re-visiting of “Finisterre” to the widescreen 11-minute close of “Across the Wide Ocean,” Les Barker's great song about the Highland Clearances, there are no weak links on this ship. Ditto for Tabor’s long-anticipated second collaboration album with Oysterband, a vibrant reunion that even exceeded the glories of Freedom and Rain (1990) for me. Full reviews here and here.

Claire Denis Film Scores 1996-2009, Tindersticks

Another place to set up home, this one. I wasn’t fortunate enough to see Tindersticks perform live this year but this six-CD collection of their stunning soundtracks for Denis’s films was compensation enough. Full review here.

The People's Key, Bright Eyes

“You got a soul? Use it.” Catchy but contemplative, sketching both tough and redemptive times on the way to the Apocalypse, the songs on The People’s Key are some of the sharpest and most substantial that Conor Oberst has written. The sound is cohesive yet diverse. Check out the thrilling stabby guitar-work in “Jejune Stars,” the heavy chug of “Haile Sellassie,” the steely crawl of “Approximate Sunlight,” the beautiful echoy piano intimacy of “Ladder Song,” and, especially, the utterly gorgeous electro-rock exuberance of “Triple Spiral.” Even the portentous Malick-ish spoken word segments - musings on time, the universe, and the whole damn thing - have grown on me by this stage. I sincerely hope that this isn’t, as has been claimed, the last Bright Eyes album. But if it so proves then Oberst, Mogis and Walcott have gone out on a high with this great offering.

Hard Bargain, Emmylou Harris

The Harrow & the Harvest, Gillian Welch

Three of the most loved and respected artists in contemporary country music (aka the O Brother Sireens) released new albums this year. As usual Alison Krauss’s record with Union Station didn’t get far beyond the “pleasant” box, for me, and wasn’t an album that I felt compelled to return to that often. But Emmylou Harris’s Hard Bargain and Gillian Welch’s The Harrow & the Harvest have continued to absorb and beguile throughout the year. The artists’ approach seems similarly minimalist, with just two musicians accompanying Harris on Hard Bargain and Welch and David Rawlings returning to their patented duo format for The Harrow… after the more expansive sound developed on their recent work. But the results couldn’t be more different: the underrated Hard Bargain turned out to be Harris’s most ambient and fullest-sounding release in some time, its clear-eyed confessions and poignant remembrances cloaked in lovely sonic layers, while The Harrow & the Harvest was quiet and hushed, offering a series of distilled hard-luck tales that combined the mythic and the everyday with consummate ease. Americana classics, both. And two very cool album covers, to boot. Full reviews here and here.

Bon Iver, Bon Iver

“Wake up to your starboard breath”? “Sat down in the soup”? Surely not? As readers of this blog might be aware, I’m a fan of “bad” diction - when it comes to singing, at least. And the fact that I can barely make out a word that Justin Vernon is intoning on Bon Iver - an effect accentuated by the recourse to over-dubbing -only adds to the fascination and beauty of its haunting, gauzy songs to me. A gorgeously atmospheric work; very special. "Towers" is favourite.

Suck It and See, Arctic Monkeys

What’s always set Arctic Monkeys apart from the (many, many) guitar bands who appeared in the noughties is Alex Turner’s particular lyrical genius. (I’d nominate Whatever People Say I Am, That’s What I’m Not [2006] as one of the best-written rock albums ever.) There’s less of that genius on display on Suck It and See, it must be said : recorded in the States (like its predessor, the brawnier Josh Homme-helmed Humbug [2009]) this album bleaches some of the gorgeous Britishness out of Turner’s lyrics and out of the band’s sound which is smoother and slicker here. Still, the stand-out moments - “She’s Thunderstorms,” “Black Treacle,” “Library Pictures,” “Piledriver Waltz,” and “Love is a Laserquest” - convince me that this is a band I’ll always have a soft spot for.

Cinderella's Eyes, Nicola Roberts

A list book-ended by redheads, therefore. A stronger singer might give the surprisingly sparky lyrics the punch they deserve. But for the most part Ms. Roberts acquits herself admirably on this very enjoyable solo debut, an album that contains several of my favourite pop songs of the year. Rhian Jones, of Wears the Trousers, sums up the album's appeal best: “It’s like finding extracts from The Bell Jar slipped inside a copy of Heat.” Cream of the crop: "Gladiator."

Honourable mentions: Don’t Stop Singing (Thea Gilmore), Let England Shake (PJ Harvey), Long Player, Late Bloomer (Ron Sexsmith), American Folk Songbook (Suzy Bogguss), Horses and High Heels (Marianne Faithfull), Walk (Israel Cannan), 50 Words For Snow (Kate Bush). And, from 2010, but not heard until this year Olympia (Bryan Ferry) (oh, “Alphaville”!) and Have One On Me (Joanna Newsom). (With thanks to moviesandsongs365 for finally convincing me on the Newsom front.)

Theatre Review: The Ladykillers (Gielgud)

2011-12-15T03:08:00.001-07:00

Following Joel and Ethan Coen’s fairly disastrous 2004 film remake, it may be considered a daring team that takes on Alexander Mackendrick’s The Ladykillers (1955) again. But writer Graham Linehan (Father Ted, The IT Crowd) and director Sean Foley have proved just such brave men. And their rather ingenious stage version of Mackendrick’s venerable comedy, now in the West End following a successful run at Liverpool Playhouse, yields considerably more entertaining results than did the Coen bros' misguided film.

One of the most beloved and best-known of the Ealing comedies, Mackendrick’s black farce concerns a gang of robbers who, posing as members of a string quintet, rent a room in the subsidence-afflicted King’s Cross abode of an elderly widow, Mrs. Wilberforce, from where they plan to carry out their next job: a raid on a security van. The humour emerges, in the main, from the way in which the genteelly innocent (yet surprisingly tough-minded) Mrs. W becomes involved in their nefarious actions, first as an unwitting accomplice and then as an unwitting foil.

Retaining the outline, structure and time-period of William Rose’s screenplay, Linehan gives the material a few contemporary spins, most of which work very well. Character histories are amusingly fleshed out - the gang now includes a cross-dresser and a pill-popper amongst their number - while the classic scene in which Mrs. Wilberforce’s friends descend on the house expecting a recital is cleverly re-imagined as a parody of “avant-garde” composition.

But what’s more surprising are the elements of inventive expressionist dash that Foley’s direction brings to the evening. Michael Taylor’s superb design is a star in itself, constructing the house as a lop-sided, tilting creation, its contents set a-quiver as trains pass by. And in a brilliant sequence that elicited a round of applause, the heist itself plays out with model trains and cars whizzing across the wall of the building. (Now, that’s the way to do driving on stage, Driving Miss Daisy people!)

Such effects would be wasted without the human element, though. And the performances are all wonderful. Peter Capaldi brings gleaming-eyed glee to the Alec Guinness role as the smugly self-satisfied and increasingly unhinged would-be criminal mastermind. Clive Rowe is adorable as the ex-boxer “One-Round,” the most dim-witted but also the most good-hearted of the group, who, in this version, reveals untapped musical potential, while Ben Miller’s volatile, old-lady-hating Romanian, James Fleet’s befuddled Major and Stephen Wight’s spiv are equally enjoyable. And as Mrs. Wilberforce the great Marcia Warren flutes, flutters and fusses beguilingly, while finally suggesting as steely a moral resolve as did Katie Johnson (whom she sometimes resembles) in the 1955 film.

The endless series of running gags and slapstick moments occasionally pall, and the evening loses is spark a little in the prolonged no-honour-amongst-thieves climax, though there are some great touches even here, especially the very memorable manner in which Rowe and Capaldi’s characters meet their fates. Super-slick but with enough eccentric elements to keep you on your toes, Foley’s production exudes assurance. It’s terrific fun.

The production runs for 2 hours 15 minutes and is booking until 14th April 2012. Website here.

Theatre Review: The Importance of Being Earnest - A New Musical (Riverside Studios)

2011-12-15T03:07:00.002-07:00

Arriving so soon after the Rose Theatre’s production, another version of The Importance of Being Earnest may not seem an especially attractive proposition, despite the deep delight that Wilde’s classic comedy is still able to generate. But Hammersmith’s Riverside Studios are presenting an Earnest with a difference: a musicalisation of the play that boasts intriguing novelty-value casting, with Gyles Brandreth - actor, author, presenter and former Tory MP - taking on the role of Lady Bracknell. Directed by the versatile Iqbal Khan, attractively designed by Samal Black, and staged in the cosy confines of Riverside’s Studio 3, the production proves most enjoyable, and strong enough to engage even those viewers who may have felt that they’d had their fill of this particular play for a while.

Despite updating the action to the 1920s, a move that widens the piece's scope in terms of choreography and musical styles, Douglas Livingstone’s book sticks closely to the content and structure of Wilde’s play, offering no major changes or revisionist elements. This, coupled with the melodious but relatively reserved style of Adam McGuinness and Zia Moranne’s piano-centred score, initially makes the evening seem a little tame. Yet after a solid but somewhat sedate opening, in which Livingstone’s lyrics aren’t always quite Wilde enough, the production kicks into gear in its second half, which is a pure and unadulterated pleasure. Here, responding to the escalating comic complications of the plot, the tunes are stronger and the lyrics more biting and artful, with hilarious duets for those tentative would-be paramours Miss Prism (Susie Blake) and Dr. Chasuble (Edward Petherbridge), and for Cecily (Flora Spencer-Longhurst) and Gwendolyn (Anya Murphy) during their face-off over tea, as well as a nicely-judged nod to the play’s (much-debated) queer subtext in Algernon (Colin Ryan) and Jack (Mark Edel-Hunt)’s bachelor-bromance vaudeville number “On the Spree.”

The performances are thoroughly pleasing, too, with spot-on turns from Edel-Hunt as a very likeable Jack, and from Ryan as a louche Algernon. The chaps are well matched by Anya Murphy’s supremely pert Gwendolen, and by Flora Spencer-Longhurst, glowing and slightly gaga as Cecily. There’s characteristically fine support from veterans Blake and Peterbridge, and wry work from the production’s Musical Director, Stefan Bednarczyk, as the butlers Lane and Merriman. And let’s not forget Brandreth’s striking Queen Mary-modelled Lady Bracknell, a decidedly unfeminine creation with an especially fine line in imperious reactions, and a truly delicious delivery on the sly xenophobe’s ode to avarice “In the Funds.” All in all, a delight.

The production runs for 2 hours 10 minutes and is booking until 31st December. Further information here.

5 Christmas Films

2011-12-12T03:39:00.003-07:00

Five to watch within the next couple of weeks. Which films will make your list?

Home Alone (Columbus, 1990)
“This is my house - I have to defend it.” Vigilantism and family values, John Hughes-style. A childhood obsession, this one, and still capable of inspiring warm and fuzzy feelings.

Gremlins (Dante, 1984)
“And that’s how I found out there wasn’t a Santa Claus…”

Dans Paris (Honoré 2006)

I love grumpy père Guy Marchand dragging a Christmas tree through the Paris streets and returning home to find Romain Duris having his 80s pop moment. Screen with Honoré's equally adorable wintry musical Les Chansons d'amour (2007) for maximum festive enjoyment.

Joyeux Noël (Carion, 2005)

Christian Carion’s sincere and touching film about the Christmas truce.

It’s A Wonderful Life (Capra, 1946)

Must we? Oh, go on then.

Theatre Review: Driving Miss Daisy (Wyndham's)

2011-12-12T03:22:00.002-07:00

Sometimes, material that struck you as believable and poignant on film can end up seeming broad, cardboard and obvious on stage. This may sound like something of a contradictory statement after my remarks about The Deep Blue Sea in the previous review, but it’s one that I stand by in relation to the unhappy experience that was Calendar Girls and also - to a lesser yet perhaps more painful extent - in relation to David Esbjornson’s production of Driving Miss Daisy which ends its successful run at Wyndham’s next week.

Alfred Uhry’s 1987 play - which charts the gradual growth into closeness of an elderly Jewish woman and her African-American chauffeur Hoke over almost three decades in Atlanta, Georgia - was made into a fine film by Bruce Beresford in 1989 with Jessica Tandy, Morgan Freeman and Dan Aykroyd in the lead roles. Beresford’s is pretty much an ideal play-to-film transposition it seems to me (the script was written by Uhry himself), skilfully “opened out” with new scenes and additional characters that add texture and nuance, and a very touching relationship, delicately underplayed, at its centre. But on stage - and despite the presences of Vanessa Redgrave and James Earl Jones - the piece seems more inconsequential and considerably less affecting.

It’s not just the way that the driving’s handled in Esbjornson’s production that’s the problem - though the sight of the two actors sitting on a bench and a chair as Jones rotates a steering wheel attached to a pole can’t exactly be said to help matters. It’s more that the social context seems much sketchier here, and also that a level of hamminess in the performances sometimes exposes the faker elements in the material.

Vanessa Redgrave - still so often a magnetic presence and so very good in the upcoming Coriolanus - doesn’t seem completely in her element in this role. She communicates Daisy’s cantankerousness amusingly enough, and tries out a few typically odd, inventive things, including a bizarre bit of Isadora-esque movement as the punch-line to the scene in which Daisy convinces herself that Hoke's been stealing. But such bits of business don’t seem precisely in character. Elsewhere, she tends to either rattle through the lines at breakneck speed - one of the loveliest passages, Miss Daisy’s recollection of the first time that she saw the ocean, is all but thrown away - or else drawls them out affectedly: “A’hm naht pre-edge-jerdiced.” (Her wavering Southern accent recalls the one she used to much greater effect in her startling turn as Miss Amelia in The Ballad of the Sad Café [1991].) James Earl Jones’s performance is all about The Voice, and although he has some effective moments, he indulges in a tad too much bellowing and cackling. And Boyd Gaines as Daisy’s son Boolie also strikes over-effusive notes. A few scenes - Hoke’s confession of his illiteracy; the Alzheimer’s-afflicted Miss Daisy finally speaking the truth about what Hoke means to her - resonate. But overall Esbjornson’s production offers less of a sense of involvement in characters and relationships than it does the spectacle of observing icons, acting. A compliant - or complacent? - mood of reverence (including applause between the scene changes) fills the auditorium.

The production runs for 1 hour 30 minutes, until December 17th.

Film Review: The Deep Blue Sea (Davies, 2011)

2011-12-05T03:52:00.007-07:00

Terence Rattigan’s centenary has been commemorated by several major stagings of the playwright’s work this year - including London revivals of Flare Path and Cause Celebre, and an excellent season at Chichester which presented The Deep Blue Sea and The Browning Version alongside new plays inspired by Rattigan’s life and work. Apart from a series of films and TV adaptations screened at BFI Southbank, cinema has been slower to celebrate Rattigan’s achievements, however, despite his close association with the medium throughout the 1940s and 50s.

So the news that Terence Davies would be making his first fiction feature in eleven years with an adaptation of The Deep Blue Sea starring Rachel Weisz, Tom Hiddleston and Simon Russell Beale in the lead roles was a particular cause for celebration, especially for those of us who admire Rattigan and Davies just about equally. Unfortunately, though, and despite some striking and affecting individual moments, the meeting of Terry and Terry hasn’t quite resulted in the perfect marriage that might have been anticipated.

Along with The Browning Version and The Winslow Boy, The Deep Blue Sea is recognised as Rattigan’s most flawlessly-constructed work - the epitome of the “well-made play,” indeed - its water-tight three act structure presenting the final few hours in the affair between Hester Collyer and her younger ex-RAF lover Freddie as they play out in a shabby London boarding house.

Resisting the idea of “just photographing the play,” Davies has - unsurprisingly and justifiably - transformed that structure, developing a non-linear narrative that presents episodes from Hester’s past with Freddie (Hiddleston) and her husband William (Russell Beale) in counterpoint with her present situation, and that clearly reflects Davies’s own abiding concern with the workings of memory. (Unlike the play, the film presents the events entirely from Hester’s point-of-view.) Always strong on ambience, Davies evokes the drear of 1950s London with the feeling with which he conjured 50s Liverpool in Distant Voices, Still Lives (1988) and The Long Day Closes (1992), Florian Hoffmeister’s misty, soft-focus cinematography and James Merifield's production design sustaining a distinctive - though not precisely pleasurable - oppressive mood. The opening is masterly: a nine-minute sequence scored to Samuel Barber’s gorgeously intense Violin Concerto that pans from the Ladbroke Grove street up the front of the boarding house to find Hester in the throes of her suicide attempt. Davies-land (milk bottles on the doorstep, sounds of “the wireless”) and Rattigan-land form a perfect synthesis here. And the ending - a beautifully-judged reverse of this sequence - is similarly strong.

It’s in the middle that things get a little sticky, at times. For it’s hard not to conclude that, in re-jigging the play’s structure, Davies has removed the material’s dramatic motor. The film drifts and dribbles, tension (and humour) dissipating in sequences that sometimes feel stilted and look posed. And the new scenes and characters that Davies has devised don’t, for the most part, seem like improvements upon those he’s excised. Especially ill-advised is a bogus early sequence - striving for bitchy wit and missing the target - that finds Hester facing off with her monstrous mummy-in-law (Barbara Jefford), the latter helpfully underlining the societal forces that Hester is up against when she intones “Beware of passion... It always leads to something ugly.” (The first part of that quote has become the film’s tagline.) As Hester’s parson pater the great Oliver Ford Davies is wasted in a similarly superfluous scene in which Hester seeks his counsel (in church! Wouldn’t he grant her an audience at home?) only to be rebuffed. Such moments seem, for Davies, atypically crass ways of ensuring audience sympathy with Hester, and emphasising the rebelliousness of her actions.

Elsewhere, the director’s movie-ardour leads him into a few unfortunate indulgences too, including a Blitz flashback that seems to express nothing more than the filmmaker’s pleasure at devising an elaborate tracking shot, and a Brief Encounter homage for Hester’s second suicide attempt. (It might have been more fun if Davies had had Hester and Freddie duck into an illicit matinee at one point - to watch Alec and Laura ducking into their illicit matinee in Brief Encounter, perhaps?)

There's a crucial piece of miscasting, too, I'd argue. Weisz's commitment to the role is evident in every scene, and she acquits herself admirably throughout. But even in her strongest moments here (such as a great final scene) her performance never completely transcends the fact that she seems about ten years too young for the role, an issue that, I think, does diminish our sense of Hester's transgressiveness in falling for Freddie in the first place. (“She looks younger than he does,” mused my companion at one point.) And the re-ordering of the scenes impacts upon the arc of the character: as Davies has re-arranged the material, Hester becomes more hysterical when Freddie storms out for the evening than she does when he announces that he’s leaving her for good.

Even though he’s been directed to overdo Freddie’s RAF-slang and his belligerence (especially in an over-pitched argument scene set in an art gallery), the engaging Hiddleston comes through with a good performance. Two pub singalong scenes - quintessential Davies moments, of course - turn out to be two of the finest innovations here, adding more to our sense of Freddie and Hester’s relationship than most of the new dialogue does.

And, playing William the cuckold, it’s great to see Simon Russell Beale in a decent screen role for once. Hester and William's scenes here may lack the deep sense of complicity and history that other actors have brought to them, but Russell Beale conveys William’s predicament with touching understatement. And Davies succeeds in bringing out the poignancy of this triangle, made up of three protagonists who all desire different kinds of love.

But apart from Harry Hadden-Paton, who’s likeable in an expanded role as Freddie’s friend Jackie Jackson, the supporting roles feel somewhat mismanaged. As Miller, Karl Johnson suffers the most from the cuts, his pivotal role - which, according to Davies, “no-one is convinced by” - reduced to a bit of disgruntled comic business. Ann Mitchell portrays the grimmest Mrs. Elton ever seen before being transformed into a sentimentalised salt-of-the-earth font-of-wisdom towards the end, replacing Miller as the person to shift Hester’s perspective on her situation with the pearl: “Suicide? No-one’s worth it.” (Now how about that as the movie’s tag-line?)

Davies’s two previous adaptations - the underrated The Neon Bible (1995) and the great The House of Mirth (2000) - seemed like pretty seamless, dynamic mergings of his highly distinctive sensibility and those of the creators of the novels. Here, in contrast, the director’s admirable but sometimes heavy-handed drive to cinematise Rattigan’s material proves less successful overall. There are, to be sure, many elements to admire in Davies’s Deep Blue Sea. But along the way a level of intensity seems to have gone missing.

Theatre Review: Beasts and Beauties (Hampstead Theatre)

2011-12-05T03:28:00.003-07:00

Following its highly successful revival last year, Melly Still’s Beasts and Beauties once again takes up residence as the Hampstead’s Christmas show. It’s a most welcome return for this dark and delectable adaptation of a selection of folk and fairytales - as well as a welcome return to theatre of the imagination at a venue whose programming has been reliant upon fact-based material this season. In its new incarnation, Beasts and Beauties has been shorn of two tales: it now comprises six rather than eight pieces, and benefits from the streamlining. Apart from an enjoyably (and appropriately) modish take on “The Emperor’s New Clothes” - which presents the hero as a hilariously strutting and posing fashionista surrounded by suited flunkies - Still and her co-writers (Tim Supple and Carol Ann Duffy) have resisted the temptation to update the stories excessively. Instead, they’ve trusted the content of the tales to resonate with a contemporary audience, and dramatised them through thrillingly theatrical means that blend diverse elements - song, shadow-play, drawing, puppetry and mime - into a cohesive and dynamic whole.

There’s female curiosity and consequent marital terror in the opening “Bluebeard” (which features one sequence so chilling that the small child behind us burst into tears); superb slapstick, suggestive butter-churning and satisfying gender politics in “The Husband Who Was to Mind the House for the Day”; manic anthropomorphising in “Toby and the Wolf”; and a frightening, funny and ultimately very touching take on “Beauty and the Beast.” The most striking and surprising of the six pieces might be “The Juniper Tree,” though, a stunning adaptation of a German tale that boldly touches upon infanticide and cannibalism before reaching its hard-won redemptive close.

The line between narrator and participant is rendered marvellously fluid in Still’s production, and the seven-strong cast - Justin Avoth, Michelle Bonnard, Jake Harders, Rhiannon Harper-Rafferty, Jack Tarlton, Jason Thorpe and Kelly Williams - work brilliantly together, demonstrating superb physical and vocal dexterity as they vividly create characters animal and human (or somewhere in between). Williams is especially effective as she trades the winsomeness of Beauty for the cleaver-wielding frenzy of the stepmother-from-hell in “The Juniper Tree,” unleashing some hilarious, Matrix-esque slow-mo moves as a disgruntled colt along the way, while Tarlton’s scary-then-sympathetic Beast and Thorpe’s dopey dog Toby are among the other stand-out characterisations. But this is the kind of show in which everyone gets their chance to shine, and its inclusive spirit is entirely winning. Still and her collaborators dramatise these tales with all the playfulness, heart and theatrical inventiveness that you could wish for, resulting in what is surely one of the richest and most entertaining family shows to be seen in London this season.

The production runs for 2 hours 15 minutes and is booking until 7 January. Further information at the Hampstead Theatre website.

Theatre Review: Calendar Girls (touring)

2011-12-05T03:28:00.002-07:00

“The global phenomenon is back for the very last time!” trumpets the publicity material for the current tour of Calendar Girls. But whether you consider this news to be a great shame or a blessed relief will be very much down to taste.

The story that inspired Calendar Girls - that of the group of Yorkshire Women’s Institute ladies who stripped off for a charity calendar that’s now raised more than £3 million - needs no detailed introduction at this juncture. Fashioned from his own screenplay for Nigel Cole’s 2003 film, Tim Firth’s stage adaptation has enjoyed a successful West End run and sell-out national tours in the last few years. Yet despite the evident audience good-will that’s built up around the show, the stage version struggles to replicate the film’s success at an artistic level. Rather, Firth’s adaptation seems to have drained most of the poignancy and grace notes out of the material, resulting in a show that at times veers perilously close to Carry On Calendar Girls in tone.

As in its previous incarnations, the show, directed by (former cast member) Jack Ryder from Hamish McColl’s original production, benefits from strong casting, with Lynda Bellingham and Debbie Chazen reprising their roles as Chris and Ruth, Jennifer Ellison switching roles from Celia to Cora, and Rula Lenska, Jan Harvey, Ruth Madoc and June Watson now joining the team.

For some of the cast, panto season seems to have come early. Speaking in deep tones, Madoc hams outrageously as the stickler WI leader Marie, while Bellingham plays to the hilt Chris’s good-hearted cheekiness. As Jessie, the oldest member of the group, June Watson gets the best piece of writing in the play - a monologue on age - perhaps to compensate for the fact that the rest of her dialogue is simply a series of quips and rejoinders of the “No front bottoms!” variety. Channelling Joanna Lumley as Patsy Stone, and using her hair as a prop when the dialogue lets her down, Rula Lenska has her stylish moments as Celia, while Debbie Chazen brings a few endearing touches to the unassertive Ruth, but ultimately can do little with a role that wrests laughs by such comic “business” as having her appear in a rabbit costume. As Annie, whose husband John’s death from cancer prompts the women to do the calendar, Jan Harvey delivers the least showy performance, but her scenes with John (an underused Joe McGann) are too brief to generate much emotional impact.

Indeed, for a piece that's based on a true story, it’s surprising just how many details here strike false notes. The back-stories that Firth has devised for the characters - a single mother here, a straying hubby there - have little weight, and the characters’ dilemmas tend to be resolved in the most contrived and obvious of manners. This is the kind of production in which absolutely everything is on the surface. Tensions arise on cue, followed by hasty reconciliations. Plaintive piano music underscores the “poignant” moments.

The achievements of the real-life Calendar Girls certainly deserve celebrating, and, judging by the vocal response of much of the audience, Calendar Girls is a show that clearly makes a great deal of people very happy indeed. But those anticipating a somewhat less broad approach may find it a disappointing experience overall.

Further information on tour dates and venues here.

Reviewed for British Theatre Guide.

Film Review: The Tree (Bertuccelli, 2010)

2011-12-03T03:23:00.002-07:00

In The Tree (2010), Charlotte Gainsbourg plays Dawn, an Anglo-Frenchwoman living with her Australian husband Peter (Aden Young) and their four children - teen Tim (Christian Byers) , 10-year-old Lou (Tom Russell), toddler Charlie (Gabriel Gotting) and eight-year-old Simone (Morgana Davies)- in the Queensland outback. Peter’s sudden death throws the family into disorder and grief, and is followed shortly thereafter by Simone's announcement that she’s able to communicate with her father through the leaves of the large tree that’s next to the family’s house.

Adapted from a novel by Judy Pascoe, Julie Bertuccelli’s second feature following the superb Since Otar Left (2003) is an equally distinctive - though tonally very different - family drama. Despite the premise, symbolic and spiritual resonances are downplayed; instead, Bertuccelli locates the substance and texture of the movie in the marvellously messy and realistic scenes depicting the family’s daily life. The Australian landscapes are filmed expressively, and the performances that the director gets from her cast are superb across the board. Davies’s angelic looks belie a wonderfully tough-minded and un-cutesy portrayal of the stubborn Simone, and her scenes with Russell, Gotting and Byers convey sibling tensions and complicities with total naturalness and believability. Marton Csokas, so very bad in Peter Hall’s Twelfth Night production at the National Theatre earlier this year, is easy and charming as the new man who (to Simone’s chagrin) enters Dawn’s life. And, as Dawn, Gainsbourg brings her particular candour and emotional transparency to the screen. Some developments in the final third feel schematic, but the movie has built up so much good will - and such a close rapport with its characters - by this stage that the elements of contrivance don’t seem to matter very much. Highly recommended.

Theatre Review: Reasons To Be Pretty (Almeida)

2011-11-23T06:30:00.003-07:00

If one thing’s for sure it’s that London Theatreland loves and loves to hate Neil LaBute in just about equal measure. The mere mention of the writer/director’s name - and the misanthropy, misogyny and sometimes shallow provocations associated with his films and plays - is enough to raise the hackles of some. But LaBute clearly has major fans on this side of the pond, judging by the frequency with which his work is staged here. Just opened at the Almeida, Reasons To Be Pretty is the third LaBute play to be seen in London this year, following the Pleasance's revival of his super-controversial 9/11 drama The Mercy Seat and the West End premiere of In A Forest, Dark and Deep, an exceedingly poor and predictable two-hander whose most memorable feature turned out to be the excellent selection of rock songs that rattled the auditorium before the performance proper began.

Though not without its problems, Reasons To Be Pretty is certainly a much more substantial piece of work than was In A Forest... With a title that tips its hat to the Hole song “Reasons to be Beautiful,” the play, first staged in New York in 2008, concludes LaBute’s loose trilogy on contemporary perceptions of beauty, a saga that he began ten years ago with The Shape of Things and continued in 2004 with Fat Pig. The focus this time is on two couples: Greg (Tom Burke) and Steph (Siân Brooke) and Carly (Billie Piper) and Kent (Kieran Bew), and the fall-out from Greg’s observation that, unlike that of a new work colleague, Steph’s face is just “regular.” That comment, reported to Steph by Carly, becomes the catalyst for a breach between Steph and Greg, while Kent pursues an affair with said work colleague, gradually arousing the suspicions of his pregnant wife.

A seasoned director of LaBute’s work, Michael Attenborough delivers a crisp, clear production here, with the snappy scenes playing out on a neat revolving trailer set by Soutra Gilmore and punctuated by lovely blasts of Queen. Proceedings start out shrill - with a bedroom barney so ostentatiously attention-grabbing that you may find yourself switching off in protest - but get subtler as the drama progresses. The tone is, ultimately, less acrid than that of much of LaBute’s output, with some surprising swerves into tenderness in the second half. If a certain shallowness and obviousness still lies at the heart of the material it may be due to LaBute’s tendency to put generalisations about male and female behaviour into the mouths of his characters (“I don’t know why God had to make it so hard to trust you guys!” wails Carly at one point) and pass them off as rude truths.

Though the play feels a little under-populated, the performances that Attenborough has elicited from his quartet are mostly winning. Tom Burke charts Greg’s growth in awareness and conscience with compelling understatement. Playing an archetypal LaBute male - a smugly self-satisfied dumbass and perennial jock - Kieran Bew comes through with a vital, funny, lewd caricature. But Billie Piper delivers the most surprising performance of the evening, managing to quietly turn her security-guard Carly - variously perky, vulnerable and shrewd - into the heroine of the play. Piper's scenes with Burke were the highlights of the production for me, tracing a compelling arc from hostility to complicity that I found far more affecting than the trajectory of Greg and Steph’s relationship.

I must admit to not enjoying Siân Brooke as Steph so much. Thought and hard work have clearly gone into the performance, but Brooke is so full-on in some scenes - and lays so heavily and affectedly into her Yank twang - that she’s an off-putting presence most of the time. It doesn’t help that Steph seems, in some ways, the most poorly-conceived role of the four, a part that’s overly reliant upon undistinguished profanity masquerading as devastating invective, and that’s also the subject of LaBute’s sickliest assumption: that a woman’s self-esteem is entirely contingent upon the way in which a man views her. (What the play seems to lack - and might, I think, benefit from - is a strong scene between Steph and Carly that gives us some perspective on their relationship and perhaps another perspective on Steph as well.)

In spite of this, Attenborough’s production amounts, overall, to an entertaining and enjoyable evening. LaBute fans will of course need no encouragement at all to check out the writer’s latest dispatch from the sex war. But even those who may have felt that they’d had their fill of LaBute should find some very good reasons to enjoy Reasons To Be Pretty.

The production runs for 2 hours 10 minutes and is booking until 14th January. Further information at the Almeida website.

Theatre Review: Salt, Root and Roe (Trafalgar Studios)

2011-11-21T03:09:00.001-07:00

Hamish Pirie’s production of Tim Price’s new play opens the second Donmar at Trafalgar Studios season: a twelve-week residency showcasing the work of the Donmar’s Assistant Directors. Poetic, strange and singular (though The Winter Guest [1995] and Ladies in Lavender [2004] might cross your mind at various points as you watch), Price’s play is a rather lovely thing. And, pitched between domestic realism and dreamscape, Pirie’s production does it full justice. It might have been titled Two Sisters: the focus is on the strong bond between two elderly twins, Iola (Anna Calder-Marshall) and Anest (Anna Carteret), who live in a run-down cottage on the north coast of Pembrokeshire. Iola is an Alzheimer’s sufferer who’s been cared for by Anest for a number of years, a situation that has become increasingly difficult due to Iola’s violent outbursts. A letter suggesting a suicide pact between the pair prompts the arrival of Anest’s daughter Menna (Imogen Stubbs) to the cottage, and the drama focuses upon the interactions between the three women.

Chloe Lamford’s clever womb-ish design and Anna Watson’s lighting bring warmth and atmosphere to a play that combines the mythic and the mundane with ease. Throughout, small incidents are made to vibrate with profound emotion, their resonance accentuated by the intimacy of the space. A mother reaches out to touch the back of her bending daughter. A confused woman’s distress is calmed by the singing of a folk song. An awkward seaside picnic gives way to an elating game of hopscotch. In a moment that may generate a special thrill for some audience members, a mobile phone meets the fate it deserves: boiled in a teapot.

The eccentricities feel honest, earned. And they’re given depth and believability by the actresses. Stubbs sketches Menna’s insecurities with skill, but the evening belongs to Carteret and Calder-Marshall, who deliver as remarkable a pair of performances as you can currently see on a London stage. Sometimes it seems that every new play involving elderly characters (and there aren’t that many really, are there?) must feature an Alzheimer’s sufferer among its number, but Calder-Marshall’s heart-rending performance, moving from warmth to childishness, confusion to anger, takes its place as one of the most realistic depictions of the disease that I’ve ever seen. And Carteret conveys both the selflessness and the frustration of the care-giver just as movingly. There’s nothing even remotely modish about Salt, Root and Roe, and that’s what’s so bracing about it: it’s a deeply humane and touching piece that marks both Price and Pirie out as talents to watch.

One complaint: Roger Evans’s role as the local policeman (and, briefly, the twins’ father) seems an afterthought, and his encounters with Stubbs’s character lack the credence and complexity of the women’s scenes. Mostly, the actor seems to have been employed to do the production’s between-scenes heavy lifting. I was put in mind of Duncan Preston’s remark in Acorn Antiques: The Musical as his disgruntled actor surveyed a chunky-looking bit of scenery that he was expected to shift: “I trained at RADA, not Pickfords.”

The production runs for 1 hour 40 minutes without interval and is booking until 3rd December. Further information here.

Film Review: Weekend (Haigh, 2011)

2011-11-21T03:00:00.001-07:00

Beautifully observed characters, nuanced performances, shrewd writing and unobtrusive style are some of the features of Andrew Haigh’s wonderful Weekend (2011), which charts the relationship between two young men, Russell (Tom Cullen) and Glen (Chris New), who meet in a Nottingham bar and spend two days - before Glen’s departure to the States to study - getting to know each other. Haigh’s second feature, following the documentary, Greek Pete (2009), is a work of remarkable confidence, intelligence and intimacy, and one that feels all of a piece - even the font in which the film’s title appears on the screen is somehow reassuring.

Equal parts talky and tactile (a few sequences demonstrate an Ozon-esque sensitivity to filming the body), Weekend’s closet cousins would appear to be Richard Linklater’s Before Sunrise (1995) and Before Sunset (2004). And it may be the movie’s fate to be viewed as a “gay variant” on those films. But the naturalism and believability of Weekend ultimately surpasses that of both of Linklater’s movies, in my view. As the combative Glen and the quieter, more circumspect Russell connect, slowly opening up and sharing, testing each other’s tastes and sensibility, the movie brilliantly conveys the variously frustrating and exhilarating business of getting to know a new person. Small moments suggest wider resonances, and as the two protagonists get to know each other we feel that we’re getting to know them, too, and modifying and changing our judgements. There’s a wonderful complexity to the characterisation here: we’re allowed to perceive Russell and Glen as strong and vulnerable, honest and self-deluding, open and self-absorbed, by turns.

Written, directed and performed from observation (in a way that Brokeback Mountain [2006], say, so very clearly wasn’t, to me) scene after scene here includes recognisable, resonant details, from morning-after etiquette to whether or not to include an “x” in a text message. But nothing feels forced or stressed. Haigh’s funny, sharp, insightful and soulful movie is one of the strongest contemporary-set British films in years - the finest since Michael Winterbottom’s Wonderland (1999), perhaps. In sum, a great pleasure. More, please.

Theatre Review: Next Time I’ll Sing To You (Orange Tree Theatre)

2011-11-12T03:26:00.001-07:00

“I’m not going to bandy existentialism with you!” proclaims one character to another in James Saunders’s Next Time I’ll Sing to You. Unfortunately, bandying existentialism is just what the protagonists of Saunders’s play spend too much time of their time doing. Saunders’s 1963 work was the first play that the Orange Tree’s artistic director Sam Walters ever directed. That and the playwright’s long association with the Orange Tree must explain the appearance of Next Time I’ll Sing to You in the theatre’s 40th anniversary line-up. If only the play itself was up to scratch. Based on the true story of Alexander James Mason, known as the hermit of Great Canfield, the piece is structured as an “investigation” into Mason’s life and his self-imposed ostracism undertaken each evening by four characters - Rudge (Aden Gillett), Meff (Roger Parkins), Dust (Brendan Patricks) and Lizzie (Holly Elmes) - as a self-reflexive inquiry into “the purpose of existence.”

There’s promise in the premise but the spirits of Pirandello and Beckett loom much too largely in Saunders’s text, in which human interest is swamped by tedious philosophical wittering, bad jokes and endless meta-theatrical commentary. (“You’re holding up the flow of the action.” “I didn’t know there was any.” Ho ho.) Gales of knowing laughter greeted every other utterance on Press Night, but I found myself stifling groans. Anthony Clark’s production boasts committed performances from the cast - with especially good work from Gillett and from Jamie Newall as the Hermit. But their best efforts can’t save this flimsy exercise. It’s billed as “startling and innovative.” Pretentious and derivative would be closer to the mark.

The production runs for 2 hours 10 minutes and is booking until 10 December. Further information at the Orange Tree website.

Theatre Review: Propeller's Henry V (Yvonne Arnaud Theatre, Guildford)

2011-11-11T06:22:00.002-07:00

As readers of this blog might be aware, Ed Hall’s Propeller have been responsible for some of the theatre productions that I’ve cherished the most over the past several years, and I’ve travelled far and wide (well, only as far as Guildford, Oxford and Sheffield, actually) to see their work. (See reviews of The Merchant of Venice here, and Richard III and The Comedy of Errors here, here, and here.) The company’s much anticipated 2011/12 tour finds them revisiting two plays that they’ve previously staged in new, recast productions. First up is Henry V, which opened at Guildford’s Yvonne Arnaud Theatre this week, and which was, in fact, the very first play that Hall and company presented back in 1997. (It’s joined in rep by The Winter’s Tale in the New Year.)

With its opening appeals to the audience’s imagination, Henry V seems, in many ways, the ideal play for Propeller, a company defined in part by its inclusive, participatory approach to Shakespeare’s drama. But for me the new production, while boasting some great moments and wonderful details, doesn’t quite achieve the breathtaking inventiveness and richness of texture that’s distinguished their very best work.

First performed in 1599, Henry V is of course one of the history plays that’s proved most enduring in its appeal, and also one of the most adaptable to different historical moments. And our view of its protagonist has shifted more drastically, perhaps, than that of any other Shakespeare character, with Henry moving in the public imagination from hero to war criminal. Made with the encouragement of the British government, Laurence Olivier’s 1944 film played up the play’s rabble-rousing nationalism to create an overt piece of WW2 propaganda that erased any moments in the play that presented Henry negatively. Forty-five years later, Kenneth Branagh’s film approached the play through the prism of Vietnam and the Falklands War, restoring most of the scenes cut by Olivier, but - some critics argued - ultimately endorsing a conservative view of the material that jarred with an apparent “anti-war” stance. Opening in 2003, Nicholas Hytner’s production at the National went full-tilt for Iraq war parallels, with Adrian Lester’s Henry a steely operator who dispatched friend and foe alike with cold efficiency on his route to the conquest of France. In Hytner’s production the orders and threats cut by Olivier weren’t just restored; in a couple of cases, their outcomes were presented on-stage, with Henry himself dispatching his old mucker Bardolph with a bullet to the skull.

Characteristically, Propeller’s approach is less specific and more eccentric than these earlier versions. Hall and his collaborators are masters at creating vivid, often surprising worlds on stage, worlds that work equally as literal spaces and potent metaphors, as their penitentiary-set Merchant and asylum-cum-morgue-set Richard III attested. Michael Pavelka’s design here appears to take the “unworthy scaffold” of the opening Chorus to suggest scaffolding and variously evokes bunker and barracks, parade ground and gym. The opening moments are glorious: the actors, in combat fatigues, take to the stage singing The Pogues's “A Pair of Brown Eyes,” discover a crown in a trunk, launch into the first Chorus, and so begin the play.

Other moments are equally striking, in inimitable Propeller style: the transition to Eastcheap - accomplished with an acoustic singalonga “London Calling” - is superb, while the English-learning scene finds Karl Davies’s wonderful Katherine reclining in a bath-tub as she’s tutored by Chris Myles’s hilariously dead-pan Alice. There seem to be some missed opportunitites for invention, though, while the attempts at Richard III-esque gross-out gore - though justifiable on the grounds of History Play continuity - come off as less effective Richard rehashes rather than dynamic parts of the whole.

Still, the production boasts fine performances from an ensemble made up equally of Propeller newbies and returnees. There’s especially good work from Gunnar Cauthery as a firebrand Dauphin, from Vince Leigh as a vigorous Pistol, and from the expert Robert Hands as Ely and the Constable of France. As a cackling Mistress Quickly Tony Bell - last seen leaving The Comedy of Errors with a sparkler in the sphincter - gets an entrance here that's as memorable as his exit was there; he’s so good that it’s a shame that the part has been cut, and with it, unfortunately, the report of Falstaff’s death and some of the essential context of Henry’s past. (Bell is equally enjoyable as a hearty, leek-brandishing Fluellen, though.)

About Dugald Bruce-Lockhart’s Henry I’m somewhat unsure: often the actor falls back on an odd singsongy delivery that feels affected; the eve-of-Agincourt soliloquy is taken a tad too fast for my liking; and the Band of Brothers speech a bit too casually. But he’s strong in the "tennis balls" scene and on “Once more unto the breach,” touching when conveying Henry’s pain at the traitors’ betrayal and expressing his shame about how his father secured the crown, convincingly fervent as a God-botherer, and he proves his comic chops in the closing encounter with Katherine. (Although it might be argued that this scene is stolen by Mr. Myles’s reactions.) Though broadly speaking a sympathetic portrayal, what’s admirable about the performance - and indeed the production - is that it doesn’t editorialise excessively on Henry as either hero or villain but allows a range of colours to emerge.

It’s likely that the weight of extremely high expectations may be responsible for my slight sense of disappointment with Propeller’s Henry V. Nonetheless, the company has produced another entertaining evening here, even if they haven’t come up with an epic vision to equal that of their Richard III for shock and awe.

The production runs for 2 hours 55 minutes, and the interval antics - all in aid of a good cause - are, as usual, priceless. Full touring information on the Propeller website.

CD Review: Don't Stop Singing (2011) by Thea Gilmore

2011-11-11T06:22:00.000-07:00

The latest album from the prolific Thea Gilmore constitutes a collaboration of a very particular kind. Don’t Stop Singing draws on unfinished manuscripts, poems and other works-in-progress by Sandy Denny, which Gilmore has completed and set to music. It’s the kind of project that, however laudable in theory, seems studded with pitfalls. But, happy to report, the always-enterprising Gilmore has pulled it off with grace, delivering a beautiful and moving album whose songs feel entirely organic, seamless and fresh.

Read the full review at Wears the Trousers.

Review: Terence Davies Lecture @ BFI Southbank (5/11/2011)

2011-11-07T03:33:00.000-07:00

The appearance of a new film by Terence Davies is an event for many for us, though sadly an all too rare event, the British film industry being what it is. The highly anticipated release of The Deep Blue Sea at the end of the month (which you can barely pass a corner of the BFI without seeing a poster for at the moment; one has now appeared in the men’s toilets!) made Davies an especially appropriate choice to deliver this year’s Colin Young Emeritus Lecture at BFI Southbank. Named in honour of the first director of the National Film and Television School, this lecture series was initiated in 2007 and offers an opportunity for the speaker to reflect on film culture and education; previous presenters have included David Puttman and Nick Broomfield. Davies is, moreover, an alumnus of the NFTS where the second part in what would become the Davies Trilogy, Madonna and Child, was completed in 1980 as his graduation film.

As it turned out, though, this year’s lecture was really a lecture in name only. Rather, it was a selection of clips from a few favourite Davies movies - The Pajama Game (1957), Gypsy (1962), Sweet Charity (1968), Oklahoma (1955), and - yup - Carry On Nurse (1959) - briefly introduced by the director and Roger Crittenden, and more in line with the BFI’s Screen Epiphanies strand than anything else. Davies began by talking with characteristic reverence about his formative cinema-going experiences, and the transcendence they offered him: “Even now I remember exactly where I sat, the route I took to the cinema…”

The film sequences shown were then loosely connected under the theme of “lost” performers: actors, dancers and singers who gave one memorable performance and then effectively disappeared. So we were treated to Paul Wallace hoofing it up in front of Natalie Wood in Gypsy and Reta Shaw and Eddie Foy Jr duetting to charming effect on "I'll Never Be Jealous Again" in The Pajama Game. Though this conceit didn’t really hold water for several of the featured performers (Charles Hawtrey? Gene Nelson? Really?), the clips themselves were an enjoyable compensation for the shaky premise, and Davies’s sheer unadulterated glee when introducing them (“This is SUBLIME!”) was infectious. Most enjoyable of all was the glorious “Steam Heat” sequence from The Pajama Game (and let’s get this marvellous Marxist musical back on a London stage soon!) and “You Gotta Get A Gimmick” from Gypsy, which sent Davies into transports of joy. The clips are here and here for your pleasure.

Always idiosyncratic, Davies’s idea of a lecture on film culture and education probably wasn’t what anyone - including, it would appear, Mr. Young himself - was anticipating. And more detailed commentary on the performers whose work he wished to highlight would have enhanced the presentation. Even so, this sharing of enthusiasms by our most ardently movie-loving auteur made for an entertaining evening.

Concert Review: Tori Amos @ Hammersmith Apollo, London (3/11/2011)

2011-11-04T07:04:00.005-07:00

What a pleasure and privilege it remains to see Tori Amos perform live. The second London night on her tour in support of her new album Night of Hunters [review here] saw the great piano lady decamp from the Royal Albert Hall to the Hammersmith Apollo. The RAH show was by all accounts a great one, but it must be said that the set-list yielded few big surprises, especially for a tour that’s already been noted for its unexpected dips into the depths of the Amos back catalogue. Last night’s show, by contrast, found Amos pulling out several unanticipated songs, placing B-Sides and rarities alongside dyed-in-the-wool classics and the new material, to deliver a typically thrilling evening of musical exorcisms and epiphanies.

Over her many years of live performance, Amos has always found ways to keep her material fresh and vibrant. But the presence on this tour of the esteemed Apollon Musagéte Quartett (aka the Fab Four, aka the Polish Strings Posse), whose contributions are so central to Night of Hunters, has made these shows particularly special. With her Bösendorfer and Yamaha synth accompanied by the energetic, expert playing of Pawel Zalejski and Bartosz Zachold on violins, Piotr Szumiel on viola and Piotr Skweres on cello, Amos is currently out there working in a generation-spanning genre: let’s call it “chamber rock.” Tight as a drum but with space for spontaneity, the show proved, as always with Amos, an emotional rollercoaster, testifying yet again to her phenomenal energy and expressive range as an artist.

The concert began, as per, with an intense, dramatic rendition of Night of Hunters’s sublime opening salvo, “Shattering Sea,” preceded by an extended instrumental opening. The other selections from the new album (just four in total) were also strong, with only “Fearlessness” perhaps not quite matching the recorded version for impact. The NoH highlight for me, though, was an intoxicating performance of that brilliant ten-minute opus “Star Whisperer,” which galvanised from its first marvellously portentous Schubertian chords through the thrilling abandon of the mid-section to the gasp with which Amos finally released the tension at the end. (All that remains now is for Amos and the Quartett to get the album’s other epic, “Battle of Trees,” together in time for the Yanks.)

The new arrangements for the older material were all intriguing, and often startlingly effective. The layered electro-rock songs from from the choirgirl hotel (1998) and To Venus and Back (1999) are daring, ambitious choices for this particular set-up, but the performances were wonderfully accomplished, with the Quartett ably standing in for the drums, synths, bass and guitars of the original renditions, and generally making cello, violin and viola sound like the baddest-ass instruments on the block. A taut yet languid “Suede” and a quicksilver “Spark” were superb, while “Cruel” - already established as perhaps the song of this tour - has become a quite extraordinary thing: a steely incantation, defiant and confessional, with a pivotal line from “Yes, Anastasia” beautifully incorporated into its folds. A furious, cathartic “Precious Things” generated perhaps the strongest response of the night, and I was also especially pleased to hear Abnormally Attracted to Sin’s “Maybe California” and, for the first time live, American Doll Posse’s “Girl Disappearing” (the song to which this blog owes its title).

In the solo spots, Amos unleashed some of her most surprising song choices, including “Ruby Through the Looking Glass” and “Never Seen Blue” (immaculate, both) while the great early B-Side “Ode to the Banana King (Part 1)” made a rare and very welcome apperance. Taken solo on the synth, AATS’s “That Guy” picked up a new level of menace and tension; a cover of “Landslide” arrived like an old friend; and a requested “A Sorta Fairytale” came out equal parts sad and sharp. The encore, preceded by the Quartett's wonderfully vigorous newly-composed piece “A Multitude of Shades,” offered a moving “Carry,” a graceful “Baker Baker,” an urgent “Siren,” and, as concert closer, “Big Wheel”, in its new, rather fetching incarnation as an all-acoustic clapalong hoe-down. A multitude of shades, indeed.

Aside from the wonder of her vocals - still capable of shifting from icy chill to embracing warmth in a moment - and her keyboard skills, there were of course all those priceless little moments that make an Amos performance an Amos performance, whether it’s her half-rising from the piano stool when she hit the “I was talking to you” line in “Fairytale,” or pointing out into the audience as she sang “Devious we all have been” on “Banana King,” a gesture bespeaking acceptance rather than accusation.

I’ve quoted this before in relation to Amos’s live performances but each time I see her it seems more apt: that she has in musical terms what Trevor Nunn says Judi Dench has in acting terms: “the capacity to open herself and become a conduit for all our emotions and experiences and memories.” Clearly energised and challenged by her work with her new collaborators, Amos continues to go as deep as any singer-songwriter has ever gone, it seems to me, carving through her superb song-craft and interpretive skills vivid sketches of our internal dilemmas, the pain of conflict, the consequences of giving up your power, the possibility of its retrieval. “The night is opening,” she sang. And so were we.

Set-list

Shattering Sea
Landslide (solo)
Suede
Ode to the Banana King (Part 1) (solo)
Maybe California
Fearlessness
A Sorta Fairytale (solo)
Ruby Through The Looking-Glass (solo)
Never Seen Blue (solo)
Cloud On My Tongue
Girl Disappearing
Star Whisperer
That Guy (solo)
China (solo)
Way Down (solo)
Precious Things
Nautical Twilight
Spark
Cruel

Encore

A Multitude of Shades
Carry
Baker Baker
Siren
Big Wheel

Full tour details here.

Last 10 Things Seen In the Theatre Meme #4

2011-10-28T02:20:00.004-07:00

List the last 10 things you saw at the theatre in order:

1. Earthquakes in London (Richmond Theatre)

2. How To Be Happy (Orange Tree Theatre)
3. The Importance of Being Earnest (Rose Theatre, Kingston)
4. Farewell To The Theatre (Rose Theatre, Kingston)
5. Othello (Sheffield Crucible)
6. South Downs/The Browning Version (Minerva, Chichester)
7. Street Scene (Young Vic)
8. Grief (National Theatre, Cottesloe)
9. Dr. Marigold and Mr. Chops (Richmond Theatre)
10. Boys Plays (Above the Stag)

Who was the best performer in number one (Earthquakes in London)?
Toss-up between Tracey-Ann Oberman and Paul Shelley.

Why did you go to see number two (How To Be Happy)?
Reviewing assignment.

Can you remember a line/lyric from number three (The Importance of Being Earnest) that you liked?

Even people who’ve never seen this play can remember lines from it! Stick a pin in the text and you’ll find a memorable epigram. I think my favourite is Gwendolen’s "I am pleased to say that I have never seen a spade."

What would you give number four (Farewell To The Theatre) out of 10?
A charitable 4.

Was there someone hot in number five (Othello)?
Ahem! West! Gilbreath! Shame on Shakespeare for not giving them a happy ending, though.

What was number six (South Downs/The Browning Version) about?
Oh, lots of things. Mainly, perhaps, what unexpected acts of kindness can do.

Who was your favourite actor in number seven (Street Scene)?
A strong ensemble but I suppose Elena Ferrari just takes it.

What was your favourite bit in number eight (Grief)?

The scene in which Marion Bailey’s Gertrude finds Lesley Manville’s Dorothy in distress and the characters almost - but don’t quite - break through to honest communication touched me a lot. Classic Leigh, brilliantly done.

Would you see number nine (Dr. Marigold and Mr. Chops) again?
Could do.

What was the worst thing about number ten (Boys Plays)?
The first play in the double-bill was fairly lacklustre.

Which was best?
Not a fashionable view, but I thought Grief was absolutely wonderful.

Which was worst?
Farewell To The Theatre. All too aptly titled, I’m afraid.

Did any make you cry?
In approximate order of amount of tears shed: Grief, The Browning Version, Street Scene, Othello.

Did any make you laugh?
Earthquakes in London, How To Be Happy, The Importance of Being Earnest, Othello, Grief, Dr. Marigold and Mr. Chops.

Which roles would you like to play in any of them?
Judging by two of the locations in which it ended up in this production, Desdemona’s handkerchief looked to be having a rather jolly time. Alternatively, Sam in Street Scene so I get to sing “Lonely House.”

Which one did you have the best seats for?
How To Be Happy and Grief. Go small theatres!

Film Review: Elena (Zvyagintsev, 2011) @ the London Film Festival

2011-10-25T03:39:00.001-07:00

The best film that I saw in an altogether strong first week at this year’s London Film Festival was Andrei Zvyagintsev’s Elena (2011), a movie that fully confirms the Russian director as one of the most vital talents in contemporary cinema. Zvyagintsev follows The Return (2003) and The Banishment (2007) with an intimate, subtle but bracingly intense drama that intelligently and feelingly explores issues of class and social status in contemporary Russia. It does so through the story of the title character (played with blinding brilliance by Nadezhda Markina). Elena is a woman caught, essentially, between two worlds: that of her poor son and his (ever-expanding) young family and that of her wealthy second husband Vladimir (Andrei Smirnov), who’s none too sure that he owes Elena’s brood any financial favours at all (“I married you, not them”). The manner in which the protagonist opts to resolve this dilemma leads her into some unforeseen territory indeed.

A Tarkovsky for those of us who (confession time) have been bored by the majority of Tarkovsky’s work, Zvyagintsev is as philosophically-inclined as his illustrious predecessor but without losing sight of character and narrative. Elena is a marvellously assured piece of filmmaking: beautifully rhythmed; rich in telling, unstressed details; and full of spaces for the viewer’s involvement and interpretation. It also proves - if proof were needed - that Iris Murdoch’s dictum that “language is soaked in the moral, literature is soaked in the moral” may be applied with equal relevance to film. The thorny ethical dilemmas that result from Elena's predicament are many. But for me perhaps the most resonant question that the movie asks might be: does the notion that “the last shall be first” refer, these days, simply to the opportunity to watch trash on a wider screen TV? But there's no overt proselytizing going on in this movie. All of the characters are viewed with a very clear eye indeed, and the expert way in which Zvyagintsev allows our allegiances to shift (and shift again) as the story develops is one of the deep satisfactions that his film offers.

As our heroine progresses through identities in her daily encounters - from wife-cum-nursemaid to bourgeois matron, cuddly babushka to criminal - so the movie shifts discreetly but dynamically through genre codes, moving from quiet observational character study to suspense drama, propelled at times by hypnotic snatches of Phillip Glass, and arriving at an ending that dispenses the kind of subtle chill you may find it difficult to shake off. Thrillingly good. Trailer here.

Post-script: In terms of other films screened so far at the LFF, kudos, too, to Miranda July’s The Future, a gloriously quirky, heartfelt and surprising meditation on time that made me exclaim an enthralled “Wow!” on two occasions, and Andrea Segre’s tender Li and the Poet, about the relationship between a Chinese immigrant (Zhao Tao) and a fisherman (Rade Serbedzija) on the Venetian lagoon island of Chioggia. Time permitting, I’ll hope to write detailed appraisals of these and other films in the LFF next month.

Concert Review: Kate Rusby (Richmond Theatre) (23/10/2011)

2011-10-24T02:39:00.002-07:00

“We’ve never played here before; we wondered if anybody would come,” confessed a characteristically self-deprecating Kate Rusby towards the end of her enchanting concert at Richmond Theatre yesterday evening. Well, Rusby need not have worried, for the folk fans of Surrey and its surrounds were out in full force last night and gave the singer and her band - Damien O’Kane (guitar/banjo), Ed Boyd (guitar), Julian Sutton (accordion), Duncan Lyle (double bass) and John Joe Kelly (bodhrán) - a very warm welcome indeed.

Though nursing a slight cough passed on to her by her and O’Kane’s two-year-old daughter, Rusby performed like a trouper and was in excellent voice throughout the night, sounding confident and clear. With no brand new album to promote - her last, the entirely self-penned Make The Light, was released a year ago - Rusby constructed a thoughtful set-list that ranged widely over her catalogue, offering a pleasing mixture of traditional and original material. And although much of her older work was of course arranged for fiddle and whistles, the competence and energy of the players ensured that the absence of these instruments in the current set-up wasn’t felt as too much of a lack.

Following an enjoyable, assured warm-up set by Kelly, Boyd and the wry O’Kane, the gig proper began with a lovely version of “Playing of Ball,” the opening track from 2001’s Little Lights, and was followed by a rollicking take on “The Cobbler’s Daughter.” (“We’ll get our songs involving deaths out of the way early on,” Rusby quipped. “And then you can relax into your Sunday evening.”) The newer self-written songs also sounded especially supple and strong, with the plaintive “Only Hope” outstanding, while “Walk the Road” - the closest that Rusby’s yet come to an anthem - concluded the first half on an especially stirring note.

It’s fair to say that, stylistically, Rusby’s work hasn’t developed much over the years, and, across an album, her music can sometimes seem to lack variety. But in a live context - and interspersed with her disarming, often hilarious banter - her music feels vibrant and fresh, and the songs sometimes gain new depths and resonances as well. The concert’s emotional highlight came towards the end of the second half with an exquisite, moving performance of “Let the Cold Wind Blow,” while other standouts included a spry, cheeky “Game of All Fours” (“If you’re under 16, then this is a song about a card game. If you’re over 16, make of it what you will”), a gorgeously rootsy “Over You Now,” and a great fun set of tunes from the band. The one-song encore of “Underneath the Stars,” which Rusby took solo, was, appropriately, celestial.

Rusby’s apparently artless, girl-next-door persona belies the talent and tenacity of a musician who’s been on the scene for 20 years now and who’s able to captivate an audience by creating an atmosphere of palpable warmth, intimacy and ease. “This theatre’s gorgeous… I think we’d like to live here,” Rusby mused. And judging by the affectionate response that she received, it seems that Richmond’s residents would be happy if she chose to do that very thing. A delightful evening.

Reviewed for The Public Reviews.

Tour dates and venue information here.

Film Review: Coriolanus (Fiennes, 2011) @ the London Film Festival

2011-10-20T03:07:00.004-07:00

Making his directorial debut here, Fiennes has done a mostly commendable job of work. And returning to a role that he first played on stage in 2000, he also delivers a compelling central performance that has genuine gravitas. But his approach sometimes betrays a certain amount of insecurity in relation to the material. The film strives so hard to be cinematic - jittery camera-work? check; ear-splitting sound? check - that it’s occasionally a little embarrassing. The opening scenes suggest a particularly hyperbolic advert for a Panorama Special, and the decision to present the conflict between the Romans and the Volscians through the language of TV news media (yawn) feels all too predictable. (How fresh this device seemed when it book-ended Baz Lurhrmann’s 1996 Romeo + Juliet; how totally shopworn now. The nadir here is a Jon Snow cameo.) As director, Fiennes also seems to have taken instruction from some of his previous collaborators: the over-wrought action scenes find him doing his best Kathryn Bigelow impersonation (Barry Ackroyd, who shot The Hurt Locker [2008], is the movie’s cinematographer), while the presentation of the Citizens as a very motley crew recalls the 2005 Deborah Warner production of Julius Caesar in which Fiennes played Mark Antony.

This tendency towards over-emphasis does result in admirably lucid story-telling, though. The film is thoughtfully paced and structured, with Coriolanus’s rejection of Rome taking place almost exactly at the movie’s mid-point. Hollywood’s favourite screenwriter-for-hire John Logan has done a skilful job of paring back (and simplifying) the text, although some elements and supporting roles do suffer the consequences of his tinkering. While Brian Cox is able to come through with a finely modulated performance as Menenius, the work of Paul Jesson and James Nesbitt as the conspiring tribunes ends up seeming obvious at times. And, more problematically, the association between Coriolanus and Aufidius (Gerard Butler, adequate) never quite strikes the sparks that it initially promises to. The homoerotic implications of the relationship which have been highlighted by some directors aren’t stressed here, although the movie does boast a slightly bizarre night-time sequence in which the Volscian camp seems momentarily to have morphed into a gay club.

The most genuinely exciting moments are those in which Fiennes stops proclaiming “Look! I’m making a MOVIE!” and opts for more sparsely staged scenes that allow Shakespeare’s language to do the work. Coriolanus then offers some memorably taut encounters, and some eloquent and expressive images, too. Fiennes’s scenes with Vanessa Redgrave’s strong, seductive Volumnia are especially fine; Redgrave (who gave even her hokey dialogue in Letters to Juliet [2010] the weight she might give to a bit of prime Shakespearean verse) delivers her best screen performance in years as the ambitious, manipulative matriarch. And she and Fiennes look wonderful together - a pair of Roman statues in the making, indeed - their intense close-ups offering the thrill that the theatre can’t provide. Volumnia’s final supplication scene is brilliantly sustained - the movie’s highlight - and its impact mitigates some of the more questionable, obvious ideas that mar the film’s opening sections. This Coriolanus isn’t, overall, everything that it could have been. But at its best it’s a vivid and gripping account of this now seldom-staged play.

Film Review: Dark Horse (Solondz, 2011) @ the London Film Festival

2011-10-20T03:05:00.000-07:00

In Dark Horse (2011), Todd Solondz has made a film without rape, paedophilia and masturbation because, in the director’s words, “it’s always good to challenge yourself.” Toning down the shock value a notch, Solondz has produced in Dark Horse perhaps his most easily digestible feature to date, albeit one that leaves some space for the perverse and disturbing elements that are the director’s stock-in-trade.

Dark Horse charts the experiences of one Abe Wertheimer (a star-making turn by Jordan Gelber). Zipping around town in a yellow people-carrier, with obnoxiously upbeat pop as his soundtrack, this portly 35-year-old considers himself a cool, capable and desirable chap, despite the fact that he’s hardly a success story in conventional American terms, living as he does with his parents (superb Mia Farrow and Christopher Walken) - in a bedroom filled, amusingly, with Thundercats and Gremlins memorabilia - and working ineffectually in his father’s industial real-estate firm. Abe’s underlying frustrations manifest themselves in juvenile tantrums and petty squabbles with all and sundry. But he knows - or at least thinks he knows - how to turn on the charm. And when this self-satisfied fellow sets his sights on a distracted-seeming woman, Miranda (Selma Blair), whom he meets at a wedding, he’s soon approaching her with marriage in mind.

As Fernando F. Croce has noted, Dark Horse suggests Solondz’s caustic rejoinder to the endless parade of “adorable arrested development comedies” featuring the likes of Seth Rogen and Adam Sandler. There’s also a touch of Coens comedy to the movie’s tone, but the brothers can’t match Solondz for emotional insight and don’t come close to rivalling his unerring ability to capture the sheer awkwardness of human interaction on screen. Its narration unravelling as the protagonist unravels, Dark Horse takes some wonderfully confounding twists and turns as it progresses. It becomes, ultimately, a movie about an individual’s dream/fantasy life, and, in particular, an exploration of the role that other people play as protagonists in such fantasies. If the movie’s did-that-just-happen-or-not? game-playing becomes somewhat wearisome towards the climax, its shakier stretches are redeemed by a haunting final shot of staggering eloquence and poignancy. Fine work.

Film Review: Midnight in Paris (Allen, 2011)

2011-10-13T05:11:00.002-07:00

Nostalgia is what it used to be - for a while, at least - in Woody Allen’s elegant time-travel comedy Midnight in Paris (2011), in which a Hollywood screen-writer, Gil Pender (Owen Wilson), vacationing in Gay Paree with his fiancée (Rachel McAdams) and trying to work on a novel, hears the chimes at midnight and finds himself transported back to his favourite epoch: the City of Light in the 1920s.

The witty, old-fashioned confection that Allen conjures from this premise (which owes something to that of the 1990s BBC series Goodnight Sweetheart) has become - somewhat surprisingly - his highest-grossing movie ever, and one that’s finally re-awakened American audience’s love affair with the director. Told in Allen’s briskest, most playful style, and shot in gorgeous warm tones by Darius Khondji and Johanne Debas, Midnight in Paris is a fine light entertainment, combining the fantastic mode of Allen’s classic The Purple Rose of Cairo (1985) with the Henry James-lite Yanks-do-Europe concerns of Vicky Cristina Barcelona (2008).

The movie’s warm, wry, romantic tone is established from the off, with an opening montage of Paris scenes so unashamedly touristy that it makes you laugh. And from there on the pleasures are numerous. Up front there’s Owen Wilson’s often-uncanny Allen impersonation in the lead role (watch out in particular for a scene where he emerges from a bathroom baring a pair of earrings and seems, for a moment, to have become Woody), as well as nicely observed turns from McAdams and from Michael Sheen as an unctuous friend.

Mostly, Allen wrests laughs via the roll-call of luminaries that Gil interacts with in the 1920s scenes, all portrayed with just the right degree of affectionate caricature by the other members of the lovely cast. Kathy Bates’s Gertrude Stein is a wonderfully straight-forward fount-of-wisdom; Corey Stoll's Hemingway is hilariously earnest, and Adrien Brody does Dali to a T. As F. Scott Fitzgerald Tom Hiddleston smiles his most beguiling smile, and Marion Cottilard twinkles bewitchingly as a muse to many. Allen provides a light dusting of philosophy, and a little social comment too, as the movie contrasts the supportive, open, bi-lingual artistic community of the 20s (as perceived/constructed by Gil, at least) with the superficial tendenicies of the contemporary Americans, who, with the exception of Gil, disdain the idea of living in Europe.

There’s a little fuzzy plotting in the final third - some business about a significant diary seems fumbled - but for the most part Allen keeps proceedings on track in a way that he can’t always be relied upon to do. And such minor lapses don’t detract from the movie’s appeal or the cogency of its gentle argument for living in the now. A charmer.

Theatre Review: How To Be Happy (Orange Tree Theatre)

2011-10-10T02:10:00.001-07:00

Two households, both with the same settee. A settee that gets lolled on, cried on, argued on, walked on and shagged on over the course of David Lewis’s lively and thoughtful new play at Richmond’s Orange Tree. Directed by its author, How To Be Happy unfolds in a series of overlapping, parallel scenes that take place in the separate - yet deeply interconnected - homes of Emma (Kate Miles) and Paul (Paul Kemp), a divorced couple now living with their new partners Graham (Steven Elder) and Katy (Carolyn Backhouse).

Each couple has its problems. Paul, a struggling writer, has been diagnosed with lung cancer, while Graham and Emma’s relationship is undergoing strain, not helped by the presence of a very vocal new baby. Meanwhile, Graham, an advertising executive who’s currently (and hilariously) “brainstorming notions of happiness” in order to best promote a new chocolate bar, wants Paul to collaborate on the campaign. Flitting between the two houses, and delivering sometimes indiscreet dispatches from each, is Paul and Emma’s teenage daughter Daisy (Kate Lamb), who’s harbouring hopes of bringing her parents back together.

At first, Lewis’s conceit of having the two families simultaneously occupy the same space in overlapping scenes feels clunky and obtrusive. But the structure moves into elegance as the evening progresses, creating some effective juxtapositions between the events in the two households: rhyming incidents of domestic discord and complicity. The relationships are, for the most part, sharply drawn, and just when you think Lewis is about to take a swerve into sentimentality you’re surprised by some unanticipated twist or acerbic observation.

The thematic focus of How To Be Happy is - you guessed! - the concept of happiness, and, in particular, its relationship to consumerism. Paul (in one of the play’s improbabilities, or, at least, its heavy-handed ironies) once wrote a self-help book on the subject of happiness and has worked in the advertising industry himself. But he has now come to disdain Graham’s profession, which he views as responsible for the sorry state of a society in which people feel pressured “to spend money they don’t have to buy things they don’t need to impress people they don’t like.”

What’s most admirable about Lewis’s writing, though, is that it refuses to employ the characters simply as one-dimensional representations of a particular idea. Rather, the people here are believably inconsistent muddles of contradictions, each with his or her measure of awareness and neurosis.

Graham may represent the horrors of consumer capitalism to Paul, but Steven Elder’s expert performance presents Graham as a rather ineffectual man, affable and eager to please, and nursing his own sense of futility and disillusionment. (It’s not until the end that we see a trace of steeliness.) Similarly, Paul’s rants against consumerism are, as his ex-wife points out, somewhat undermined by his own attachment to his iPhone.

The raspy-voiced Paul Kemp doesn’t fall into the trap of trying to make the disappointed, rather whiny Paul too sympathetic or easily appealing, and the other roles are played with equal bite. As Emma, Kate Miles brilliantly conveys the insecurity and frustration of a woman who’s walked away from one unsatisfactory marriage only to find herself in another. And although the characterisation of Daisy takes an unfortunate late slide into psychobabble, Kate Lamb (a young actress to watch) is spot-on as the daddy’s girl.

Some moments fail to completely convince - the growing intimacy between Graham and Katy, in particular - and the play’s contemporary allusions - Lady Gaga, The X Factor - occasionally feel pat. But Lewis’s spry production nicely conveys the shifts in tone of his writing, as the mood moves from broad comedy to contemplation, with the action underscored by classical pieces that range from jaunty, brisk baroque to the intense drama of Schubert’s Winterreise (“a good break-up CD,” in Paul’s definition). And the production’s truly delicious closing moments, which leave one character alone on stage and make the best use of The Ronettes’s “Be My Baby” since the opening of Scorsese’s Mean Streets, are perfectly judged. Lewis’s play has its glib and undeveloped elements, but at its best it reflects wittily and poignantly on the way we live now.

The production runs for 2 hours 20 minutes and is booking until November 5. Further information at the Orange Tree website.

Reviewed for British Theatre Guide.

Covered Girls: Tori Amos and the Art of Reinterpretation

2011-10-06T05:41:00.003-07:00

Alongside the many diverse self-penned compositions that she has produced throughout her prolific career, cover versions of other artists’ songs have always occupied a particularly important place in Tori Amos’s live and recorded repertoire. A survey of the songs that Amos has covered over the years reveals an extraordinary diversity, one rivalled by very few artists in contemporary music. Her covers span material from most of the 20th century, encompassing everything from nursery rhymes, show tunes, musical hall and jazz standards, through protest songs, spirituals, folk, carols and pop to heavy metal, rap and grunge, and now the adaptations of classical pieces that form the basis of her superb new album Night of Hunters [review here]. Amos has consistently performed other artists' songs in concert, as well as on the peerless collection of B-Sides that she produced throughout the 1990s, and on her 2001 concept album Strange Little Girls. Ten years on seems an appropriate moment to celebrate that important album, and to place it in the context of Amos’s reinterpretations of others' songs throughout her career.

Despite their diversity, Amos’s choice of covers has seldom seemed random or indiscriminate. Indeed, Amos has emphasised that she will only perform a cover if she feels that she can contribute something new to the song in question. Part of what makes her most successful performances of others’ material so compelling, I’d suggest, is that they come off less as straightforward cover versions than as carefully thought out reinterpretations, which seek to add another dimension to the original version and, sometimes, to radically subvert its meanings. An Amos cover is not necessarily an act of tribute to the song in question, nor does it represent a simple diversion for her from the “real graft” of original composition. Rather, it is a more complex encounter between an extant text and an artist who is expert at approaching songs from unusual angles and infusing them with her unique spirit and interpretive skills.

That interpretive expertise was honed during Amos's childhood recitals and her formative “piano bar” years playing lounges and clubs and taking requests from sometimes appreciative but often indifferent audiences. While Amos has commented upon the difficulty of these years and the frustration that she experienced in performing the likes of “Send In The Clowns” and “Feelings” every night, she seems to have come to acknowledge the importance of this period for her creative development, and has suggested that she learnt much about song structure, stage presence and performer/audience dynamics during this time.

However, the recording that first alerted the wider world to Amos’s special skills of reinterpretation was of course 1992’s “Crucify” E.P. on which intense piano-and-vocal covers of Led Zeppelin’s “Thank You,” The Rolling Stones’ “Angie” and, most famously, Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spirit” succeeded in stripping back these rock songs - two classics and one soon-to-be classic - to uncover nuances and vulnerabilities previously obscured within the originals. These three haunting renditions set the standard for Amos's future cover versions with their mixture of care, intelligence, and impudence. In particular, by boldly transforming Nirvana’s raging anthem into a classically inflected piano ballad Amos offered a timely demonstration that hardcore emotion may be expressed through quietness and economy as well as volume. A female musician performing the song in this way constituted a provocative challenge to grunge’s masculine ethos, proving, in the words of James Hunter in Rolling Stone, that the genre’s “blend of emotional distress and sonic kicks represented a state of mind as much as a guitar sound.”

Although primarily a showcase for her original material, Amos’s Little Earthquakes tour included performances of all the “Crucify” E.P. B-sides plus her favourite Zeppelin song “Whole Lotta Love.” A trio of equally distinctive covers then appeared on the special edition single for “Cornflake Girl”: Joni Mitchell’s “A Case of You,” Jimi Hendrix’s “If 6 Was 9” and the harrowing “Strange Fruit,” made famous by Billie Holiday. “To show that all things are possible, and permissible, for me as a singer-songwriter,” Amos explained when asked by Joe Jackson in Hot Press why she had selected these songs specifically; she went on to stress the importance of each of these artists to her own development as a performer and composer. Her take on the Hendrix song was particularly striking, with her piano played through a Marshall amp in order to create a discordant electric guitar-style motif, a move that prefigured the kind of keyboard experimentation that she would develop across Boys For Pele (1996).

1994’s mammoth Pink tour found Amos introducing the likes of Fleetwood Mac’s “Landslide,” Springsteen’s “I’m On Fire,” The Police’s “Wrapped Around Your Finger” and a selection of Beatles tracks into her repertoire, while her measured take on “Famous Blue Raincoat” was one of the highlights of the patchy Leonard Cohen tribute album Tower of Song in the same year. Discussing her version of the Cohen track, Amos talked for the first time about entering a song through the perspective of one of its characters, in this case “Jane” whom she envisaged discovering the letter which is described and transcribed within Cohen’s lyrics. This character-based approach would become increasingly important to her later cover versions.

By the release of the Boys For Pele singles, fans had come to expect something special in the way of Tori-fied covers and were not disappointed as, in a particularly left-field move, Amos turned her attention to the work of cult Cockney duo Chas & Dave, relishing the tongue-twisting lyrics of “That’s What I Like Mick (The Sandwich Song)” - with its homages to fellow piano virtuosos Little Richard and Jerry Lee Lewis - and offering a sultry yet wry take on “London Girls.” “This Old Man,” meanwhile, became an ambiguous, rather menacing piece with undertones of emotional and physical violence. Unsurprisingly, the accompanying Dew Drop Inn tour included some of her weirdest covers - everything from “Kumbaya,” “Blue Moon” and Stephen Forster’s “Oh Susannah” to The Cure’s “Love Song” and a riff on Tag Team’s “Whoomp! (There It Is).” (Yes, really.)

On this tour, too, Amos developed her practice of occasionally pairing others’ songs with her own, performing, for example, a short section of Björk’s “Hyperballad” before “Butterfly” and turning Nine Inch Nails’ “Hurt” into a prelude for the Pretty Hate Machine-referencing “Caught A Lite Sneeze.” This novel idea allowed her to create some fascinating “sonic dialogues” between her work and that of her song-writing peers and demonstrated her gift for linking songs both thematically and emotionally. Sadly, few of these performances were recorded for posterity beyond bootlegs but 1996’s “Hey Jupiter” E.P. did offer one special rendition: namely, the priceless moment when Amos achieves the feat of silencing a group of particularly rowdy, baying fans with a breathtakingly fragile version of “Somewhere Over The Rainbow.”

The choirgirl and To Venus and Back sessions yielded fewer cover versions, though a spaced-out “Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas” and a memorably histrionic take on Steely Dan’s “Do It Again” both proved effective B-Sides to the “Spark” singles. But just as fans may have been wondering whether her interest in performing others’ work was waning, Amos returned with her most ambitious, controversial and divisive covers project yet: her 2001 album Strange Little Girls.

Amos's covers have often reflected her commitment to giving listeners an insight into what the male-drawn map of rock music history looks like when approached from a female performer’s point of view. Nowhere was this commitment clearer than on Strange Little Girls, which saw Amos reinterpret twelve male-authored tracks from the perspectives of an assortment of female characters, developed in collaboration with Neil Gaiman. While we now know that this album was in part a way for Amos to fulfil her contractual obligations to Atlantic without providing them with any original songs, it’s also immediately apparent that the work goes far beyond this. For Strange Little Girls emerges from Amos's concerns with the definitions of gender roles and the sometimes questionable construction of female characters in contemporary songs by men.

In Piece by Piece Amos explained the album’s genesis in typically vivid terms. “[P]eople were talking to me about how popular music was getting more violent,” she claimed. “Male songwriters were saying these really malicious things … Neil, Mark [Hawley] and I really felt, as I was nursing my little girl child in my arms right before Christmas in the year 2000, that a generalized image of the antiwoman, antigay heterosexual man had hijacked Western male heterosexuality and brought it to the mediocrity of the moment. At its core, this perverted male image was filled with malice and getting high off swallowing its own violent ejaculation.”

Reinventing the covers album as concept album, Strange Little Girls presents itself as Amos’s response to the casual violence and homophobic and misogynistic messages which, she felt, were being expressed in popular song at the beginning of the 21st century. The carefully chosen and researched covers featured on the album included such alpha-male anthems as The Stranglers’ “Strange Little Girl,” Slayer’s “Raining Blood,” and, most notoriously, Eminem’s “’97 Bonnie and Clyde,” his infamous rap about murdering a troublesome wife and involving a young daughter in the disposal of the body.

Extremely well-structured, the album linked its songs via a number of themes and motifs, with issues of language and silencing, and images of guns and violence, recurring. The most successful of the performances once more demonstrated Amos’s gift for subverting a song from within, as she turned the “Just the two of us” refrain in Eminem’s song into a ghostly mother-to-daughter message, exposed the emotional cruelty of 10CC’s “I’m Not In Love,” and transformed “Happiness Is A Warm Gun” into a gun-lobby debate. She also gave The Boomtown Rats’ “I Don’t Like Mondays” a chillingly innocent reading at odds with the disturbing lyrics, and transformed Neil Young’s placid “Heart of Gold” into a feral squall. Other interpretations were more reverent: an intimate take on Tom Waits’ “Time,” a moving rendition of Lloyd Cole’s “Rattlesnakes,” and a subtle, wry version of Joe Jackson’s “Real Men” were among the album's highlights. Each track, however, reflected Amos’s skill in sliding into songs from unusual angles, thereby finding fresh dimensions in the material and challenging listeners to view these tracks in new ways.

Not all critics were up for this. While Amos’s earlier covers had generally met with acclaim, the response to Strange Little Girls was much more mixed. Reviews of the album ranged from the enthusiastic through the ambivalent to the openly hostile. Arguably these latter responses - often expressed in terms which labelled Amos a desecrator of the work of male song-writing “geniuses” - reflected some of the prejudices that the album itself was seeking to expose, revealing the sexism of some rock journalists and their knee-jerk antagonism to any project which might be described as feminist.

Certainly, Strange Little Girls can be viewed in the context of the issues raised by second-wave feminists who critiqued male representations of women and descriptions of sexual violence in contemporary literature. The innovation of Strange Little Girls is to extend this debate into the realm of rock, and to recognise popular music as one of the primary cultural spheres in which gender roles get played out and patriarchal ideology disseminated. If this makes the album sound dry, worthy or overly academic then think again: Strange Little Girls is consistently dynamic, varied and musically exciting, employing a range of instruments and arrangements and benefiting from some of Amos’s most compelling and original singing. Her performances were supplemented by Gaiman’s brilliant “Portraits of Girls” narratives, and with the stylist/make-up team of Karen Binns and Kevyn Aucoin on hand to aid her metamorphoses, Amos produced a subversive and rewarding album that deserves reappraisal as one of her best achievements. Meanwhile, in a fun piece for Q magazine, Amos picked 18 songs by women that she’d like to see male artists perform, her suggestions including Janis Joplin’s “Get It While You Can,” Ani DiFranco’s “32 Flavours” and Gloria Gaynor’s “I Will Survive.” Of the last track Amos commented: “I think E from the Eels could do this well … alone at the keyboard. No drums. Spooky.”

While the elaborate Strange Little Girls seems likely to represent the apex of Amos’s recorded covers, her most recent tours have seen her continuing to engage with the work of other songwriters in compelling ways. The Scarlet's Walk tour included some incredible covers, not least a thrilling mash-up of "Pancake" and Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young's "Ohio", while the Piano Bar section of her solo 2005 Summer of Sin tour was the most overt homage yet to her formative “lounge performer” years in the 1970s/80s, with fans invited to submit requests to her via her website. (With the proviso that the song choices “didn’t suck.”) This led to some amazing reinterpretations of never-before-played, often city-specific material. Many of these performances were made available on the Original Bootlegs series [review here], where listeners discovered Amos breathing new emotional intensity into Jim Croce’s “Operator,” spontaneously turning Oasis’ “Don’t Look Back In Anger” into an anti-Morrissey rant, and investing “Like A Prayer” with more genuine sexual and spiritual fervour than Madonna could hope to muster. “I’ve gotten into this weird 80s thing,” she confessed to one audience, a fact which explained the appearance of songs such as “I Ran,” “Livin’ On A Prayer” and “Bette Davis Eyes” in her sets.

Although less central, covers also formed a significant part of 2007’s American Doll Posse tour, with the reappearance of gems such as “Carnival,” “Famous Blue Raincoat,” "Daniel," and “I’m On Fire” - plus the mind-boggling proposition of the ADP characters “covering” Amos’s own songs in the opening section of the shows.

Overall, then, Amos’s reinterpretations make up a substantial part of her contribution to contemporary music. From nursery rhymes to heavy metal, grunge to goofy comedy songs, raps to Christmas carols, and her current inventive adaptations of the classical repertoire, her covers reflect her wide assimilation of musical influences and her gift for selecting intriguing material, and have complemented her original work in extremely interesting ways. Beginning by stripping back the songs, her approaches have become increasingly experimental, and she has proved herself capable not only of performing an amazingly diverse range of material but also of transforming it in her own inventive style. Her best covers make you reassess your relationship to a given song, challenging your perspective and inviting you to see qualities previously overlooked. It’s also likely that her reinterpretations have led her fans to investigate bands and artists that they might never have discovered otherwise. Most importantly, perhaps, her covers reflect her serious commitment to being a performer within a community, an artist with a strong sense of heritage and tradition, and one who is closely engaged in a musical conversation with the work of both her song-writing predecessors and her peers.

For this reason, it’s a genuine shame that her own work has been neglected by other artists. An Amos-covers wish-list immediately springs to mind. Imagine Radiohead tackling “iieee” or “Lust.” Antony and the Johnsons taking on “Pretty Good Year.” Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds trying their hand at “Professional Widow.” Lucinda Williams and Emmylou Harris duetting on “Playboy Mommy.” Prince performing “Body and Soul.” Eminem responding to “’97 Bonnie and Clyde” with a version of “Little Amsterdam.” Well, maybe some day. In the meantime, covers remain an integral part of Amos’s own creative life, and, with her new tour having just opened with a beautiful excursion into The Joshua Tree (see below), we wait expectantly to see where her explorations with others’ songs might lead her next.

Theatre Review: Farewell to the Theatre/The Importance of Being Earnest (Rose Theatre, Kingston)

2011-10-06T05:39:00.000-07:00

The Autumn season at Kingston’s Rose Theatre opens with a double-bill of sorts that intriguingly pairs one classic, oft-performed play, Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest, with another that’s receiving its (rather belated) world premiere, Harley Granville Barker’s 1916 one-acter Farewell to the Theatre.

Directed by the Rose’s Artistic Director Stephen Unwin and starring Jane Asher, the two productions play in rep. However, their pairing doesn’t seem to have been motivated by any particular deep connection between the two pieces, beyond what Unwin has termed his “perverse pleasure [in tackling] one play especially conceived for the proscenium arch … and another about saying goodbye to that kind of theatre forever.”

Farewell to the Theatre - which is also, rather confusingly, the title chosen by Richard Nelson for his forthcoming play about Granville Barker at Hampstead Theatre - takes the form of a duologue between an actress, Dorothy (Asher), and her lawyer, Edward (Richard Cordery), whom she meets to discuss her possible retirement. Dorothy has grown to distain the business of soliciting money to get plays put on, and as the pair discuss the financial prospects (none too good) of the production that she is about to appear in, the play touches upon the protagonists’ personal and professional regrets, finally broadening out into a wider discussion of changes in the theatre and the function of the artist.

Reflecting Granville Barker’s own concerns about the direction of the theatre at the turn-of-the-century, it’s easy to see the appeal of Farewell to the Theatre to those “in the business.” But the play’s musings on theatrical matters may hold less appeal for general audiences. Unwin’s production is competently performed, with Asher stylish and Cordery warm and wry, and it generates more interest towards the end, when the discussion takes a philosophical turn. But the overall effect is static and slightly smug; Granville Barker may be concerned with the function of the theatre here, but what he has produced feels in form and concept more like a radio play.

Happily, The Importance of Being Earnest proves a much more successful and engaging experience. The play is, of course, invariably a pleasure and Unwin’s production has genuine charm. Designed with unobtrusive elegance by Hayden Griffin, the approach is very much in the traditional mould of, say, Peter Hall’s The Rivals rather than the po-mo stylistic revisionism of a Deborah Warner School for Scandal. Unwin and his team offer an unfussy, no-nonsense take on a play whose most famous lines are by now so well known that the audience laughs in anticipation of them.

Still, the production feels vivid and fresh. Asher’s Lady Bracknell could do with a little more vocal heft at times, but her lines zing anyway, and she has some superb moments, not least the classic scene in which she interrogates Jack (the excellent Daniel Brocklebank).

Asher is also well supported by Bruce Mackinnon, who’s a delightful Algernon. Making her professional debut as Cecily, Jenny Rainsford takes a little while to warm up, but her central scene with Kirsty Besterman’s superb Gwendolen is perfectly played. And there’s amusing work from Walter Van Dyk, doubling as the butlers Merriman and Lane, from Cordery as Rev. Canon Chasuble, and from Ishia Bennison who adorably turns Miss Prism’s prudery into a form of flirtatiousness. Two lengthy intervals slow the evening a little more than is necessary. But this remains an accomplished and very enjoyable production that keeps you giggling contentedly throughout.

The productions run until 30 October. Further information at the Rose website.

Reviewed for British Theatre Guide.

Theatre Review: Othello (Sheffield Crucible)

2011-10-03T02:44:00.001-07:00

At the Sheffield Crucible, Daniel Evans directs a highly accomplished Othello that’s notable for its clarity, pace and excellent performances. Evans has pulled off something of a casting coup in reuniting two of the stars of HBO’s The Wire (a series whose intricacies have sometimes been described as Shakespearean) for this production, which pits Dominic West’s Iago against Clarke Peters’s Othello. That billing is all that Evans has needed to ensure a sell-out run, but the production’s success is fully deserved, for this is a stark, sharp and powerful staging that grips and involves from beginning to end.

Fresh from his brilliant star-turn in Lindsay Posner’s revival of Butley, West delivers another scintillating performance here. Employing a broad Yorkshire accent to underscore the confidence-inspiring “hail-fellow-well-met” persona that’s central to his Iago, the actor gives a vivid, characterful interpretation. There have been more perverse and chilling Iagos than this but few that have been more convincing and persuasive as successful manipulators, and West unearths a surprising amount of humour in the role too, while not stinting on the underlying bitterness. He’s well-matched by Peters whose Othello has gravitas and tragic grandeur, and who movingly conveys the character’s deep love for Desdemona (a touching, fervent Lily James) in a way that makes the tragedy feel both inevitable and deeply shocking. And, while Colin George's Brabantio is a mite feeble and Leigh McDonald's Bianca somewhat shrill, there’s good work from Gwilym Lee as Cassio and from Brodie Ross as an amusingly lachrymose Roderigo.

And then there’s Alexandra Gilbreath as Emilia. At times, Gilbreath seems to be doing a tad too much in this relatively minor role: her incredible voice, with its exhilarating depths and husky layers, turns the simplest, most straightforward of lines into sweeping, grandiose pronouncements. But her big moments here - from the tenderness with which she invests the “willow” scene and the quiet passion of her plea for female equality to her grief at Desdemona’s murder and fierce denunciation of the men at the end - leave you in no doubt that she’s one of the most magnetic actresses that we currently have the privilege to see on stage. This Emilia starts out as a (slightly frustrated) bawd, and Gilbreath is especially adorable when popping Desdemona’s handkerchief into her cleavage for Iago to find and declaring “I have a thing for you.” But the clarity with which the actress charts Emilia's increase in awareness and refusal to “obey” turns the character into the heroine of the evening, in a production that restores vibrancy and power to even the play’s most familiar, shop-worn moments. Who needs HBO?

Sheffield Theatres website here.

5 Filmmakers (v): Mike Leigh

2011-09-30T02:12:00.001-07:00

Three key films: Naked (1993), Secrets and Lies (1996), Topsy-Turvy (1999)

Underrated film: All or Nothing (2002). A contemporary drama released between Leigh’s two stunning “period” films Topsy-Turvy and Vera Drake (2004), All Or Nothing slipped through the net; indeed, the movie has been described by Leigh and Lesley Manville as “the one that got away.” Dismissed by some British critics as grim and interminable, this raw ensemble drama about the fortunes of three families on a South London council estate is in fact a rewarding, involving and, finally, quietly affirmative piece of work: “I feel that this film is entirely about redemption,” Leigh has said. With superb performances from Manville, Timothy Spall, Ruth Sheen, James Corden, and, in her first role for Leigh, Sally Hawkins, All or Nothing combines Ozu-like intimacy with an oddly epic scope; it’s ripe for rediscovery.

Unforgettable moment: The meeting between Cynthia (Brenda Blethyn) and Hortense (Marianne Jean-Baptiste) in the diner in Secrets and Lies, shot in one brilliantly sustained long take, encapsulates the film’s brand of humour and heartbreak, as Cynthia moves from denial and amnesia to the recognition that the young woman sitting beside her is in fact the daughter that she gave up for adoption years before.

The Legend (1943-)

“Directly, objectively, yet compassionately [Ermanno Olmi’s The Tree of Wooden Clogs] puts on the screen the great, hard, real adventure of living and surviving from day to day and from year to year, the experience of ordinary people …” Mike Leigh’s praise for Olmi’s film stands as a very apt description of Leigh’s own work, which has, from the very beginning, concerned itself with “the experience of ordinary people”: working, raising families, dealing with loss and illness, trying to communicate and connect. Howie Movshovitz defines Leigh’s output as a sustained attempt to “capture the texture of real life” and terms such as “social realism,” “kitchen-sink drama” and “naturalism” invariably appear in discussions of the British auteur’s work. However, none of these terms seems quite adequate in capturing the very distinctive brand of humane insight and uproarious social comedy that characterises Leigh’s film-making. As the director states, “no work of art is truly naturalistic. Art is not real life and has to be organised, designed and distilled because it’s dramatic.”

Leigh’s very particular process of “organising, designing and distilling” his material remains one of the most original and commented upon in contemporary cinema. In recent years, the director has become somewhat more open about discussing elements of his method - even while keeping the more “esoteric” aspects firmly behind closed doors. Famously, Leigh’s projects begin with no script, starting instead from a basic premise that is developed through lengthy improvisation sessions with his actors, who initially base their characters on a person - or various people - that they know. The months of rehearsal result in Leigh’s composition of a bare-bones shooting script, which is refined, distilled, and finalised after more improvisation, by the time shooting commences. The process is organic, finely detailed and highly collaborative; small wonder that many actors (including his unofficial “repertory company” of performers: Alison Steadman, Timothy Spall, Lesley Manville, Peter Wight, Phil Davis, the late Katrin Cartlidge and, more recently, Martin Savage, Eddie Marsan and Sally Hawkins) have frequently described their work with Leigh as among the most rewarding and fulfilling of their careers.

Leigh’s idiosyncratic methods were initially developed in his work for the theatre, a medium in which he continues to do vital work (cf. his stunning new play Grief). However, it was a viewing of John Cassavetes’ seminal Shadows (1959) that first alerted him to the possibility of “creating complete plays from scratch with a group of actors.” His first film, Bleak Moments , a devastating anatomisation of English reserve and failures in communication, appeared in 1971, but it would be another 17 years before his next feature film, High Hopes was made. In the intervening period, Leigh dedicated himself to working for television, producing a string of memorable dramas for the BBC’s celebrated ‘Play for Today’ strand, including Hard Labour (1973), Nuts in May (1976), The Kiss of Death (1977) and Abigail’s Party (1977). Following High Hopes and Life is Sweet (1990), the turning point in Leigh’s career came with Naked, an epically-scaled and often brutal drama which tracks its garrulous anti-hero, Johnny (David Thewlis), from Manchester to the streets of London, exploring his fairly vicious relationships with women; the film’s confrontational approach was likened by one (hostile) critic to “a mugging.” Naked was followed by the equally extraordinary Secrets and Lies, perhaps the quintessential Leigh film in its subtle, immersive drawing together of a group of extended family members, colleagues and friends. His camerawork characterised by what David Thompson has called a “detached, medical watchfulness” Leigh often bases his scenes around social engagements, with their ensuing dramas, revelations and embarrassments; the climactic, emotionally charged barbecue sequence in Secrets and Lies is, in many ways, the Leigh scene par excellence.

Leigh has broadened his scope to encompass period drama with Topsy-Turvy and Vera Drake (2004), bringing his distinctive aesthetic (and most of his favourite actors) to bear on these projects, which subtly challenge the conventions of heritage cinema. Sometimes prone to caricature and over-emphasis, Leigh’s weaker films can be obvious and schematic, occasionally relying too heavily on broadly-drawn contrasts between characters and taking a rather judgemental attitude towards the protagonists. His best films, in contrast, work to change and challenge the audiences’ pre-judgements about characters, and cast a sharp yet sympathetic eye upon human frailty and resilience. According to Andy Medhurst, the director‘s skill lies in “making moving (in both senses of the word) pictures that evoke the horrors and humours of being English.” For all the national specificity of his work, however, it is, finally, Leigh’s sustained engagement with “the great, hard, real adventure of living and surviving from day to day” that makes his films resonate so profoundly for audiences across the world.

5 Fillmmakers (iv): Michael Haneke

2011-09-30T02:12:00.000-07:00

Three key films: Funny Games (1997) Code Unknown (2000), Hidden (2005)

Underrated film: 71 Fragments of A Chronology of Chance (1994)

The final part of Haneke’s Austria-set “emotional glaciation trilogy” has never gained the amount of attention given to its predecessors, The Seventh Continent (1989) and Benny’s Video (1992). But this subtle and provocative film is among Haneke’s most resonant works. As its title suggests, the film is an elliptical account of numerous events involving disparate characters (a homeless Romanian boy; a student; a bank security guard and his wife) who are finally connected by a random and apparently motiveless act of violence. A precursor, in both content and structure, to Code Unknown, the movie’s withering critique of the mediatisation of experience is encapsulated by the ending, in which we see a complex and multi-faceted event diminished and packaged as it takes its place in the endless parade of TV news images.

Unforgettable moment: The film ‘rewind’ in Funny Games. In a rare moment of one-up-(wo)man-ship against the family’s two captors, Anna (Susanne Lothar) shoots Peter (Frank Giering), only for his accomplice Paul (Arno Frisch) to grab a remote- control and rewind the film’s action from within the diegesis, subsequently “replaying” the scene to prevent Peter’s murder. Functioning as a self-reflexive disavowal of the ‘catharsis’ of the retaliatory violence expected from a suspense thriller, the scene is one of the most startling moments not only in Haneke’s oeuvre but in all of contemporary cinema.

The Legend (1942-)

“Cold,” “detached,” “theoretical,” “didactic” and “sadistic” are some of the words that invariably appear in discussions of Michael Haneke’s work. While a superficial engagement with Haneke’s cinema might make all of these terms seem apt at various points, none of these reductive descriptions truly does justice to the power of Haneke’s work and the density of its inquiry into the complexities of living and interacting in the contemporary world. Calculated to provoke and disturb, it’s certainly true that Haneke’s films can be gruelling experiences, but they seldom fail to reward one’s patience and commitment. Watching Haneke’s movies, the viewer always feels in the grip of a controlled, discerning intelligence, that of a filmmaker who is intensely preoccupied by some of the most pressing social and ethical questions facing us today.

A German-born Austrian, Haneke studied psychology, philosophy and drama at the University of Vienna. He worked as a film and literary critic before beginning his directing career in the German theatre and in television. His first cinematic feature, The Seventh Continent, appeared in 1989; the story of an Austrian family going through their daily lives in a series of ritualised routines before calmly undertaking an irrevocable decision, the film established some of the key aspects of the director’s spare, measured, understated and elliptical style. It was followed by two more films, Benny’s Video and 71 Fragments of A Chronology of Chance, that also explored what Haneke would call the “emotional glaciation” of Austria. The trilogy was followed by a made-for television adaptation of Kafka’s The Castle (1997), and then by Funny Games, still perhaps Haneke’s most notorious film, a Brechtian deconstruction of the “home invasion” thriller that critiques the concept of violence-as-entertainment but was accused by some critics of employing precisely the kind of shock tactics that it sought to attack. Since then, Haneke has gone on to make more ambitiously-scaled films, often employing European star actors: Juliette Binoche in Code Unknown and Hidden; Isabelle Huppert in The Piano Teacher [2001] and Time of the Wolf [2003]. He has also continued to engage in a subversive manner with genre conventions: melodrama in The Piano Teacher, disaster film in Time of the Wolf, suspense thriller in Hidden. His most recent film, the Palme d’or-winning The White Ribbon, was a foray into period drama, a chilling account of mysterious, violent happenings in a north German village just before World War I.

Deeply concerned with the ethics of spectatorship, Haneke’s work frequently explores the ways in which the proliferation of images in contemporary culture may serve to reduce rather than intensify the viewer’s sense of reality. As Catherine Wheatley has argued, Haneke believes we are living in a time in which “people have become inured to the experience of real life through the medium of television (and film), which divides brute reality into neat segments and packages it between commercials, insinuating it into the daily routines of consumer life.” Screens-within-the-screen, frames-within-the-frame, thus form a recurrent motif in his cinema, which attempts to forge an alternative relationship to the spectator, engaging him or her as a discriminating, thoughtful participant rather than a voracious, unthinking consumer.

Indeed, watching a Haneke film the viewer often feels drawn into an intense, all-too-rare state of alertness, challenged to puzzle out the significances that seem “hidden” in his often static and painstakingly-composed frames. Clearly, there's an element of didacticism in Haneke’s project to make us “see better,” but ultimately his cinema is one of open-ended questions rather than fixed, final answers. Wider allegorical resonances in his work emerge subtly, almost subliminally, and despite his engagement with a range of contemporary panics and paranoias - around race, immigration, sexuality, power - his work never feels issue-led. Finally, an unsentimental compassion and concern underpins the invigorating moral seriousness of Haneke’s film-making, with its urgent inquiry into what we watch, how we live, and the relationship between the two.

5 Filmmakers (III): Agnés Varda

2011-09-30T02:11:00.004-07:00

Three key films: Cleo From 5 to 7 (1961), Jacquot de Nantes (1991) The Beaches of Agnés (2008)

Underrated film: The Creatures (1966)

Varda’s under-appreciated film boasts excellent performances from Michel Piccoli and Catherine Deneuve as an enigmatic couple, a writer and his mute wife, on the beautiful island of Noirmoutier in Western France. Controversial at the time, the film’s genre blur - it combines elements of fantasy, comedy and suspense thriller - now seems integral to its strange and singular fascination.

Unforgettable moment: Distressed about the imminent results of a medical test that she fears will confirm a fatal condition, the singer Cléo (Corinne Marchand) receives a visit from her composer and accompanist, Bob (played by Michel Legrand), who presents her with a new song, “Sans Toi.” Moved by the lyrics, which seem to refer to her predicament, Cléo’s performance of the song becomes a highly emotional, dramatic and expressionistically staged interpretation that marks a turning point in the character’s journey towards self-realisation. This scene alone is enough to make you understand why Madonna once set her sights upon starring in an American remake of this movie.

The Legend (1928-)

Encompassing fiction, documentary, photography, essay film and, latterly, installation art, Agnés Varda’s diverse output is connected by a wonderfully inclusive curiosity about the world: about people, animals, places, buildings and objects. Born in Belgium, Varda studied Art History at the Ecole du Louvre before becoming the official photographer to the Théâtre National in Paris. Those two disciplines have informed Varda’s pioneering approach to film-making, which began in 1954 with La Pointe Courte. Shot on location on a tiny budget (with Alain Resnais as editor), the film was stylistically ahead of its time, combining documentary footage of the fishermen of a French village with the story of a couple breaking up. La Pointe Courte is now recognised as the first New Wave film, although Varda belonged more precisely to the Left Bank wing of the movement, which included Resnais, Chris Marker, Alain Robbe-Grillet and Marguerite Duras.

Throughout her career Varda’s work has been characterised by experimentation with film form. She has moved fluidly between documentary and fiction film-making; indeed, perhaps the most striking and innovative aspect of her work has been her blurring of the boundaries between fiction and documentary. Her masterpiece remains the classic Cleo From 5 to 7, in which a pop singer whiles away two hours in the shops, cafes, streets and parks of Paris as she anxiously awaits the results of recent medical tests. But Varda’s filmography is full of riches, surprises, delights. These range from the gorgeous textures and dark heart of Le Bonheur (1965), one of the most visually splendid yet subtly disturbing “family” films ever made; the feminist coming-of-age saga One Sings, The Other Doesn’t (1977); the gritty homelessness drama Vagabond (1985); Jacquot de Nantes, her moving film about her husband Jacques Demy; and the extraordinary, life-enhancing documentary The Gleaners and I (2000), which explores the practice of “gleaning” from its depiction in 19th Century art-works to the actions of contemporary scavengers, who salvage discarded produce in order to survive and to denounce the excesses and waste of consumer capitalism.

In addition, Varda has made short films on a variety of topics - from cats and potatoes, to the Black Panthers and widowhood, sculpture to the Côte d’Azur - each offering a witty and profound discourse on its theme. A deceptive lightness of touch characterises much of her work, but her movies go fathoms-deep. Witness her most recent film, the eccentric and entrancing cine-autobiography The Beaches of Agnés, which ranges over episodes from her childhood and career, and features Chris Marker in the guise of an animated cat. What’s especially heartening is the centrality that “play” clearly retains in Varda’s concept of cinema. In her 80s now, this director continues to make movies with what can only be described as unfettered glee. “I don’t want simply to show, but rather to convey a desire to see,” Varda has claimed.. This commitment is evident in the way her films work to sharpen the viewer’s perception of the world, heightening our awareness of what can be noticed, appreciated and - ultimately - loved within it.

5 Filmmakers (II): Andrzej Wajda

2011-09-30T02:11:00.002-07:00

Three key films: Kanal (1956), Ashes and Diamonds (1958), Man of Marble (1976)

Underrated film: Everything for Sale (1968)

“Today you’re in despair. Tomorrow you’ll be thinking it’ll make a great film…” Inspired by the death of Zbigniew Cybulski, acting icon and star of Ashes and Diamonds, Everything for Sale is Wajda’s 8½ (1963), a dazzling reflection upon the relationship between art and life, in which a film crew (led by a director called, yes, Andrzej) must deal with the death of its leading man in an accident. A fascinating experience in its own right, Everything for Sale is also an interesting companion piece to Wajda’s most recent film, Sweet Rush (2009), a collaboration with Krystyna Janda, that is another astute and poignant meditation upon loss and the filmmaker’s art.

Unforgettable moment: In Ashes and Diamonds, the increasingly reluctant assassin Maciej finally fulfils his remit to kill Comrade Szczuka, shooting him at point-blank range in the street. The dying man staggers forward and Maciej finds himself holding his victim in his arms. In a final expressionist flourish, fireworks from a party light the night-time sky behind the pair, locked in their strange, momentary embrace.

The Legend (1926-)

More consistently than any other Polish filmmaker, Andrzej Wajda has dedicated himself to presenting the social, cultural and political life of his country on screen. Born in Suwalki, north-east Poland, Wajda was 13-years-old when Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union invaded the country, an experience that would have an indelible effect on his psyche, and, ultimately, his cinema. His father, a cavalry officer, was among the thousands murdered by the Soviets in the Katyn massacre of 1940, an atrocity that Wajda would finally address in Katyn (2007), the Oscar-nominated film that became a cultural phenomenon in Poland. After the war, Wajda studied painting at the Cracow Academy of Fine Arts, a discipline that is evidenced in the profusion of memorable single-shot images in his films. However, the solitary act of painting failed to satisfy his artistic temperament, and he subsequently trained at the famous Lodz Film School, making an immediate impact in 1955 with his feature debut A Generation, a portrait of a teenage anti-German resistance group, that provided the foundations for the nascent “Polish School” of cinema. “With this film Polish cinema began,” commented Roman Polanski, who acted in the film.

Wajda’s following film Kanal, a vivid, intense depiction of the last days of the 1944 Warsaw uprising, won the Cannes Special Jury Prize, catapulting Wajda to international fame. The director’s position was consolidated by the release of Ashes and Diamonds, which starred the iconic Zbigniew Cybulski (dubbed Poland’s James Dean) as a resistance fighter assigned to kill a Polish Worker’s Party official. The film is still regarded as Wajda’s masterpiece.

As Janina Falkowska has argued, “in his films Wajda presents human dilemmas within a complex historical and social reality … An individual is shown as either trying to oppose the historical reality or as annihilated by it.” Consistently concerned with the excavation of the past to uncover long-buried truths, Wajda has explored Polish experience in numerous films, including the classic, Citizen Kane-inspired Man of Marble and its sequel, Man of Iron (1981), which explore political activism in the country from the Stalinist era to the Gdansk shipyard strike. In addition, he has turned his hand to lavish literary adaptations, including The Promised Land, based on Stanislaw Reymont’s novel about industrial development in Lodz, and the less successful Pan Tadeusz (1999), an adaptation of Adam Mickiewicz’s epic poem.

Wajda has seldom worked outside Poland, although in the martial law era he directed the French-produced Danton (1983), a film interpreted by many as an allegory of the Lech Walesa/Wojeiech Jaruzelski conflict of the time. These epic films, however, have been balanced by other, smaller-scaled, more idiosyncratic and self-reflexive projects, including Everything for Sale, The Conductor (1980), featuring John Gielgud, and the recent Sweet Rush, an intimate collaboration with his iconic actress, Krystyna Janda. Ultimately, though, it is the political commitment of Wajda’s cinema - its ability to turn the complexities of Polish history into compelling human drama - that will be the director’s enduring legacy.

5 Filmmakers (I): Claire Denis

2011-09-28T07:54:00.001-07:00

I'll be posting the five pieces that I wrote last month for the PopMatters 100 Essential Directors series here over the next week or so. First up: Claire Denis. Comments/quibbles always gratefully received.

Claire Denis

Three key films: Beau Travail (1999), 35 Shots of Rum (2008), White Material (2009)

Underrated film: The Intruder (2004)

“Your worst enemies are hiding inside. Hiding in the shadows. Hiding in your heart.” Denis’s most obscure and inscrutable film deeply divided audiences and critics, some viewers considering it to be a profound treatise on identity, life and death, and others attacking it as an impenetrable tone poem that fails to add up despite scattered striking images. Initially baffling it might be, but The Intruder is a movie that, even more than Denis’s other films, richly repays and rewards repeat viewings. Inspired by Jean-Luc Nancy’s book, the film is at once a metaphysical exploration, a travelogue, and a quest narrative of sorts, tracking its “heartless” protagonist, Trebor (Michel Subor), as he journeys from Jura to Pusan in South Korea and finally to Tahiti, undergoing a heart transplant and attempting to seek out his estranged son. As a story in which, in Denis’s words, “everything is broken,” The Intruder doesn’t need to add up, and for all its opacity, the film remains an indelible, haunting experience - a trip, in two senses, at least.

Unforgettable moment: Endings in Denis’s cinema are invariably memorable and surprising, and none more so than Denis Lavant’s extraordinary acrobatic solo dance at the conclusion of Beau Travail, a moment that at once underscores the movie’s exploration of the male body and space and blows it all to pieces. Previously depicted as the controlled military man, Lavant’s Galoup lets rip with a frankly astonishing display of moves in this scene: twirling, flailing, leaping, rolling on the floor, and finally propelling himself out of the frame. “I wanted to show that Galoup could escape himself,” Denis has commented. And you’ll never hear Corona’s “The Rhythm of the Night” again without seeing these images.

The Legend (1948-)

“I always freak out when I hear people opposing sensation to story-telling,” Claire Denis has said. “A great story-teller always gives you that sense of warmth or cold… [Sensation and story-telling] are not opposed … Why deprive a film of what belongs to cinema?” Perhaps more consistently than any other contemporary filmmaker, Denis’s movies work to make sensation into story-telling, and vice versa. Elliptical and fragmentary, sometimes oblique to the point of opacity, Denis’s films re-write the rule-book in terms of narrative content and characterisation, her stories often emerging through an intense focus on the bodies of her actors and a moody, sensuous evocation of places and spaces. The result is a cinematic style that, in its combination of discretion and ellipsis with moments of confrontational, sometimes brutal directness, is one of the most distinctive in modern French cinema.

Born in Paris, Denis was raised in colonial West Africa, where her father was a civil servant; she went on to study at the IDHEC, the French film school, and served as an assistant to directors including Jacques Rivette, Wim Wenders and Jim Jarmusch. This background finds its way into her films in ways that vary from the obvious to the indirect. Elements of autobiography would certainly seem to inform her debut film, Chocolat (1988), in which a white French woman returns to Cameroon, where she recalls her childhood as the daughter of a regional administrator and her relationship with the family’s servant, Proteé (Isaach de Bankolé). Issues of “race” and the fallout of colonialism remain pertinent in Denis’s cinema, and in its exploration of the experiences of white characters in Africa (Beau Travail and White Material) and African and Caribbean immigrants in France (No Fear, No Die [1990]; 35 Shots of Rum [2008]) her work can certainly be seen to engage with the complexities and uncertainties of our post-colonial world.

But Denis’s movies are too subtle and impressionistic for crude polemics around racial politics. Rather, her films approach such issues in more abstract terms, charting what the director herself calls “movement[s] towards the unknown Other and toward the unknown in other people.” Indeed, the notion of “movement” is particularly key to Denis’s cinema which brings a choreographic sensibility to its presentation of bodies at rest and in motion, and also makes spectacular use of rock and pop music ranging from Neil Young to the Beach Boys and the Commodores. An invigorating tactility, an effort to make her movies felt in the body of the spectator, characterises her film-making practice.

Denis frequently works with the same colleagues, including actors (de Bankolé, Grégoire Colin, Alex Descas, Nicholas Duvauchelle), musicians (the British band Tindersticks) and the cinematographer Agnés Godard. The contributions of such collaborators clearly play a part in the distinctive ambience that her films create even as her work moves from the gore of the horror film Trouble Every Day (2001) to the warmth and sensitivity of an Ozu-inspired family drama (35 Shots). But what defines Denis’s cinema most is the liberating amount of interpretive space that it gives to the audience. In the words of Ryland Walker Knight, Denis “captures life’s richness by observing behaviour, and then lets us develop the picture.” Ultimately, it is nothing less than the mystery and materiality of human experience which is conveyed with such bracing insight and feeling in Denis’s dynamic work.

Film Review: Melancholia (von Trier, 2011)

2011-09-28T06:32:00.002-07:00

I saw Melancholia (2011), Lars von Trier’s latest piece of provocation, in Łódź's Kino Charlie back in July. And while it would be an exaggeration to say that it’s taken me over two months to formulate a response, it’s certainly true that von Trier’s film is a tough one to sort out your feelings about. I think that’s because what’s good and what’s not so good in Melancholia is very close indeed, sometimes to the point of being indistinguishable. For that reason alone, I’d place von Trier’s movie alongside Terrence Malick’s recent evolution opus The Tree of Life (2011). Like Malick’s film, von Trier’s variously lush and stately, urgent and contemplative offering often teeters on the cusp of being a ludicrous, pompous folly as it scores the end of the world, ever so picturesquely, to Wagner. But, also like The Tree of Life, Melancholia is possessed of an ambition, audacity and singularity of vision that it’s hard not to admire and, ultimately, embrace. (And, boy, what a truly cosmic double-bill these two pictures would make!)

One of the exciting elements of von Trier’s output has been the way in which it has fused literary and theatrical elements into a thoroughly cinematic form. Melancholia’s thoughtful, elegant structure divides the film into two chapters that focus on two sisters, Justine (Kirsten Dunst) and Claire (Charlotte Gainsbourg). We encounter Justine on her wedding day to Michael (Alexander Skarsgard) - at a reception that, even from the opening moments, fails to go as smoothly as planned. After all, the presentiment that a planet called Melancholia may be on a collision course with earth is hardly likely to get a girl in the mood for her nuptials, though in truth there seem to be a few reasons other than the prospective end of the world for Justine’s sudden dose of cold feet. The second section then shifts the focus to Claire, who, some time after the wedding, is attempting to deal not only with Justine’s melancholia but with her own increasing anxiety about the planet Melancholia’s approach.

For all the exasperating, contrived and over-obvious elements present in this scenario, the assurance of von Trier’s handling of the material comes as a relief after the risible art-film-meets-torture-porn miscalculation Antichrist (2009), a true folly. Indeed, even as you’re stifling groans, you’re likely to find yourself caught up in Melancholia, an “atheist’s On the Beach” - to borrow Michał Oleszczyk's brilliant description. Felicities abound, not least in the performances of the cast, from Charlotte Rampling’s caustic cameo to amusing bits of business from Udo Kier and John Hurt, neat work from Kiefer Sutherland, and the wonderfully intense characterisations offered by both Dunst and Gainsbourg. (This is another only-in-von-Trier ensemble if ever there was one.) It’s debatable that the movie’s portentousness adds up to any kind of profoundity: perhaps the director is doing little more than working out his own depressive condition here. Melancholia makes its impact, though: it certainly feels quite unlike any other film released this year. See it, love it, hate it, argue about it. But do see it.

Theatre Review: South Downs/The Browning Version (Minerva, Chichester)

2011-09-27T01:56:00.000-07:00

Chichester Festival Theatre’s Terence Rattigan centenary season concludes in the Minerva with Angus Jackson’s production of The Browning Version, which is paired in this outing with a newly commissioned work by David Hare called South Downs - a “response” to Rattigan’s play, directed by Jeremy Herrin. Rattigan’s venerable 1948 one-acter was originally performed with the author’s Harlequinade, an amusing-enough trifle on theatrical themes. Hare’s play proposes itself as a more substantial and relevant curtain-raiser, however. And it is a decent enough effort, albeit one that looks somewhat pallid compared to Rattigan’s play, and the intensity of emotional response that it is still able to generate.

South Downs isn’t in any sense a radical revisioning of Rattigan’s text but rather a play that draws on themes and issues from The Browning Version: it includes, for example, complementary riffs on teaching, on the benefits (or otherwise) of likeability and charm, and on the role of performance in daily life. And, most obviously, like Rattigan’s play, South Downs unfolds in a boys’ school and pivots upon an act of benevolence that redeems the protagonist’s sense of alienation. In this case, the year is 1962 and the focus is on a 14-year-old pupil named John Blakemore (Alex Lawther), an unhappy boy whose friendship with another pupil, Jenkins (Bradley Hall), is undergoing strain. Dismissed as “showing off,” Blakemore’s endless class-room questioning has pretty much alienated the rest of his classmates as well. But he draws the sympathetic attention of an older boy, Duffield (Jonathan Bailey), whose actress mother (a wry, warm Anna Chancellor) invites Blakemore to tea and offers him a few valuable life-lessons over Fortnum & Mason cake.

Herrin’s spare production conjures the atmosphere of the school, with its petty squabbles and tensions, without fuss, and boasts some strong performances, especially from the younger cast members, most of whom are making their professional debuts. There is perhaps a strain of sentimentality to Hare’s characterisation of the troubled but bright, Camus-reading and CND-supporting Blakemore - the playwright’s hymn to his own sensitivity, intelligence and beautiful alienation at this age, perhaps? But Lawther’s skilful performance cuts through this conception. And Andrew Woodall brings his customary wit and presence to a scene - the play’s best - in which he pompously lectures the students on Alexander Pope.

Hare, who last month was quoted as saying that his recent work has become more journalistic because “there hasn’t been time to dramatise it,” mercifully avoids a journalistic approach in South Downs. But the play isn’t really dramatic either: it lacks a sense of urgency and momentum. Still, the playwright’s gift for enjoyable sharp put-downs is in good form, and if some moments here feel bogus and rigged, others prove quietly affecting.

South Downs sustains interest while it lasts, but when compared with the grace, elegance and cutting emotional insights of The Browning Version Hare’s play simply shrivels up and blows away. No case needs to be made for the greatness of The Browning Version these days, but Jackson’s staging is just about as fine an account as you’re likely to experience. Intimate and full of feeling, it centres on a superb performance from Nicholas Farrell (who’s not given quite enough to do in South Downs) as the unloved schoolmaster Crocker-Harris, dubbed “the Himmler of the Lower Fifth.” As his wife, Millie, Anna Chancellor does well enough to convey the bitterness of a woman trapped in an entirely unsuitable marriage - though her performance ultimately lacks the heft of Judi Dench’s exquisite work in the 1985 TV version. But the always-watchable Mark Umbers brings a beautiful clarity, conviction and moral force to his role as her lover, while, as the student Taplow, Liam Morton pitches his performance exactly right. The scene in which Taplow’s unanticipated gift briefly succeeds in piercing Crocker-Harris’s reserve is, as it should be, the very moving highlight of an altogether excellent production.

South Downs/The Browning Version runs for 2 hours 35 minutes and is booking until 8th October. Further information at the Chichester Festival Theatre website.

Screening the Secret City: Guy Maddin’s My Winnipeg

2011-09-23T03:21:00.000-07:00

Part of the Maddin-est Blogathon in the World!

Keyframe are hosting a Blogathon dedicated to the great Guy Maddin this week. Here’s my contribution: an essay on Maddin's My Winnipeg (2007) which takes a look at the film’s presentation of the city, its politics, and its attention to space. Cameos from J. Hoberman and Edward Soja, amongst others.

Screening the Secret City: Guy Maddin’s My Winnipeg

When Michael Burns, the president of the Documentary Channel in Canada, first approached Guy Maddin to ask him to make a film about his hometown of Winnipeg, Manitoba, it was with a couple of specific instructions. “Make it your Winnipeg,” Burns apparently told the director. And: “Please don’t give us the frozen hell-hole that we all know the city is.” It’s hard to imagine that Burns would have envisaged anything other than a highly personal and unconventional portrait of the city from Maddin, who is widely celebrated as one of the most distinctive auteurs in Canadian cinema. As is known, the signature visual aesthetic of Maddin’s films replicates the look and feel of early cinema - in particular, of silent film. And not only that, but Maddin’s work also seeks to replicate the degraded look that such films might have after decades of projection have left their mark on the images. This faux-retro style - at once direct and elusive – leads J. Hoberman to describe Maddin, with characteristic perceptiveness, as “the most eccentric of mainstream filmmakers (or the most accessible of avant-gardists)” (Hoberman 2004).

Of course, the overt stylization of Maddin’s work - its wholesale appropriation of the language of silent film, its surrealism and absurdist humour and its wildly melodramatic elements - may seem entirely antithetical to the documentary tradition. Maddin is, after all, a director who boldly champions film as artifice. “I like silent film because it aggressively says to its viewers: I am artificial,” he has said. “Silent film announces itself as art. It says: 'quit expecting realism from me.' If you want realism watch security camera tapes” (Maddin, in Springer and Werthschulte, 2008).

In Maddin’s hands, then, My Winnipeg was hardly destined to be a standard or conventional documentary. Appearing at the time of other, complementary, city essay-films - notably Victor Erice’s La Morte Rouge (2006), about San Sebastian, and Terence Davies’s Of Time and the City (2008), about Liverpool - the film famously combines fact and fabrication in its account of the city, merging archive footage, home videos, and staged re-enactments of Maddin’s family history, and producing a work that is as based in imagination, dream and subjective personal memory as historical fact. Developed in collaboration with Maddin’s regular writing partner George Toles, the film was shot over a ten-day period in a wide variety of formats -16 mm, Super 8, mini DV video, HD video and cell phone, as well as found footage - and also avails itself of inter-titles, cut-out animation, and most significantly a dynamic voice-over narration provided by Maddin himself. As Ryan Gilbey suggests, “the textural collage [of the film] is appropriately jumbled and hallucinatory” (Gilbey, 2008), reflecting Maddin’s construction of Winnipeg itself as a kind of multi-dimensional mosaic, as much dreamscape as historical reality.

While Maddin originally favoured the portmanteau word “docu-fantasia” to describe My Winnipeg’s genre-blur, he ultimately rejected the term, stating that “I think it is just a documentary. Documentary has elastic enough borders, especially now, everyone understands that there is no such thing as a completely honest documentary. Everything has a point of view” (Maddin, in Halfyard, 2007).

The "point-of view" of My Winnipeg is one that emphasises, overtly, incompleteness and impression, the personal, selective and the subjective. Maddin thus places the documentary in what he has called his "Me Trilogy," alongside Cowards Bend the Knee (2003) and Brand Upon The Brain! (2006). Each of these three films features a character called "Guy Maddin" and draws in a fantastical way on aspects of the director’s personal history.

The Maddin avatar in My Winnipeg (played, as in Cowards Bend the Knee, by Darcy Fehr) is introduced to us on a train journey through Winnipeg as he attempts to escape the city that oppresses and confines him - “to film his way out” in Maddin’s phrase. This is a journey which, we gather, the protagonist has attempted (and failed) to accomplish many times before. He is, as the narration has it, “leaving for good - again.” This notion of the endlessly deferred journey out provides a structural principal as the film travels through the city, digressing through personal memory, folklore, anecdote and social history, in order to anatomise Maddin’s own shifting engagement with Winnipeg, a relationship characterised by a mixture of pride and distaste, hatred and affection. “It’s no Eden that you would see/But it’s home sweet home to me” state the lyrics to the song “Wonderful Winnipeg” by The Swinging Strings that plays over the film’s opening credits. Though heavily ironic in context, the lyrics succinctly encapsulate the ambivalence of Maddin’s attitude to Winnipeg, which is presented throughout as “no Eden” but nonetheless functions as an (ultimately inescapable) “home sweet home.”

In talking about his decision to make the film, Maddin emphasised his desire to mythologise Winnipeg, commenting on what he identifies as a peculiarly Canadian failure to mythologise the nation. “I am making it my mission to mythologize the place,” Maddin stated. “Every other country in the world gives their folk heroes a bigger than life treatment. For some reason, Canadians look through the wrong end of the telescope and make them smaller than life. I just thought that if no one was going to make a myth about Winnipeg [then] I would do it myself” (Maddin, in McBride, 2008).

Unsurprisingly, Maddin’s myth-making in My Winnipeg often tends towards the absurdist or the ludic. The city that the film presents is one of gay bison, of séances held in the parliament building, of aged hockey stars reunited for one final game, and, in the film’s most famous image, of frozen horse heads trapped in the Red River. Maddin’s sleepy, snowy Winnipeg is, in this sense, “wonderful” - full of wonders, spectacles, phenomena, intrusions of strangeness and oddity into the everyday. This is a city of “mystical synchronicities,” we are told. The statistics which the narrator provides at various points are largely and deliberately fictional, parodying the conventions of the documentary and constantly unsettling the viewer’s sense of historical reality. As Gilbey notes: “In Maddin’s wildly fabricated Winnipeg, veracity matters less than evocation” (Gilbey, 2008).

Even so, the entrancing playfulness of Maddin’s approach should not obscure the seriousness of the film’s endeavour to engage with and deconstruct the myths and realities of Winnipeg’s past and present, and more broadly the myths and realities of the nation for which the city serves as a metonym. In particular, the film’s attention to space is central to its often subversive engagement with Winnipeg’s history and the position of its citizens therein. In Post-Metropolis, Edward Soja suggests that

[p]erhaps more than ever before we are becoming consciously aware of ourselves as intrinsically spatial beings, continually engaged in the collective activity of producing spaces and places, territories and regions, environments and habitats.... On the one hand, our actions and thoughts shape the spaces around us, but at the same time the larger collectively or socially produced spaces within which we live also shape our actions and thoughts in ways that we are only beginning to understand. (Soja, 2000)

Soja’s suggestion that human beings both shape and are shaped by the spaces in which we live with others resonates strongly with My Winnipeg. Indeed, Maddin’s film may be read as an exploration of how a city and its culture and geography form the individual, and how the individual, in turn, (per)forms and re-forms the city itself. “Our performance as spatial beings,” Soja suggests, “takes place at many different scales, from the body, or what the poet Adrienne Rich once called ‘the geography closest in,’ to a whole series of more distant geographies ranging from rooms and buildings, homes and neighbourhood, to cities and regions, states and nations, and ultimately the whole earth.”

The spaces documented and explored in My Winnipeg encompass just such a wide range, taking in the train tracks leading in and out of the city; the Arlington Street Bridge; the city’s back alleys; the Eaton’s department store and the Winnipeg Hockey Arena. They encompass the famous ‘Forks’ of the Red and Assiniboine rivers; the three-level Sherbrook pool; Garbage Hill, a dump for the city’s waste materials; and the abandoned Happyland amusement park, which the film finally reclaims as a space for the city’s dispossessed. And then, of course, there is the Maddin house itself, 800 Ellice, rendered in Maddin’s voice-over as an abstract shape: “a chunk of home: white, block, house.” It is here - indeed, on that most intimate of spaces, the family couch - that My Winnipeg reaches its elegant and surprisngly emotive end.

A concern with spatial relationships thus permeates Maddin’s movie, and what is especially striking is the way in which the film constructs city space and bodily space as synonymous. Bodily metaphors abound in Maddin’s often florid descriptions of Winnipeg’s geography. Most significantly, there are the 'Forks' where the Red and the Assiniboine rivers meet, and which are associated throughout with the "lap" of Maddin’s mother, visualised in the film as a pubic triangle that flashes across the screen dissolving into the image of the rivers ("The Forks! The lap!"). The image encapsulates the film’s merging of the private and the public, and, moreover, the city's status in Maddin's imaginary as both nurturer and oppressor.

There is also, again, the Winnipeg Hockey Arena, where Maddin claims to have been born - "right in this dressing-room." The venue is described by Maddin as “my male parent” and connected throughout with the presence of his father, manager of the Winnipeg Maroons hockey team. There are also the back lanes of the city, figured as its “black arteries,” and there is of course the position of the city itself, at “the heart of the heart” of the continent, as Maddin’s voiceover repeatedly announces.

Such bodily metaphors imbue with particular poignancy and power two interrelated narratives of civic loss and destruction which are at the centre - indeed, at the heart - of the film. These are the demolition of Eaton’s department store and the demolition of the Winnipeg Arena, both of which events are explicitly presented by Maddin as acts of violence perpetrated against the living body of the city by its officials. Maddin’s voice rises in righteous anger as he rails against the bureaucrats who sanctioned the demolition of these buildings, with all their personal and communal associations. Particularly traumatic is the loss of the Arena, described by Maddin as “the most myth- and memory-packed landmark in our city’s history.”

Public space in My Winnipeg is thus presented a contentious and contested entity, one that is threatened by local authority, whose decisions result in what Maddin terms “a horrific chain reaction of architectural tragedy.” As William Beard suggests, "the loss of Eaton’s .. could appear as a particularly unmistakeable objective correlative for the long, gradual slide downhill of a city that had not so many decades earlier been so bustling and full of promise" (Beard, 2010). For a time, Beard suggests, "Winnipeg stood dramatically for for the vast potential of the Canadian west - English Canada’s Chicago, almost. If there is a melancholy that clings to the city itself, and not simply to Maddin’s view of it, it can perhaps be traced to this sense of faded promise" (Beard, 2010). The movie’s lamenting tone echoes Roger Kemble’s remarks in The Canadian City as he surveys the intersection at Portage & Main: “Whatever a sense of place may have been, Winnipeg has lost it,” Kemble writes. “The old streets have disappeared. The city is one big parking lot now” (Kemble, 1989).

As the Eaton’s and Winnipeg Arena episodes attest, attention to space in My Winnipeg is explicitly connected to the film’s politics. Although Maddin has often sought to downplay any political content in his cinema, the documentary is very clearly political in its implications, adding up to a critique of the erosion of social, cultural, architectural and other traditions in an increasingly homogenised and corporate world. Exploring the aftermath of the urban project of modernity, Maddin’s film finds much to mourn and rage against. As Soja claims in Post-Metropolis, city spaces "must be recognised as products of collective human action and intention and therefore susceptible to being modified or changed. This infuses all socially constructed scales of human spatiality with built-in tensions and potential conflicts, with openness and freedom as well as enclosure and oppression,… and hence with politics, ideology, and what, borrowing from Michel Foucault, can be called the intersections of space, knowledge and power" (Soja, 2000).

Winnipeg as presented by Maddin is precisely a place of “built-in tensions and potential conflicts, openness and freedom… and enclosure and oppression.” Moreover, the concern throughout with issues of “space, knowledge and power” explains why Maddin’s film is repeatedly drawn to the idea of spaces within spaces. Winnipeg, the film tells us, is “a city of palimpsests, of skins beneath skins.” Dipping into the layers of Winnipeg, Maddin’s film discovers a “secret city on top of the official one.” The aforementioned back lanes with their hints of illicit or non-normative sexuality are one such secret space, as are the 'Forks' Beneath the Forks where, in the film’s mythology at least, the Aboriginal First Nations speak of a subterranean river system running directly beneath the visible one, and attribute supernatural powers to this secret juncture.

More significant still is the film’s aforementioned reclaiming of the destroyed Happyland amusement park as a space for the city’s marginalised groups, including First Nations, the homeless and the city’s forgotten war veterans. These “swelling ranks of the heartsick dispossessed,” as Maddin’s narration figures them, “gather up the detritus of Happyland, every last sliver of happiness they can gather, and reconstitute it out of sight, and up on the rooftops of our city. An Aboriginal Happyland.” As Darren Wershler suggests, "this is not so much a forced marginalization as it is what Hakim Bey might call a TAZ - a Temporary Autonomous Zone where non-normative desires can be enacted and revolutions planned" (Wershler, 2010, p. 91). Winnipeg’s “forgotten people” must unite, the film suggests, to claim their own space within the city’s narrative.

In a final revisionist flourish, the narrator posits a fantasy saviour for Winnipeg named "Citizen Girl" who will “tend to those in our aerial Happyland,” as well as restoring the Winnipeg Arena and the Eaton’s store, and reversing other incidents of civic damage and loss chronicled by Maddin’s film. As such, My Winnipeg proposes a fantasy scenario as an escape route from the realities of the city's present state. This is not to suggest that the film’s engagement with the history of Winnipeg’s marginalised is in any sense unproblematic. In particular, as Wershler notes, the “Marxist pin-up” Citizen Girl whom Maddin envisages saving and restoring the city is “unambiguously white, leaving salvation, once again, in the hands of the colonizers” (Wershler, 2010, p.91). The problems inherent in the notion that a Utopian space must be secured by a white guardian are neither resolved nor even addressed in Maddin's film. What is significant, nonetheless, is the film’s recourse to imagination and fantasy to highlight the injustices of the past and present, and to construct a counter-narrative that disrupts and modifies the city’s official history.

In this way, the city that Maddin presents connects with Edward Soja’s notion of thirdspace, “opening up the scope and complexity of the spatial imagination.” In this alternative or “third” perspective,” Soja argues, “the spatial specificity of urbanism is invested as fully lived space, a simultaneously real-and-imagined, actual-and-virtual, locus of structured individual and collective identity” (Soja, 1996). Maddin’s "real-and-imagined, actual-and-virtual" Winnipeg serves as just such a "thirdspace," as the film opens up the city’s history to revision and re-imagining.

My Winnipeg offers, then, a variously poetic, playful and political meditation on the director’s hometown, one that unpicks the spurious certainties of the documentary as it engages with social and historical issues of considerable significance. “Dipping into the layers of the city,” “decoding its signs,” Maddin's movie constructs a counter-narrative to an official version of Winnipeg, presenting the city as at once familiar and fantastic, mysterious and mundane, banal and baroque. “No Eden yet home sweet home,” Maddin’s multi-dimensional Winnipeg is a city replete with secret spaces and hidden realms that co-exist with its daily façade, offering the potential for the revision of dominant ideologies. “The best we can do is selectively explore, in the most insightful way we can find, the infinite complexity of life through its intrinsic spatial, social and historical dimensions, its interrelated spatiality, sociality and historicality,” Soja suggests. Maddin’s film provides just such an exploration, one that adds up to an interrogation of the historical legacies and contemporary realities of “the peaceable kingdom.”

Theatre Review: Grief (Cottesloe, National Theatre)

2011-09-19T02:17:00.000-07:00

Hearts break very quietly in a 1950s suburban living-room in Grief, Mike Leigh’s exquisite new play which is currently in previews at the National Theatre and follows this year’s well-received revival of his 1979 play Ecstasy at Hampstead and in the West End. (Despite the complementary one-word titles, there are no direct connections between these two dramas, as had been speculated in some quarters.) Appearing in Terence Rattigan’s centenary year, this new play marks Leigh out - at once surprisingly and not surprisingly at all - as an heir to Rattigan in many ways: an acute anatomist of English reserve, of petty cruelties, of failures in communication and love. Having been dissatisfied with Leigh’s last film, Another Year (2010), on a number of counts, I was delighted to find myself completely absorbed by Grief, a play which ranks, I think, as one of the director’s finest works to date, and certainly one of his most tender, poignant and humane.

The setting is the middle-class household of Dorothy (Lesley Manville), a war widow who resides with her bachelor brother Edwin (Sam Kelly) and teenage daughter Victoria (Ruby Bentall) in a Greater London suburb. The year is 1957, in an England in which signs of social change are just beginning to stir. Changes are occurring within the family, too: Edwin is about to retire and Victoria is preparing for her O’Levels. Though clearly plagued by depression and still affected by her husband’s death, Dorothy is a kind and outwardly cheerful woman, who plays the gracious hostess as she receives visits from her old friends Gertrude (Marion Bailey) and Muriel (Wendy Nottingham). But as the New Year approaches the situation in the household darkens considerably, as mother and daughter come into conflict and the extent of Victoria’s frustration and resentment is revealed.

Fractious parent/teen relationships have been a staple of Leigh’s output from Life is Sweet (1990) to All or Nothing (2002), and they come to form the focus of Grief, a play deeply concerned with generational clashes and the reluctance of parents to accept changes in their children. And Leigh’s delicate and atmospheric production, beautifully lit by Paul Pyant and meticulously designed by Alison Chitty, draws us gently but inexorably into intense intimacy with the characters, pulling our sympathies every which way.

The principal problem with Another Year, for me, was that it resorted to Leigh’s bad habit of setting up over-obvious contrasts between the protagonists and encouraging the audience to pass judgement on them. Grief avoids such traps. Holding more than one perspective in balance, the play simply presents behaviour, and gives us the space to draw our own conclusions. Dorothy’s firm belief in “the rules” and her refusal to yield to her daughter on certain picky points of social propriety are frustrating, yet Manville’s empathetic performance succeeds in showing that the character is motivated by deep concern and love for her child. At times, the play’s portrait of parent/teen communication break-down threatens to teeter on the brink of cliché. But the perceptiveness and emotional exactitude of Leigh and his actors is such that Victoria and Dorothy’s conflicts stir many small shocks of recognition. Registering distress with the slightest flinch, the brilliance of Manville’s subtle, captivating performance is that it keeps us attuned to Dorothy’s feelings all the time: we have the sense of watching her thinking, in close-up, throughout. And she’s well-matched by the excellent Bentall, who unpicks Victoria’s terseness to reveal a truly disturbing sense of alienation and tendency towards self-sabotage: her final (wordless) scene may haunt you for days to come.

The production’s rhythm is extremely satisfying: the scenes flow elegantly, each carrying its precise emotional weight, and revealing some gem of perception or resonant detail, while generating a strong cumulative tension across the interval-less two hour running time. (And Leigh isn’t afraid of moments of silence and stillness on stage, either.) As in Topsy-Turvy (1999) and Vera Drake (2004) the director again proves himself a master at writing believable period dialogue too: the interactions here feel totally authentic, emerging out of the social context in a way that never seems forced or contrived. When Dorothy, Gertrude and Muriel reminisce about their work as telephonists, or when Edwin and Dorothy talk about their parents, these moments have a genuine weight. (The sequences benefit from the performers’ shared professional history as “Leigh regulars,” too.) And the scenes in which Manville and Kelly sing together - with the lyrics of songs like “Goodnight Sweetheart,” “Smile,” and “Apple Blossom Time” expressing the deep feelings that the characters aren’t otherwise able to articulate - are simply lovely; they suggest such a close, intuitive brother/sister bond that the progressive deterioration of Dorothy and Edwin’s relationship is truly upsetting to witness. Again, the challenge of human contact is Leigh’s primary concern throughout. A scene in which Bailey’s garrulous Gertrude finds Dorothy in distress and the two women almost - but don’t quite - win their way through to honest communication is especially moving.

There’s also lovely work from Dorothy Duffy as Dorothy’s brash, no-nonsense new cleaner, Maureen, and, in particular, from David Horovitch as Hugh, the jovial Doctor friend of Edwin’s who drops by to boast about his son’s achievements and giggle over his own witticisms.

Those who prefer the more savage and satirical side to Leigh may be disappointed in Grief, a play which, while rich in humorous moments, avoids the snide tone that can crop up in his work. (The director certainly seems to be mellowing on class issues: following the glowing endorsement given to those smug bourgeois Tom and Gerri in Another Year, the middle-class matrons here are subjected to only the most affectionate mockery.) As in other Leigh texts, there’s also a certain inevitability to the trajectory of the piece: you may find yourself wishing for a less predictable ending. But that doesn’t stop the conclusion from packing a terrific emotional punch. Perfectly pitched and powerfully affecting, this great production is one of the strongest that the National Theatre has offered us in a patchy year. Good Grief indeed.

The production runs for two hours without interval and is booking until 28^th January. Many performances are already sold-out but further information is available at the NT website.

Concert Review: June Tabor & Oysterband (Queen Elizabeth Hall, 14/9/2011)

2011-09-15T08:12:00.004-07:00

It may have taken them over two decades to get around to recording a follow-up to their 1990 album Freedom and Rain, but June Tabor and Oysterband have intermittently reunited for live shows in the intervening years, "never losing touch" with each other’s music, as Tabor noted in a recent interview. This deep rapport and connection was clearly evident last night in Tabor and the band’s superb show at Southbank Centre’s Queen Elizabeth Hall, the first in a tour in support of that long-awaited new album, Ragged Kingdom [reviewed below]. The show served as a launch of sorts for the new record, with Oysters front-man John Jones confessing rather sheepishly that this was the first time that they had performed many of these songs for an audience.

No signs of anxiety showed through in the performances, however. For, from the galloping, powerhouse opener “Bonny Bunch of Roses” to the impeccably elegant closing lullaby “Put Out the Lights,” Tabor and the band delivered a thrilling show that was controlled and polished yet wonderfully loose and spontaneous.

The set-list combined tracks from Ragged Kingdom and Freedom and Rain, with a couple of Oysters originals added to the mix. Avoiding Dad-rock stolidity, the band played with vigour and passion throughout, Dil Davies’s sturdy drumming, Ian Telfer’s outstanding, soulful violin-playing, Alan Prosser and Al Scott’s guitar-work and the efforts of the multi-tasking Ray Cooper (cello, mandolin, bass) giving the material an exciting mixture of folk grace and rock grit, and beautifully complementing Tabor’s magnificent vocal performances. Jones’s singing matched Tabor’s in drama and intensity, especially his stunning, keening solo on “Molly Bond,” while, backed by Cooper’s mournful cello and Prosser’s delicate guitar, the pair’s duet on Joy Division’s “Love Will Tear Us Apart” proved predictably emotive. Cooper, Prosser and Telfer provided chants and harmony vocals for several songs, including an ambient “All Tomorrow’s Parties,” a reeling “Susie Clelland” and a heart-rending “(When I Was No But) Sweet Sixteen,” their contributions adding deep hymnal textures to the already rich material.

The force of the performances succeeded in rendering the diverse song selections - from broadside ballads to late-’60s psych-rock - cohesive, with epoch-spanning tales of war, loss and Love Gone Wrong presented as a seamless story. The most daring transition was between the Oysters’ thunderous, percussive take on “The Bells of Rhymney” and Tabor and Prosser’s timelessly restrained and haunting rendition of “The Hills of Shiloh,” while other highlights included a deft, jangly “If My Love Loves Me” and an ineffably sultry “Mississippi Summer.” And I doubt that there’s been a cooler spectacle on the QEH stage this year than that of Tabor and the band tearing into Jefferson Airplane’s immortal Alice/LSD classic “White Rabbit” at the encore, which she introduced with a hilarious anecdote about performing the song in San Francisco in the early ’90s.

Indeed, throughout the night the bleakness of much of the songs’ subject matter was off-set by the warmth and affection of the band’s interplay, and by Tabor’s wonderfully wry gallows humour. (A story involving a “Goth baby” definitely deserves another outing.) The result was a richly enjoyable concert that held the audience in thrall from beginning to end. “Every place that I have been/Leaves its message on the skin,” sang Tabor on the closing “Put Out the Lights.” The same might be said of all of the indelible songs sung on this spell-binding evening, by some of Britain’s finest. Don’t miss the chance to catch these guys if they’re performing round your way.

Set-list:

Bonny Bunch of Roses
Fountains Flowing
All Tomorrow’s Parties
Love Will Tear Us Apart
If My Love Loves Me
Molly Bond
That Was My Veil
(When I Was No But) Sweet Sixteen
Susie Clelland

Interval

Judas (Was A Red-Headed Man)
Son David
Mississippi Summer
Bells of Rhymney
The Hills of Shiloh
The Leaves of Life
Where the World Divides
Dark-Eyed Sailor
Seven Curses

Encore:
Dark End of the Street
White Rabbit
Put Out the Lights

Details of tour dates and venues here.

CD Review: Ragged Kingdom (June Tabor and Oysterband)

2011-09-13T03:17:00.002-07:00

Not content with having delivered one of the year’s finest albums in the magnificent Ashore [review and interview here and here], June Tabor now returns with her second record of 2011, re-teaming with Oysterband for a highly enjoyable (and long-anticipated) sequel to their 1990 collaboration album Freedom and Rain. Placing Tabor’s unique voice - mostly associated with stark, or indeed a cappella musical settings - in the context of Oysterband’s lively, brawny brand of folk-rock, Freedom and Rain expanded the musical horizons of both singer and band, offering covers of songs by artists as diverse as Billy Bragg, The Velvet Underground, Shane McGowan and Richard Thompson alongside a smattering of traditional material.

Twenty-one years on, the set-up remains much the same on Ragged Kingdom, although the ratio of old-to-new material is more balanced here, the new album’s twelve tracks comprising seven traditional numbers and five contemporary songs, seamlessly sequenced. Benefiting from the many years of musical exploration undertaken individually by Tabor and the Oysters, the new record also boasts a wider tonal range than its predecessor, as well as a fuller, richer, more organic sound; play Freedom and Rain straight after listening to this and the older album sounds just a tad “tinny” by comparison.

Proceedings open in fine style with a rollicking take on “Bonny Bunch of Roses,” the venerable broadside that presents an imagined conversation between Napoleon’s second wife, the Empress Marie Louise, and their war-mongering young son. The band settle into an imperturbable gait and Tabor tears into the lyrics with gusto, ensuring that the song’s cautionary vision of “Moscow … a-blazing” is fully communicated to the listener. Her awesome dramatic power is put to equally good use on a brooding, full-blooded version of The Wicker Man-evoking Somerset carol “Judas (Was A Red-Headed Man),” with sublime fiddle work from Ian Telfer and Alan Prosser, while other highlights on the trad. side include fresh, spirited interpretations of “Son David” (another mother/son duologue), “If My Love Loves Me,” and “Fountains Flowing.”

“We have long been fascinated by the mystery, magic and mayhem in traditional song,” note Tabor and the band in the liner notes. “But the impulse to tell strange stories never goes away.” War and the travails of love remain two of the primary thematic concerns on Ragged Kingdom and provide a bridge from the oldest to the newest tracks. The taut take on PJ Harvey’s and John Parish’s “That Was My Veil” packs a fiercer punch than the muted original, and Tabor’s emphatic delivery of the final “Lies!” is prodigious. As on Freedom and Rain the band don’t swamp Tabor’s genius for nuance when at their noisiest, except perhaps on the slightly clunky version of Bob Dylan’s “Seven Curses” that’s included here, a reading that somehow fails to really tap in to the song’s tragic narrative.

It’s ultimately the album’s quieter moments that resonate most profoundly, though. Tabor’s and John Jones’s gloriously dolorous duet cover of Joy Division’s immortal “Love Will Tear Us Apart” has been a highlight of their live shows for several years now, and it fully retains its impact on record, while Shel Silverstein’s and Jim Friedman’s Civil War saga “The Hills of Shiloh” gets a marvellously spare and spectral acoustic guitar-led treatment that’s reminiscent of some of Tabor’s work with Martin Simpson.

And the a cappella “(When I Was No But) Sweet Sixteen” is the most haunting thing here - a moving tale from the perspective of a young mother who warns against submitting to the desires of “the plough-boys in the gloaming.” Chips Moman's and Dan Penn’s illicit-lovers staple “The Dark End of the Street” may seem a lightweight choice of finale by comparison, but Tabor and Jones offer an elegant, understated reading that tips its hat to Richard and Linda Thompson’s version of the song while also carving out its own distinctive niche.

In sum, Ragged Kingdom is a most welcome addition to both Tabor and Oysterband’s catalogues, a stirring offering that succeeds in bringing “strange stories,” old and new alike, to vivid, compelling life.

Ragged Kingdom is released on 19th September, through Topic. Tabor and the band are undertaking an extensive tour in support of the album, and I’ll be reviewing their show at the Queen Elizabeth Hall tomorrow night. Further details on tour dates and venues here.

Reviewed for Wears the Trousers.

Theatre Review: Dr Marigold & Mr Chops (Richmond Theatre)

2011-09-13T02:55:00.001-07:00

Fresh from his successful stint at the Edinburgh Festival in Emmanuel Darley’s Tuesday at Tescos, and having only recently completed a run of Being Shakespeare in the West End, the indefatigable Simon Callow now hits the road with Dr Marigold and Mr Chops. Callow first performed this double-bill of Charles Dickens texts as a Christmas show in 2009, in a production directed by Patrick Garland, and the show has now been revived for a national tour, with Richard Twyman taking over directing duties. Callow is, of course, an actor who has practically cornered the market in one-man shows in recent years, and these colourful monologues - adapted by Dickens himself from two Christmas stories that he wrote and performed on his famed reading tours in the 1860s - provide pretty much an ideal showcase for the actor’s talents.

Callow delivers the monologues on a set by Christopher Woods that suggests the run-down backstage area of a theatre or circus, with red curtains, stacks of theatre paraphernalia and faded posters surrounding him. In the first piece, "Mr Chops," the actor plays one Toby Magsman, a showman who narrates the cautionary tale of the title figure, a circus dwarf whose £12,500 lottery win provides him his long-awaited entrance into “society.” But this position proves rather less congenial than Mr Chops imagined and the story charts his discovery that an increase in social status can represent its own kind of sham and trap. Clearly relishing Dickens’s epigrams and baroque turns of phrase, Callow dexterously conjures the presences of a variety of circus folk here, in a piece that combines social satire with a vivid evocation of the life of sideshow performers.

"Dr Marigold," though, is the richer and more emotionally satisfying of the two monologues. It’s the tale of a ‘cheap jack’ or itinerant merchant, who, following the deaths of his wife and young daughter, adopts a ‘deaf-and-dumb’ girl with whom he forms a deep bond. Like much of Dickens’s work, "Dr Marigold" has been criticised for sentimentality, but underpinning its tender portrait of a healing relationship is a darker narrative that touches on poverty, loneliness, domestic violence and child abuse. And Callow proves himself an absolute master at shifting moods here, moving the audience from mirth to deep melancholy as he slides from Dr Marigold’s quick-fire salesman’s spiel to a devastating account of a bad marriage. Thus the piece really earns its emotional response and heart-warming finale.

There is, it must be admitted, a certain air of quaintness about a show like Dr Marigold & Mr Chops, which is an unashamedly old-fashioned entertainment. But this charming evening proves hard to resist, serving as a reminder of the rich humanity of Dickens’s writing and a demonstration of the skills of an actor whose sheer delight in performance is palpable and infectious.

Reviewed for The Public Reviews.

Review of Mr. Callow's Masterclass last year here.

Film Review: Archipelago (2010)

2011-09-12T02:53:00.001-07:00

I missed Joanna Hogg’s film Archipelago (2010) on its theatrical release earlier this year, but having recently seen, and for the most part admired, Hogg’s first film, Unrelated (2008), I was eager to catch up with her most recent work. A chamber drama shot in a spare, austere, painterly style, Archipelago feels very much like a companion piece to Unrelated; in fact, Hogg has spoken of the films as the first two instalments in a loosely connected trilogy. Further, Archipelago reunites the director with one of the stars of her first film, the much-in-demand Tom Hiddleston.

Complementing Unrelated’s exploration of the interactions between a group of family members and friends on holiday in Tuscany, Archipelago’s focus is a family gathering on the Scilly Isle of Tresco. Prior to the departure of 20-something son Edward (Hiddleston) on a volunteering trip to Africa, the Lytton clan hole up at their summer rental on the island to say farewell. Edward’s sister Cynthia (Lydia Leonard) and mother Patricia (Kate Fahy) are present, but notable by his absence is Edward’s father, whose non-appearance becomes the subject of a series of increasingly testy phone-calls with Patricia. Filling out the group are the family’s cook, Rose (Amy Lloyd), who Edward finds himself drawn to, and the soulful artist Christopher (Christopher Baker) who is teaching Patricia how to paint.

Like Unrelated, Archipelago polarised viewers on its release with some finding its measured pace and art-conscious ambience captivating and others deeming its “privileged” protagonists unbearable. This isn’t the moment for a debate on issues of class in British cinema (although I do wonder whether viewers who complained about Archipelago’s comfortably middle-class crew had any problems clucking with sympathy over the travails of a rather more privileged protagonist in The King’s Speech). But what I admire about Archipelago is that it does things that most British films don’t do, and that it does them with discretion, intelligence and finesse.

Hogg is great on domestic detail, on the awkwardness of groups (a restaurant scene here is a mini-classic), on capturing her characters in moments of solitude and reflection, and on atmosphere. This is the kind of film that sharpens the viewer’s perception, and its Hammershoi-inspired compositions (with characters often shot from behind or through doorways) are expressive and interesting, the Tresco locations serving as more than a mere backdrop (as the Italian locations really didn't in Unrelated).

The tensions inherent in the family dynamic emerge believably, and the performances are engaging. Hiddleston’s work is especially fine, rendering Edward’s passivity and hesitancy exasperating and touching, while Leonard communicates the concern and insecurity that’s lurking under Cynthia’s tetchiness. And Baker (playing a version of himself) is a wonderfully calm presence: a fine late scene in which he provides Edward with a memorable definition of “toughness” is a highlight of the film. I don’t think Hogg means for us to pass a final judgement upon these characters (although it seems that many viewers went on to do just that), instead casting a wryly sympathetic eye on their foibles, their hesitancies, their squabbles and their brief moments of connection.

Archipelago is perhaps a little too proud of its art-film credentials (no music, no camera movement). And as in Unrelated at times the semi-improvised dialogue seems a strain on the performers; although Hogg’s approach is very different, a few moments here have the peculiarly unreal “reality” that John Cassavetes's work can have. But, as in Cassavetes’s films, other scenes are marvellously effective, and touch off very personal associations. The upside of Hogg’s studiously “subtle” approach is that Archipelago leaves the viewer plenty of interpretive space. So the lives of its rather opaque characters resonate and linger in the mind. Overall, then a beautiful and distinctive movie from a British filmmaker to watch.

Last 10 Things Seen in the Theatre Meme #3

2011-09-12T02:47:00.001-07:00

It turns up like a bad penny, that theatre meme. Previous instalments here and here.

List the last 10 things you saw at the theatre in order:

1. The Madness of George III (Richmond Theatre)
2. The Conspirators (Orange Tree)
3. The Kitchen (National Theatre)
4. The Golden Dragon (Arcola)
5. Three Days in May (Richmond Theatre)
6. Korczak (Rose Theatre, Kingston)
7. Bernarda Alba (Union)
8. Anna Christie (Donmar)
9. Rattigan’s Nijinsky (Chichester Festival Theatre)
10. The Deep Blue Sea (Chichester Festival Theatre)

Who was the best performer in number one (The Madness of George III)?
A solid ensemble but it’s David Haig’s show, no doubt about it.

Why did you go to see number two (The Conspirators)?
Reviewing assignment.

Can you remember a line/lyric from number three (The Kitchen) that you liked?
Not specifically. But I thought the monologue by Samuel Roukin’s character, Paul, about his neighbour was the best piece of writing in the play.

What would you give number four (The Golden Dragon) out of ten?
A mighty 10.

Was there someone hot in number five (Three Days in May)?
I could quote something that a friend once said to me about Warren Clarke here. But that would be plain rude and uncalled for, quite frankly.

What was number six (Korczak) about?
A Polish hero whom Britishers should know a good deal more about.

Who was your favourite actor in number seven (Bernarda Alba)?
Again a strong ensemble, but I have to go with the powerhouse Ms. Beverley Klein. And I loved Amelia Adams-Pearce as Adela as well.

What was your favourite bit in number eight (Anna Christie)?

The big scene is Anna’s revelation of the truth of her past to her father and to Mat, and it’s powerfully done here. But the moment that’s haunted me the most in this wonderful production occurred in its last few minutes. Captivating throughout, Ruth Wilson comes through with a totally transcendent piece of acting in these final moments, blowing away any qualms that we might have about the fate that O’Neill devises for his heroine. “As for me being alone, that runs in the family, and I’ll get used to it,” Anna tells the two men in her life. “I’ll get a little house somewhere, and make a regular place for you two to come back to - wait and see.” Wilson’s delivery of these lines somehow transforms them into as heroic a declaration as I’ve heard any character make on a stage this year. What a great performance.

Would you see number nine (Rattigan’s Nijinsky) again?
Once was sufficient for this one.

What was the worst thing about number ten (The Deep Blue Sea)?
Nothing springs to mind. A lovely production all round.

Which was best?
In order of preference: Anna Christie, The Golden Dragon, Korczak, The Deep Blue Sea, Bernarda Alba.

Which was worst?
I was disappointed in The Kitchen, overall, and didn’t really enjoy Rattigan’s Nijinsky very much.

Did any make you cry?
Korczak, Anna Christie, The Deep Blue Sea, and The Golden Dragon.

Did any make you laugh?
The Madness of George III, The Conspirators, The Golden Dragon.

Which roles would you like to play in any of them?
Mysterious Mr. Miller in The Deep Blue Sea will do.

Which one did you have the best seats for?
Front row for The Golden Dragon and Bernarda Alba.