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Frankenstein by Mary Shelley and Some Other Thoughts

12/5/2016

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I am sometimes appalled to hear educators declare that teaching the classics of English literature in our schools  should be abandoned because they hold no relevance for modern children.  I firmly believe that anyone who truly wishes to understand the development of language and writing needs  to possess a firm grasp of of our literary heritage.  The famous quotation from Sir Isaac Newton to Robert Hooke acknowledging his indebtedness to others, “If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of giants,” can be applied to any discipline just as easily as science. There would be no detective/thriller genre if Wilkie Collins hadn’t created books like The Woman in White and The Moonstone (just imagine what prime-time TV would ever have done then, even more reality and game shows perhaps?), without H Rider Haggard there would be no Lost World genre (Tarzan would still be apeing about in the jungle and there would be no Jurassic Park!). If John Polidori’s The Vampyre hadn’t influenced Bram Stoker, then there may never have been a Dracula, and Stephen King wouldn’t have written Salem’s Lot. The whole Fantasy genre basically stems from the pen of one man, J R R Tolkien, who had himself been inspired by the Norse myths. On a personal note, I most definitely couldn’t have written Niedermayer & Hart or Roadrage without  following the bright trails that lead back to their many rich sources.  Anyone who claims total originality is I think deluding themselves. However, there is a big difference between following themes or traditions and direct, deliberate plagiarism.

I’ve just read Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein or, the Modern Prometheus, for the first time (published 1818 - and acknowledging its debt to Greek mythology in the title). It is of course the original mad scientist scenario that has since become a stalwart of just about every form of popular culture.  The story, then not a hundred years old, first made it to the cinema screens as far back as 1910 - we just love to be horrified! The book might be loosely classified as science fiction too, and its influence on art and literature has been incredibly far-reaching. As a novel it most certainly deserves its classic status.  The book’s basic premise of man taking on the role of God has cross-bred with other genres: combine a mad scientist and lost world theme and you get Jurassic Park, mix mad science that creates computers who themselves create horrific human-like machines and you have the Terminator series, perhaps even Tolkien had something of the book in mind when he has Saruman create the Uruk-Hai.

Mary Shelley was born Mary Godwin in 1797, the daughter of  the feminist writer Mary Wollstonecraft and writer and journalist William Godwin. Her mother died soon after she was born, and Mary received no formal education and doesn’t seem to have taken very well to her step-mother. She began an affair with the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley when still a teenager and eloped with him to the (then war-torn) Continent.  She began writing Frankenstein in 1816 whilst holidaying on Lake Geneva ; by this time she had lost her first baby and had given birth to a son (sadly not to survive either). They were assailed by weeks of rain, and their chum Lord Byron suggested to the group of friends present, that they each compose a horror story to pass the time. The rest is, as they say, history.

The story is well written and has withstood the test of time. The monster of her tale undertakes to do many cruel and vindictive acts in revenge upon his creator Frankenstein; yet it is the monster who is given the last word in the novel by Shelley, and it is for him that we feel the deepest sympathy. Frankenstein never acknowledges his responsibility as creator, and simply abandons his creation which he finds too abhorrent to even gaze upon. The monster subsequently wanders the world like a lost child receiving only cruelty, unkindness and hatred from mankind who he yearns in his heart to join. Is the monster in this story the creature, or the human ego?

We stand at a point in time where such matters are no longer far-fetched. Whilst our governments can attempt to reassure us that any genetic experiments are only carried out with the utmost care and with every attention paid to what is both morally and ethically right ... we know too that once the genie is out of the bottle ...

I wrote a blog some time back that was based on the National Theatre’s production of Frankenstein.

And on a lighter note - one of my favourite comedy films, Young Frankenstein.

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Radio Four

17/4/2016

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​I've been decorating over the past week or so - trying to catch up with the stuff I pretend isn't waiting to be done when I'm busy writing. I'm not a great fan of the paintbrush, if the truth be told, however, I have been grateful for the opportunity to listen in to more on the radio. When I say radio I am naturally referring to BBC Radio 4. We generally wake up to Radio 3, the classical station, as the other half dislikes opening her eyes (ears!) to the full-on confrontation that is the Today news programme on 4.

The variety of programmes on Radio 4 is always astonishing, and as someone who rarely watches television I think I'd happily pay my BBC licence fee for this service alone, which has managed to both educate and entertain me over many years. If only I could write and listen to radio programmes at the same time! Alas, during periods of writing the radio has to be switched off until I break at lunchtime (here I must confess to having been hooked into the Helen & Rob marital abuse storyline of late in Radio Four’s daily soap The Archers!).  I've really enjoyed some of the drama offerings, especially Killing Time by Peter Jukes, starring Lenny Henry, and The Clerks' Room by Janice Okoh, plus a number of one-off plays and some serials like Home Front, about the First World War, which relates itself to a day exactly a hundred years ago. But the Radio 4 diet is completely omnivorous, and this week I've also particularly relished hearing Thinking Allowed and The Media Show.

There is one fifteen minute programme that I've found immensely engaging though, and I'm so glad I didn't miss any of it: Free Speech, written and presented by Timothy Garton Ash. Basically this is a series of essays on a subject I truly believe we should all feel passionate about - the hard won right to express ourselves without prejudice. This is a terrific short series and I can highly recommend listening to it.

So, mostly thanks to BBC Radio, the decorating has been getting along nicely and relatively pain-free!

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Behind the Beautiful Forevers

21/3/2015

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It has been a little while since our last outing to watch a play under the NT Live banner, and it’s probably true to say that a theatre piece set in the slums of Mumbai didn’t immediately get me racing for a seat - the clincher was probably the fact it had been dramatised by David Hare. His play, Behind the Beautiful Forevers, is based on American Pulitzer Prize-winner Katherine Boo’s non-fiction work of the same title. Katherine Boo, married to a man with Indian citizenship, spent three years gaining the trust of the people whose lives she sought to record for her book.

She focused on the men, women and children who are forced to live by their wits in Annawadi, a makeshift slum area close to Mumbai airport and its adjacent luxury hotels . It has a large sewage lake lying just beside it, and when you look at photographs of the place it’s hard to believe how the structures, so far from any concept of vertical, can ever stay upright. The people here collect the rubbish discarded by those who live in the other Mumbai with its billionaires and global ambitions. I can’t speak for the book because I haven’t read it, although it is now most certainly on my To Read list.

The play reminded me of the kind of work we were regularly presented with on British TV in the 60s and 70s through slots like Play for Today. Thank God for NT Live and subsidised theatre, because how else could such a large-scale production be possible? TV it seems to me has largely given up its remit of educating its audience in this way. David Hare’s writing is seamless, as was Rufus Norris’s direction - there were times when I actually forgot I was watching a piece of theatre; the set design lighting and production were all top-notch as was the ensemble playing of an excellent British Asian cast. It was unremittingly dark at moments as it depicted the desperate lives of these men, women and children who exist by their wits in this often truly grim place.

As we left the Odeon Tunbridge Wells and drove home in our nice car to our comfortable home we still felt shocked and perhaps a little bit ashamed that such places as Annawadi exist in this world that we are all supposed to share - well, we are, aren’t we?

Definitely worth seeing if you get a chance. There is another NTLive transmission on 2 April, and the last performance of the play is at the National Theatre on 5 May.


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A Trip to Wales and Another Good Welshman

4/3/2015

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The wife and I spent the weekend in Wales - most appropriate of course, to be back home for St David’s Day! We stayed with a newly reacquainted long-lost relative in Cardiff. One of my first engagements as a professional actor was for a theatre company, long defunct, based in Cardiff, called the Welsh Drama Company. I enjoyed working in the city then and have continued to do so whenever work or play have taken me back there. It has continued to improve as a city. When I worked there initially the magnificent St David’s Hall was simply a building site and the whole shopping area around it was in the process of being redeveloped. A great deal of Cardiff was rather grey, just as much of post-industrialised Britain looked back then. Its heyday as a port, at one time one of the world’s largest exporters of coal, was past, and this once economically vigorous city was struggling to find a new role for itself in the world. Of course Cardiff  has seen many more great building projects since the late Seventies, including the redevelopment of the whole Bay Area which includes the Welsh Assembly Building and the Millenium Centre. And of course our national passion (bordering on obsession) for the game of rugby is now catered for at the magnificent Millenium Stadium, right in the heart of the city.

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Any visitor entering Cardiff’s Queen Street from the Castle end is met by the statue of Aneurin Bevan (1897 - 1960), or Nye as he’s more affectionately remembered in Wales. He was born and raised in the valleys town of Tredegar, the son of a coal miner. He left school to work in the pits himself at the age of thirteen, where he soon became active in the trade union movement, which sent him to Central Labour College in London. It was here that he gained in confidence as a speaker and began to overcome the stammer that he had been afflicted with since childhood. In 1929 he stood and became elected as the Labour MP for Ebbw Vale, and he was to remain in this seat for the next thirty-one years until his early death. He is perhaps best remembered as the founder of the National Health Service, which became fully operational on the 5 July 1948. He defined a civilised society as one that takes care of its weak and vulnerable. Those of us who have grown up in a happy time where health care was provided unquestioningly by the state have Nye Bevan to thank for this. The National Health Service wasn’t born without suffering the pangs of childbirth and was vehemently opposed by the Conservative Party, the British Medical Association and by some in Bevan’s own Labour Party.

The National Health Service is, we are currently told by too many of its workers to be just scare-mongering, splitting at its seams. It is one of the finest institutions this country has, and we would all be far poorer for its loss. I for one will almost certainly be considering it as one of the foremost issues to be considered when the time comes for me to cast my vote in the general election in May. My Great Aunt Mary had lived almost sixty years before the National Health Service and the Welfare State were fully in place for the protection of all British citizens. I was often amused as a young boy when she expressed her darkest fear of ending up in the workhouse - it seemed preposterous to me then; workhouses belonged to the world of Oliver Twist and Charles Dickens! Actually, the workhouse system was only abolished in 1930. But the kind of poverty experienced by the working classes of the past isn’t possible today, is it? Again, I am reminded of Food Banks and the 900,000 British people forced to resort to them last year.

In 2004 Aneurin Bevan was voted No 1 by the people of Wales in a poll to name 100 great Welsh men and women. After my recent visit to Wales, and seeing as it’s customary for this blog to present to its readers a Good Welshman or Welshwoman on St David’s Day - I give you Nye Bevan: “The National Health service and the Welfare State have come to be used as interchangeable terms, and in the mouths of some people as terms of reproach. Why this is so it is not difficult to understand, if you view everything from the angle of a strictly individualistic competitive society. A free health service is pure Socialism and as such it is opposed to the hedonism of capitalist society.”


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The Sky is Overcast

19/2/2015

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PictureChallenging teenage behaviour in South Wales
I met someone yesterday who had formerly been a scene-painter in the world of theatre. I immediately expressed my great enthusiasm for the scene-painter’s craft. I imagine the scene-painter’s role has changed considerably over time, and I guess the real heyday of scene painting as an art must have been the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, before the advent of television, when music hall and repertory theatres were attended with a regularity that can only be dreamed of by people working in live theatre today.

My own first experience as a scene painter was as a teenager at my local youth club in Gorseinon, near Swansea, in Wales. The director of our pot-boiler play The Sky is Overcast, which had been entered in a one-act play competition amongst Glamorganshire Youth Clubs, was a lovely chap called Howell Edwards. He’d heard somehow that I was safe with a paintbrush and so I got drafted in to paint the fairly straightforward box set as well as playing a character in the play. The story was set in occupied France during World War II and concerned a dastardly German plot to parachute in a spy purporting to be an RAF officer but whose real aim was to infiltrate the French resistance. I remember doing the set painting very fast and extremely broadly using really bold brush strokes.

The part I played in The Sky is Overcast by playwright Anthony Booth (not to be confused with T Blair’s Father in law) was that of a very unpleasant SS Officer whose name I now forget. However, what I most certainly couldn’t have forgotten is the fact that when the costumes arrived in a wicker trunk from costumiers Bermans and Nathans in London, mine wasn’t among them! Yikes! There wasn’t enough time to get another costume sent, so Howell went to a fancy-dress shop in Swansea and picked up the kind of Nazi uniform some people might wear to a silly eighteenth birthday party! The aim of this costume was clearly to be funny rather than authentic. Take a look at the picture of me above at fifteen threatening my mother (Mam looks about as terrified as she’d be if mauled by a King Charles Spaniel named Cindy). I don’t know how he did it - hypnotism perhaps - Howell managed to convince me that nobody in the audience would probably even notice it wasn’t a proper uniform.

The night of the competition, which took place in the Little Theatre, Aberdare, arrived. I come originally from Aberdare so I was even fielding a few family members in the audience. I had a big powerful entrance set up with the characters on stage rushing about nervously announcing that my approach to the house was imminent. There came a loud rap on the door, centre stage. My friend Paul Davies, taking the main part in the play, went to the aforementioned door and drew it open, only to reveal me in my fancy-dress Hitler. It was an entrance designed to bring hush and awe, but when the people of Aberdare saw what I was wearing, there was just a huge, spontaneous guffaw of laughter. It was the theatrical equivalent of Benny Hill’s Ernie the Milkman making an impromptu guest appearance as the ghost in Hamlet.

Anyway, teenage chutzpah got us through on the night. And things worked out well in the end: we won the cup for best production, the main adjudicator gave me a special mention for a good performance despite a bad entrance she said was beyond my control, and perhaps most unexpectedly of all, we won the prize for the best set.

The Youth Club took us all out to a posh hotel in Llandeilo for a slap-up meal to celebrate. Happy days!


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The Crucible by Arthur Miller

10/12/2014

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I first read Arthur Miller’s play The Crucible when I was in my late teens, and it has remained one of my favourite plays ever since, even though I had yet to actually witness a production of it. Actors tend to view the passing of the years in a different way to other folk: once we pass age-milestones upon life’s track we have to (sometimes reluctantly) accept that certain roles have passed us by -  Hamlet of course, Lopakhin (The Cherry Orchard), Khlestakov (The Government Inspector), to name but three. I don’t really act anymore, so don’t feel this problem too acutely, although watching The Crucible for the first time last week, revived in me a small but poignant sense of regret - the part of John Proctor had always been very high on my ‘to play before I’m forty’ list. Alas, not to be. 

The play is set in Salem, Massachusetts during its infamous witch hunt and trials of 1692/3. The Crucible received its first performance in 1953 and is a partly fictionalised account of the mass hysteria that ran amok and took control of the Puritan communities in the Massachusetts Bay Colonies when fear and superstition overtook common sense and villagers accused their neighbours, sometimes through sheer malice perhaps, of witchcraft. Miller uses the play as an allegory for the spectre of McCarthyism and its dreaded blacklisting of suspected communists. Miller himself would later be called upon to testify before the House of Representatives’ Committee on Un-American Activities, where he was convicted of ‘contempt of Congress’ for refusing to identify others who had been at meetings he’d attended. 

This production of The Crucible, directed by Yaël Farber, aired at The Old Vic over the summer and we were fortunate enough to view it in a Digital Theatre broadcast at our local Odeon Cinema. This really was a marvellous production, absolutely riveting, despite a first half lasting for two hours (it was only my bladder had attention span problems, honest!). Reviewers have used adjectives like visceral and scorching to describe Ms Farber’s production and it’s not difficult to appreciate why these descriptions are quite apt. From the very opening scene we witness a community consumed by fear of the supernatural, ready to abandon good judgement and common sense. It is a powerhouse production that repeatedly drives home a heavy punch; its blistering effect upon the senses of this observer and his companions, sent us staggering homeward emotionally wrung-out and quite stunned. We felt affected by the force of the drama for some days afterwards. I understand it is nominated for a number of awards, which I can only anticipate it has a great chance of winning. I tend not to list names (very appropriately considering the play!), but if you’re fortunate enough to catch a recording of this great production I’m certain you’ll agree with me that the acting all round is excellent. And without wishing to diminish in any way the performances of the male cast, my wife and I both felt that the quality of acting from the female cast was really quite exceptional. 

It strikes me as a very good time indeed to revive this play, to reacquaint ourselves with its warnings; especially seeing as we have recently entered a new era where liberally-minded democratic governments like our own have seen fit, in light of the perceived threat from our enemies, to withdraw some of our legal rights. I recently heard a balanced commentator on BBC Radio point out that newly-assumed surveillance and arrest measures, ostensibly taken to defend us from the extremists who would wish to harm us, might equally, if we should ever be unfortunate enough to discover ourselves under the control of a less than benign authority, make ordinary life in our country very uncomfortable. Miller’s play calls us to seek truth and justice, to require an impartial legal system and to demand nothing less than the due processes of the law; after all, in the end it’s all that stands between us as free individuals and the rule of despots. 

Definitely see this production if at all possible.


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Medea

10/9/2014

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Last week we went to see Medea in the NT Live series at our local Odeon Cinema. This was a new translation of the Euripides play by Ben Power, with Helen McCrory playing the title role. She is a fabulous actress and this, I thought, was an excellent production directed by Carrie Cracknell. It’s a play I happen to know well, having played the part of Jason myself in a production about twenty years back. However, taking part isn’t the same as watching - it was wonderful to actually be seeing the play for the first time! It is still, even after two and a half thousand years, deeply involving as a piece of theatre, and it is hard to believe that Euripides only took third place for penning it at the Dionysia Festival of 431 BC. The supporting cast, choreography, movement, set design and presentation in this production are all excellent.

Many things about this production were very similar to the one I was involved in: both adopted a modern setting; both came down firmly on the side of Medea and the injustice of being cast aside by Jason. I discussed some of these concepts with an octogenarian actor at the time of my production, who didn’t find the updating of the play wholly to his taste,”Where were the robes?” he complained. And it’s only years later, after witnessing the play from an audience’s perspective, that I understand what he meant - he wasn’t simply complaining about the costumes! Last Thursday, Judith and I left the auditorium in total agreement that we had just seen a first class piece of theatre. However, later on we found that neither of us was somehow as deeply affected as we might have expected to have been after witnessing the atrocious act of filicide commited by Medea in her terrifying revenge upon Jason for his cowardly betrayal of her love. Why, we had to ask ourselves, were we not as moved as we have often been after watching many other tragic dramas?

I feel many of our theatre productions strive too hard to give plays from an earlier age a contemporary ‘feel’. Personally, I think we are wrong to take Euripides’ universality as a writer as unshakeable proof that he was some kind of proto-feminist. He definitely sympathised, I think, with the plight of women in Greek society; as well, I suspect as understanding Medea’s vulnerability as an immigrant living in what was to her a foreign land; we can appreciate her pain at being suddenly cast aside, despite her love and devotion, by an ambitious self-serving husband. Let’s face it, Jason is a rat and Euripides makes this very plain for us to see. But something I think we must also bear in mind is that Euripides’ audience was entirely male - no women were present at the Dionysia Festival - so perhaps he is making them look at their responsibilities. Maybe this didn’t go down too well, which is why he only came third?

However, we are in great danger I think when we attempt to turn a classical text into kitchen sink drama. We should not forget that in the original Euripides play, Medea, after witnessing the devastation she has wrought upon her faithless husband by murdering their children, not to mention Jason’s bride-to-be Glauce and Creon the king, exits the stage bearing the dead bodies of her sons in a fiery chariot belonging to the sun God Helios. She is an accomplished practitioner of the dark arts; Medea isn’t new to atrocity, she has already killed her own brother and betrayed her own people to help Jason steal the Golden Fleece. Let’s not forget either that these ancient ‘myths’, as they are to us, were a religion to the Greeks; they are their Bible stories if you will. Medea has always struck me as an archetype, the goddess Kali perhaps comes close; Ayesha in Rider Haggard’s She strikes a similar note. The female archetype is creative, loving and devoted, yet once forsaken by him she once loved with a devotion verging on the fanatical, can become as equally terrifying and unforgiving in her malevolence and hatred; by poisoning Jason’s new wife and destroying his royal aspirations, then murdering their children, Medea has, by the end of the play, utterly obliterated any possible future he may have aspired to; it is an unimaginably terrible revenge.

Anyway, just my thoughts. This is a great production and it is well worth seeing.


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Ghosts 'n' Stuff

6/7/2014

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It’s been a busy week for us Johnsons

We went to see a digitally recorded performance of the recent acclaimed Almeida Theatre production of Ibsen’s Ghosts, skilfully adapted and directed by Richard Eyre. It is a wonderful play about the power of the past to return and haunt the living with its unresolved bitter truths and hidden lies.  An appropriate theme indeed at a time when so many loved and trusted British celebrities have been lately exposed for their sordid past behaviour.

In Ghosts, Ibsen, the great nineteenth-century exponent of naturalism, remains true to the unities of Greek Theatre (Action, Place, Time), as his play unfolds and its characters unravel within the space of a day and night. He was without any shadow of doubt a tremendous playwright, commanding an ability to drive his audience along with a force as irresistible as a steam locomotive.  What may at first seem to be little more than a domestic drawing room saga, set in the  comfortable provincial home of Helene Alving  with her liberal ideals, soon has power to make the jaw drop. The past and its ‘sins’ return, leaving a trail of torment and destruction in their wake.  Judging from the collective exhalation that came from the audience as the lights dimmed on the cinema screen - this play still packs a very powerful punch even a hundred and thirty years after it was written. The cast were all excellent, however, Lesley Manville was utterly marvellous as Helene Alving, and thoroughly deserved her Olivier award.  I think her performance, its truthfulness, integrity and total lack of theatricality, has to rank as one of the very finest I have ever witnessed.  Here’s a link to the West End Theatre Series website - some cinema performances are still available. Do not hesitate if it’s possible to see a reprise showing of this.

Judith and I spent last weekend in Cardiff. Since my mother passed away eighteen months ago now, we like to pay a visit home every few months when the feeling of ‘hiraeth’ (longing is closest to the word’s meaning) becomes compelling. “We loves the ‘Diff!” We met up for coffee with a long-lost cousin, last seen when he was thirteen and I was eleven. We’re all chatterboxes and a couple of strong coffees didn’t inhibit any of our tongues any. We had a lovely time!

Then I returned home to the cellar and the great effort I’m engaged in down there. I love a difficult task, although after our busy weekend I did feel rather despondent by Tuesday after realising I had made a mistake the previous day and needed to take another day to undo everything it had achieved. Ah well, I got over it and was smiling again by the end of the week - especially after receiving, completely out of the blue, no less than four new 5* reviews for Roadrage in as many days! All were, as always, greatly appreciated - two of these pieces were so marvellously succinct I hope you’ll forgive my indulgence by including them in this blog post:

“I found this book by chance and it is a riveting read. Fantastic characters, fantastic plot and I would highly recommend to all. Brilliant.” - left on Amazon UK

and

“Brilliant storyline. A must read.” - left on Goodreads

Pretty good, huh?


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The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time

24/5/2014

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The title The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time chosen by Mark Haddon for his hugely successful novel comes from a remark made by Sherlock Holmes to his trusty pal Watson in the story Silver Blaze. Haddon’s novel is about a fifteen year old autistic boy who takes it upon himself to solve the mystery of who murdered a neighbour’s dog. I enjoyed the book immensely at the time I read it, as did a couple of million other readers - but I can’t honestly say I raved about the novel - I just gave it a strong ‘like’. However, I absolutely loved the National Theatre production which we watched on Thursday evening at our local cinema in its NTLive strand! The show, adapted with skill and sensitivity from the Haddon book by Simon Stephens, was truly exceptional. And watching theatre of this calibre made me definitely wish I’d seen it performed live at the National. This is the one real drawback of pre-recorded or even live-screened theatre, you never quite experience that intimacy, the tangible thrill you get from actually being there - close to the actors and action. At the end of the screening, there is inevitably a certain sense of disconnection, especially on occasions like the performance we watched when the cast were given a standing ovation - you are a voyeur rather than an active participant. But I’m not complaining, it is great to see such stupendous work, even if one-step removed from it.

Everything about this production, staged in the round and directed by Marianne Elliott, deserves praise: design, lighting, movement, sound, and of course the excellent ensemble acting. Being presented in the round, it has little physical set to speak of, but believe me it really works; you will most certainly feel sympathy for the play’s fifteen year old hero as he makes his way across London, goes up escalators for the first time, is forced to enter crowded commuter trains, and you will definitely fear for his life when a tube train hurtles towards him! This really is a piece of magical theatre and deserves the praise already heaped in large quantities upon it. It was nominated in eight categories at last year’s Olivier awards and actually won in seven, including the coveted Best Actor award for its leading actor Luke Treadaway and Best New Play. This NTLive encore screening is still doing the rounds throughout May/June; the play resumes in London in June, after rain damage to the theatre forced it to close suddenly; it starts its Broadway run in September; also, a UK and Ireland tour in December.

Definitely one to catch!


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King Lear

2/5/2014

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King Lear is a Shakespearean tragedy I’m quite familiar with, having watched numerous productions over the years on both stage and screen. It is a monumental play, and it is a testimony to Shakespeare’s greatness and universality as a playwright that this four hundred year old melodrama concerning familial loyalty and betrayal, can bear so many incarnations. The play’s themes are as valid today as they were back in the earliest years of the seventeenth century when it was written. 

The drama unfolds as a direct consequence of Lear’s blind arrogance and failure to either hear or accept the truth. At the play’s start he rashly commends and generously rewards his two honey-tongued and avaricious daughters, Goneril and Regan, whilst at the same time banishing his honest child Cordelia. The character of Gloucester too, rejects his good and faithful son Edgar after believing without making appropriate investigation the lies of his scheming bastard son, the evil Edmund. These knee-jerk actions on Gloucester’s part mirror Lear’s earlier foolishness. Blindness is a motif that runs throughout the play: Gloucester only sees his own errors clearly once he has been made physically blind, and at the play’s start Lear, we observe, is blinded by his own vanity. Lear’s not simply just a father though, he is also a king, therefore his mistakes have far-reaching consequences; his foolish actions create an opportunity for evil to thrive in his kingdom, unleashing civil war upon his land and people. Shakespeare is warning us against having too much pride, reminding us to see the world and our role and place in it, right-sized. At the end, the stage littered with corpses, Lear makes his final entrance bearing the dead Cordelia in his arms, by this time fully contrite with humility. It is a moral tale about the wielding of temporal power and human folly - "Thou shouldst not have been old till thou hadst been wise".

Last night we went to see the NT Live production of King Lear with Simon Russell Beale in the title role. Beale is a highly accomplished actor, always a beautiful interpreter of Shakespeare, and his performance did not disappoint. Yet this is not in my opinion a great production of the play, although I must also say, I enjoyed it immensely. However, I didn’t feel that all the casting choices, or the direction, were always delivering or giving Simon Russell Beale the support necessary to make this a truly outstanding production. Despite this criticism, many of the performances were spot-on and I was particularly impressed by, Stanley Townsend as Kent, Stephen Boxer as Gloucester, Kate Fleetwoood as Goneril, Richard Clothier as Albany, and last but not least, Adrian Scarborough as The Fool.


Therefore in my view, certainly very good - with some reservations. But then, any production of a Shakespeare tragedy that can keep its audience sustained through a two hour first half has to be worth seeing - as this was.



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