Six years ago Stuart and I were lucky enough to see Debbie Reynolds perform live on the London stage. She was fantastic. This is what I wrote about it at the time.
Debbie Reynolds: Alive and Fabulous...
To kick off our anniversary week Stu and I went to see Debbie Reynolds in her Alive and Fabulous show at the Apollo Theatre in London's glitzy West End.
I've not laughed at the theatre so much for ages. She was very, very funny.
The show consisted of a mix of anecdotes, chatting to the audience, showing us film clips and singing. OK, her voice perhaps wasn't quite what it was but she is seventy-eight. Here are some of the things I remember from the show:-
"Thank you for coming. No one here is under fifty. Not unless someone over fifty bought you. Anyway, it was nice of you to come and see me before I die."
"I was born Mary." (Whoops from man in audience). "Oh, are you a Mary too, dear."
"I won a beauty competition at sixteen - I wanted to win the first prize; a scarf and a blouse. I ended up getting a contract at Warner Brothers."
"My first husband Eddie Fisher left me for Liz Taylor - she being three months older than me. I warned him that she'd dump him after fifteen months - and she did!"
"I'm Princess Leia's mother - that makes me a Queen... (eyes front row)... are you all Queens too?"
She showed many film clips such as 'Singing' in the Rain' and 'The Unsinkable Molly Brown' and sang along to all of the songs.
She told a dirty joke: A woman was at a party and said, "If any one can guess what's in my hand they can sleep with me". A man calls out, "an elephant?" The woman says, "close enough!"
She did a lovely 1940s melody and even did a rap to Three Little Fishes and did a bit of Beyoncé's Single Ladies (Put a Ring on It). Stu almost wet himself laughing.
"How do I look from up there?", she asked the balcony. "From down here (pointing to the front row again) I look like Lady Gaga."
She did some spot-on impressions too; Mae West, Jimmy Steward, Ethel Merman, Katharine Hepburn and Bette Davis among others and regaling each with stories from her days in Hollywood. Nice to have someone take the piss who actually knew the originals.
"Judy Garland and I were great friends. I'd put Carrie and Todd to bed and she'd put Liza, Lorna and Joey to bed and I'd go over to Judy's house for a drink. Then we'd wake Liza up and give her some!"
Her impression of Barbara Streisand was something to behold though. She looked, sounded and joked just like her. And it was very, very funny.
All in all Debbie Reynolds is a non-stop all-round old-school entertainer. Real show-biz, with all the razzmatazz of Hollywood. She obviously never wants to leave the stage. Always wanting to be in the spot-light. But it's a spot-light that casts a very long shadow. And I can't imagine how tough it must be having to walk in that shadow all your life (yes, I looking at you Carrie Fisher).
Quote Of The Day
"Victory goes to the player who makes the next-to-last mistake - Chessmaster Savielly Grigorievitch Tartakower (1887-1956)"
Thursday, December 29, 2016
Wednesday, December 28, 2016
Tuesday, December 27, 2016
RIP George Michael...
The last time we saw George Michael live was in 2012. Such a loss. But fond memories of such a great musician.
Friday, December 23, 2016
Thursday, December 22, 2016
A Fireman, a Systems Analyst and a Playwright Walk Into a Bar...
Great night out with the Daves - Dave Eldridge and Dave Marshall - last night in the Old Queen's Head PH.
Wednesday, December 21, 2016
Death Knows No Season...
Last night Stuart and I went to see funny guy David Sedaris along with the BBC Symphony Orchestra perform a show entitled Death Knows No Season at the Barbican Hall in London's brutalist Barbican Centre.
Conducted by Giancario Guerrero we were treated to a few Christmas orchestral pieces interlaced with some stories old and new from Master Sedaris.
Nuit of the Living Dead went down best not least because it contained the drowning of a mouse, graveyard zombies (French), and a dead burglar stuck up a chimney.
Conducted by Giancario Guerrero we were treated to a few Christmas orchestral pieces interlaced with some stories old and new from Master Sedaris.
Nuit of the Living Dead went down best not least because it contained the drowning of a mouse, graveyard zombies (French), and a dead burglar stuck up a chimney.
Tuesday, December 20, 2016
Peter and The Gang...
Stuart and I had a lovely Xmas meal on Sunday with Peter, Todd, Darren, Roger, Stuart, Luca, Steve and The Gang at the Fentiman Arms in Kennington.
Father Christmas was there to deliver the Secret Santa gifts and we ate and drank until the cows came home. Great fun.
Father Christmas was there to deliver the Secret Santa gifts and we ate and drank until the cows came home. Great fun.
Monday, December 19, 2016
Dawn and The Gang...
Dawn and Al are back from Singapore for a while so they, Stu, Lynda, Jo and Jo all met up for a tipple and a bite at Gem on Upper Street.
Great fun was had by all. (We can see you Lynda!)
Great fun was had by all. (We can see you Lynda!)
Friday, December 16, 2016
Rogue One: A Star Wars Story...
(***Mild spoilers***)
The good news about “Rogue One: A Star Wars Story,” the first in a planned series of stand-alone films set in the Star Wars universe, is that the last half-hour of the film is a sustained stretch of rousing action, indelible images and cliffhanger thrills.
The bad news about “Rogue One: A Star Wars Story” is that getting to the good stuff is a slog — and the film is pretty long. The inherent problem in a story about the suicide mission to steal the Death Star plans used to blow up the space station at the end of A New Hope is that we already know how it ends. There’s no suspense, no momentum, no stakes.
Don't get me wrong, I love the main Star Wars films and the TV spinoffs but in Rogue One although bits were ok it was all just a bit boring. I wanted to be excited, but was anything but. Someone walked out at our screening. I yawned and looked at my watch a few times.
It took an hour and a half to get going which for a 2-hour film was just too long to wait.
And when it did get going I didn't really much like the plot or ultimately what happen to the characters to be honest. I think I prefer my Star Wars films to have a driving and surprising plot with strong characters who become heroes and heroines using the Force to fight evil baddies - not trench warfare. There was just too much "Wars" and not enough "Star" for me. The space fights were fun but all too brief.
It was just all too messy, too bleak and too dark for my taste. So dark in fact that often I couldn't see what was happening on the screen.
The comic relief, such as it was, came from K-2SO, the scene-stealing military droid voiced by Alan Tudyk. But his impression of Marvin the Paranoid Android "Life? Don't talk to me about life. Brain the size of a planet..." etc. did little to raise a smile. No one else in the film seemed to smile anyway. They all looked pretty miserable.
And where was the opening title Star Wars text crawl?! Crime! Not even a blast of John Williams’ symphonic score! Sacrilege!
And as for "bringing back" or reanimating characters? They looked OK. But not quite OK enough in my opinion. It was distracting to watch. Their lack of facial movement made them look like Botox models and made me not really listen to what they were saying.
Maybe churning out one new Star Wars film per year is just too much. Or maybe it's just that in my humble opinion this particular story is an unnecessary backfill to a plot point in the mythology whereas I wanted the mythology itself to be extended with new stores in new directions. I wanted A New Hope.
So what I'm really saying is I just don't like prequels!
My Top 5 Star Wars Films
1. Empire Strikes Back
2. A New Hope
3. The Force Awakens
4. Return of the Jedi
5. Rogue One
Thursday, December 15, 2016
Wednesday, December 14, 2016
Essex Christmas...
We were back at The Railway for our Essex Christmas get together last Saturday. And guess who got roped into playing Father Christmas? Or (with John-Paul on the fart machine) Farter Christmas.
The adults laughed their socks off. The kids hated it. Ho ho no.
Tuesday, December 13, 2016
Sky Feature Requests...
I’m fairly new to Sky TV but just wondered if there is a poll somewhere that Sky could run to gauge the most requested features for the various Sky apps / platforms / web sites?
If so here are a few I'd like to add:-
14-day EPG across all platforms
I'm sure this is much requested but I have to put it as my top request
"Never Miss" emails to be for recordable show times only
I get "Never Miss" emails from Sky - great idea - but they sometimes tell me about a show on this very day but next week i.e. in 7 days’ time but the Sky TV guide counts it as 8 days’ time. I got an email today Monday for a show on next Monday but I can't schedule the recording because of the EPG limit.
Discover new programmes as really NEW in the EPG
Some shows have the word NEW in their title but not all. It would be great if there was a proper 'new' flag for programmes that could be used so when you search or you have a series record it could be set to record 'new' programmes - the definition of 'new' to be agreed. Let's say I was to record new showings of The Simpsons but not every single repeat (of which there are many).
Edit Existing Scheduled Series Recordings
On the Sky Q you can see what individual shows are scheduled to be recorded in the next 7 days but you can't seem to list or edit the series links behind them. I have a feeling I have a long list of series links but can't list them do delete or edit unwanted ones so odd programs are being recorded I no longer want.
Create Auto Record Schedules from Search
It would be great to be able to search for a word - say "Arsenal" - channel "Sky Sports" - show type "live" - and save this with an auto record setting. Or say "Brad Pitt" - channel "Sky Movies" etc.
If so here are a few I'd like to add:-
14-day EPG across all platforms
I'm sure this is much requested but I have to put it as my top request
"Never Miss" emails to be for recordable show times only
I get "Never Miss" emails from Sky - great idea - but they sometimes tell me about a show on this very day but next week i.e. in 7 days’ time but the Sky TV guide counts it as 8 days’ time. I got an email today Monday for a show on next Monday but I can't schedule the recording because of the EPG limit.
Discover new programmes as really NEW in the EPG
Some shows have the word NEW in their title but not all. It would be great if there was a proper 'new' flag for programmes that could be used so when you search or you have a series record it could be set to record 'new' programmes - the definition of 'new' to be agreed. Let's say I was to record new showings of The Simpsons but not every single repeat (of which there are many).
Edit Existing Scheduled Series Recordings
On the Sky Q you can see what individual shows are scheduled to be recorded in the next 7 days but you can't seem to list or edit the series links behind them. I have a feeling I have a long list of series links but can't list them do delete or edit unwanted ones so odd programs are being recorded I no longer want.
Create Auto Record Schedules from Search
It would be great to be able to search for a word - say "Arsenal" - channel "Sky Sports" - show type "live" - and save this with an auto record setting. Or say "Brad Pitt" - channel "Sky Movies" etc.
Monday, December 12, 2016
The Red Shoes...
Last Friday night Stuart and I went to see The Red Shoes at the Sadler’s Wells Theatre in London's glitzy Islington.
This most recent of Matthew Bourne's works is perhaps not his best but certainly worth a visit. Kate Bush thought so anyway!
Based on the 1948 Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger film which itself was based upon the Hans Christian Andersen fairy tale The Red Shoes is a story of obsession.
Vicky is an aspiring ballet dancer whose leap forward from the back row to that of prima ballerina catches the eye of Boris, the ruthless but charismatic impresario of the Ballet Lermontov.
However, Vicky's heart lies with young composer Julian and a bitter love triangle ensues.
Julian writes a new ballet for Vicky called "The Red Shoes" which is a big hit. Only the obsession with which her character wears the ill-fated red shoes in the ballet seems to be bleeding into real life too. An obsession that will have fatal consequences.
Good toes, bad toes.
As the story itself is about a ballet dancer inevitably the work has a lot more ballet in it than a contemporary dance show. And this is perhaps it's only weakness. Most of Bourne's works play with subverting traditional ballet clichés and his dance moves are often innovative and witty. Here however his feet are rather tied. As The Red Shoes is about ballet it really does have to contain a lot of traditional ballet in it.
Luckily when the action moves from Monte Carlo to London's East End the humour of the piece is more apparent but despite the auteur's masterly attempts it never reaches the giddy heights of say The Car Man, Swan Lake or Edward Scissorhands.
Good try. Worth a visit.
This most recent of Matthew Bourne's works is perhaps not his best but certainly worth a visit. Kate Bush thought so anyway!
Based on the 1948 Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger film which itself was based upon the Hans Christian Andersen fairy tale The Red Shoes is a story of obsession.
Vicky is an aspiring ballet dancer whose leap forward from the back row to that of prima ballerina catches the eye of Boris, the ruthless but charismatic impresario of the Ballet Lermontov.
However, Vicky's heart lies with young composer Julian and a bitter love triangle ensues.
Julian writes a new ballet for Vicky called "The Red Shoes" which is a big hit. Only the obsession with which her character wears the ill-fated red shoes in the ballet seems to be bleeding into real life too. An obsession that will have fatal consequences.
Good toes, bad toes.
As the story itself is about a ballet dancer inevitably the work has a lot more ballet in it than a contemporary dance show. And this is perhaps it's only weakness. Most of Bourne's works play with subverting traditional ballet clichés and his dance moves are often innovative and witty. Here however his feet are rather tied. As The Red Shoes is about ballet it really does have to contain a lot of traditional ballet in it.
Luckily when the action moves from Monte Carlo to London's East End the humour of the piece is more apparent but despite the auteur's masterly attempts it never reaches the giddy heights of say The Car Man, Swan Lake or Edward Scissorhands.
Good try. Worth a visit.
Friday, December 09, 2016
Rent...
Last night Stuart and I went to see the opening night of New York set musical Rent at the St James Theatre in London's (soon to be) glitzy (when is it going to be finished) Victoria.
Synopsis: Surprisingly good, spirited performances of the Jonathan Larson's classic rock (La Bohème inspired) musical. A bit dated but great fun. Angel steals the show.
Now, we've seen some pretty rubbish things over the years at the St James Theatre (yes, we're looking at you McQueen). And although Stuart is (or was) a big fan of Rent as a piece of work recent listening to the Original Broadway Cast recordings had rather put him off. I'd never seen the show myself but to be honest when I too listened to the cast recordings I wasn't filled with much hope either. Self-absorbed losers wringing their hands, singing about killing a dog and a cow jumping over the moon? No, thanks.
But how wrong we both were. Our low expectations proved totally unfounded. The admittedly rather dated story of poverty, angst and HIV set in New York City in the 1990 proved to be highly entertaining. It was funny, heart-felt and sexy.
And it was all down to the wonderful cast.
Sure, the setting was fairly standard NYC fayre - the sort of place you might find on Sesame Street with burning braziers, graffiti, discarded supermarket trollies and wrought-iron fire escapes. Sure, the on-set band played excellently. And sure, the sound and lighting were as good as you would expect to see in any West End show.
But it was the cast that made the story come alive. Even the weaker songs were sung with gusto. Bruce Gutherie direction was spot on too with Lee Proud's Hot Gossipy dancing making full use of Anna Fleischle vertical set.
Philippa Stefani's sex and drugs and rock 'n' roll Mimi was the perfect femme fatale match to Ross Hunter's tortured aspiring songwriter Roger. Her set-shaking performance of Out Tonight was excellent.
Ryan O'Gorman played Tom Collins as a sexy beefcake wearing what are probably the tightest pair of jeans I've even seen on stage. It wasn't just my eyes that were bulging. Hubba hubba.
Even Lucie Jones as fly-by-night lesbian singer Maureen made the piss-poor song Over the Moon fun.
Other notable stand-out ensemble songs were the renditions of Rent, La Vie Bohème, and Seasons of Love.
Best song of the night: Tango Maureen as sung by Billy Cullum as jilted Mark and Shanay Holmes as soon to be jilted Joanne.
The absolutely stand out performance of the night though was Layton Williams as Angel. When he sang Today 4 U complete with high-heeled, drag queen back flips it brought the house down and the audience to its feet. Simply sensational.
Go see.
Synopsis: Surprisingly good, spirited performances of the Jonathan Larson's classic rock (La Bohème inspired) musical. A bit dated but great fun. Angel steals the show.
Now, we've seen some pretty rubbish things over the years at the St James Theatre (yes, we're looking at you McQueen). And although Stuart is (or was) a big fan of Rent as a piece of work recent listening to the Original Broadway Cast recordings had rather put him off. I'd never seen the show myself but to be honest when I too listened to the cast recordings I wasn't filled with much hope either. Self-absorbed losers wringing their hands, singing about killing a dog and a cow jumping over the moon? No, thanks.
But how wrong we both were. Our low expectations proved totally unfounded. The admittedly rather dated story of poverty, angst and HIV set in New York City in the 1990 proved to be highly entertaining. It was funny, heart-felt and sexy.
And it was all down to the wonderful cast.
Sure, the setting was fairly standard NYC fayre - the sort of place you might find on Sesame Street with burning braziers, graffiti, discarded supermarket trollies and wrought-iron fire escapes. Sure, the on-set band played excellently. And sure, the sound and lighting were as good as you would expect to see in any West End show.
But it was the cast that made the story come alive. Even the weaker songs were sung with gusto. Bruce Gutherie direction was spot on too with Lee Proud's Hot Gossipy dancing making full use of Anna Fleischle vertical set.
Philippa Stefani's sex and drugs and rock 'n' roll Mimi was the perfect femme fatale match to Ross Hunter's tortured aspiring songwriter Roger. Her set-shaking performance of Out Tonight was excellent.
Ryan O'Gorman played Tom Collins as a sexy beefcake wearing what are probably the tightest pair of jeans I've even seen on stage. It wasn't just my eyes that were bulging. Hubba hubba.
Even Lucie Jones as fly-by-night lesbian singer Maureen made the piss-poor song Over the Moon fun.
Other notable stand-out ensemble songs were the renditions of Rent, La Vie Bohème, and Seasons of Love.
Best song of the night: Tango Maureen as sung by Billy Cullum as jilted Mark and Shanay Holmes as soon to be jilted Joanne.
The absolutely stand out performance of the night though was Layton Williams as Angel. When he sang Today 4 U complete with high-heeled, drag queen back flips it brought the house down and the audience to its feet. Simply sensational.
Go see.
Thursday, December 08, 2016
Wolverhampton Tourism 1972...
"What can you do in Wolverhampton?"
"Nothing."
"Can you think of anywhere nicer to go than Wolverhampton?"
"Majorca."
"It's hardly Monte Carlo but it's quieter than Blackpool.."
News item from ATV Today: 20/06/1972 called "Wolverhampton Holiday Town"
http://www.macearchive.org/Archive/Title/atv-today-20061972-wolverhampton-holiday-town/MediaEntry/1205.html
John Swallow report about a new initiative to attract tourists to the town of Wolverhampton.
John Swallow piece to camera standing in the centre of Wolverhampton (he describes the town and also says that it is his home town).
We then see traffic in the town centre, an industrial canal and a park (some of these shots are mute).
Next, Swallow conducts vox pops asking local people what any potential holidaymakers would find to do in Wolverhampton.
Next we see mute shots of the exterior of the Queen's Ballroom and restaurant, posters for Asian cinema and several signs for bingo halls.
Swallow then interviews Peter Wills about a scheme to attract tourists to Wolverhampton (Wills appears to work for a local hotel although his exact role is not known).
Finally Swallow ends the item with another piece to camera sitting in a deck chair: "It's hardly Monte Carlo but it's quieter than Blackpool.."
"Nothing."
"Can you think of anywhere nicer to go than Wolverhampton?"
"Majorca."
"It's hardly Monte Carlo but it's quieter than Blackpool.."
News item from ATV Today: 20/06/1972 called "Wolverhampton Holiday Town"
http://www.macearchive.org/Archive/Title/atv-today-20061972-wolverhampton-holiday-town/MediaEntry/1205.html
John Swallow report about a new initiative to attract tourists to the town of Wolverhampton.
John Swallow piece to camera standing in the centre of Wolverhampton (he describes the town and also says that it is his home town).
We then see traffic in the town centre, an industrial canal and a park (some of these shots are mute).
Next, Swallow conducts vox pops asking local people what any potential holidaymakers would find to do in Wolverhampton.
Next we see mute shots of the exterior of the Queen's Ballroom and restaurant, posters for Asian cinema and several signs for bingo halls.
Swallow then interviews Peter Wills about a scheme to attract tourists to Wolverhampton (Wills appears to work for a local hotel although his exact role is not known).
Finally Swallow ends the item with another piece to camera sitting in a deck chair: "It's hardly Monte Carlo but it's quieter than Blackpool.."
Wednesday, December 07, 2016
The Great Tower for London...
Here's a scan of 68 bat-shit crazy designs the Victorians proposed for a Great Tower for London. Why? Because Paris just got the Eiffel Tower and we had to do bigger and better. My fave is #6, with the spiral steam train driving up the side. What happened in the end? We got discouraged and gave up - oh, London, don't ever change!
Descriptive illustrated catalogue of the sixty-eight competitive designs for the great tower for London
http://www.archive.org/stream/descriptiveillus00lynd#page/n3/mode/2up
Descriptive illustrated catalogue of the sixty-eight competitive designs for the great tower for London
http://www.archive.org/stream/descriptiveillus00lynd#page/n3/mode/2up
Tuesday, December 06, 2016
Hair...
Last Saturday afternoon Stuart and I travelled all the way up to Manchester to see a production of our favourite musical Hair at the Hope Mill Theatre in decidedly unglitzy Manchester Piccadilly.
Synopsis: Great musical in a small theatre. Dazzling performances Let the Sunshine In.
I was too young to go to the London opening of Hair the first time around but I'm certainly not too old for it now.
It is one of Stuart and my favourite musicals which, for all the show’s structural failings – including an almost complete lack of narrative impetus and coherence – it is sweetly enticing, whatever your age, in this revival by Jonathan O’Boyle. The show benefits enormously from the intimacy of Manchester’s most vibrant new theatre space, which makes the audience feel as if we really are part of this tribe. It’s hard to resist joining in the dancing at the end – although we resisted flinging our clothes off, too.
The piece, which focuses on a group of New York hippies and Vietnam protesters who believe in making love not war, is as daft as a brush. It follows Claude, who can’t decide whether to burn his draft card or just his New York library card and accept his call-up. You can only assume that Gerome Ragni and James Rado were high on something when they wrote the book and lyrics, particularly in the second half’s hallucinogenic trip sequence.
But from the opening song Aquarius all the way through to Let the Sunshine In, which begins almost as a lament and turns into something more optimistic, almost every song in Galt MacDermot’s score is a tuneful cracker. One number – Manchester, England – has added appeal, given the location of this revival, and choreographer William Whelton plays to it wittily with a display of umbrellas that nods to the city’s famed weather.
Unlike Daniel Kramer’s 2005 Gate dreadful revival, which attempted to update the show and turn the Tribe into protesters against the Iraq war, O’Boyle treats it as the period piece it undoubtedly is. But that doesn’t mean it lacks traction, particularly in the light of recent events in the US. When the arrogant, pleasure–obsessed Berger announces, “I’m going to stay high for ever”, you can’t help but be reminded that he is part of the baby boomer generation who reaped the benefits of the economic good times and whose self-interest may have played a part in putting Trump in power. This revival is a lament for lost innocence in more ways than one.
O’Boyle’s production is staged with far more dash than cash, and benefits enormously from a fine onstage band and a thrillingly talented, sweet-voiced cast. Robert Metson brings depth to Claude, torn between conformity and revolt, and Ryan Anderson’s Berger exudes a camp charisma. This is not a show in which anyone really gets a chance to develop a distinctive character, but they differentiate themselves vocally.
That’s particularly true of the female characters, who seem largely untouched by the impact of the women’s liberation movement, but who find their voices in song. Chloe Carrington as Jeanie finds every comic nuance in Air; Shekinah McFarlane is a ball of roaring energy as Dionne; and Laura Johnson, as Shelia, makes her mark with Easy to Be Hard and Let the Sunshine In. It’s shining brightly on Hope Mill.
Synopsis: Great musical in a small theatre. Dazzling performances Let the Sunshine In.
I was too young to go to the London opening of Hair the first time around but I'm certainly not too old for it now.
It is one of Stuart and my favourite musicals which, for all the show’s structural failings – including an almost complete lack of narrative impetus and coherence – it is sweetly enticing, whatever your age, in this revival by Jonathan O’Boyle. The show benefits enormously from the intimacy of Manchester’s most vibrant new theatre space, which makes the audience feel as if we really are part of this tribe. It’s hard to resist joining in the dancing at the end – although we resisted flinging our clothes off, too.
The piece, which focuses on a group of New York hippies and Vietnam protesters who believe in making love not war, is as daft as a brush. It follows Claude, who can’t decide whether to burn his draft card or just his New York library card and accept his call-up. You can only assume that Gerome Ragni and James Rado were high on something when they wrote the book and lyrics, particularly in the second half’s hallucinogenic trip sequence.
But from the opening song Aquarius all the way through to Let the Sunshine In, which begins almost as a lament and turns into something more optimistic, almost every song in Galt MacDermot’s score is a tuneful cracker. One number – Manchester, England – has added appeal, given the location of this revival, and choreographer William Whelton plays to it wittily with a display of umbrellas that nods to the city’s famed weather.
Unlike Daniel Kramer’s 2005 Gate dreadful revival, which attempted to update the show and turn the Tribe into protesters against the Iraq war, O’Boyle treats it as the period piece it undoubtedly is. But that doesn’t mean it lacks traction, particularly in the light of recent events in the US. When the arrogant, pleasure–obsessed Berger announces, “I’m going to stay high for ever”, you can’t help but be reminded that he is part of the baby boomer generation who reaped the benefits of the economic good times and whose self-interest may have played a part in putting Trump in power. This revival is a lament for lost innocence in more ways than one.
O’Boyle’s production is staged with far more dash than cash, and benefits enormously from a fine onstage band and a thrillingly talented, sweet-voiced cast. Robert Metson brings depth to Claude, torn between conformity and revolt, and Ryan Anderson’s Berger exudes a camp charisma. This is not a show in which anyone really gets a chance to develop a distinctive character, but they differentiate themselves vocally.
That’s particularly true of the female characters, who seem largely untouched by the impact of the women’s liberation movement, but who find their voices in song. Chloe Carrington as Jeanie finds every comic nuance in Air; Shekinah McFarlane is a ball of roaring energy as Dionne; and Laura Johnson, as Shelia, makes her mark with Easy to Be Hard and Let the Sunshine In. It’s shining brightly on Hope Mill.
Monday, December 05, 2016
This House...
Last Friday Stuart and I went to see This House at the Garrick Theatre in London's glitzy West End.
The play derives its title from the name given to the House of Commons by MPs. The action takes place in the period in British parliamentary history between the February 1974 general election and the 1979 vote of no confidence in the government of James Callaghan. The play is set in the Palace of Westminster mainly in the offices of the Labour and Tory Chief Whips. Party leaders such as Ted Heath, Harold Wilson, James Callaghan, Jeremy Thorpe and Margaret Thatcher remain offstage characters. The narrative concentrates on the relationships between the two sets of whips (the so-called usual channels), and between the whips, their backbenchers and the members of the minor parties.
It's a sort of Yes Minister on steroids. Like House of Cards but with extra Jokers.
Very funny. Recommended.
Synopsis: Very funny play about untrustworthy, back-stabbing
politicians doing dodgy backroom deals in the 1970s. Like things have changed!
A live rock band play David Bowie songs too - most notably the poignant “Five
Years”.
The play derives its title from the name given to the House of Commons by MPs. The action takes place in the period in British parliamentary history between the February 1974 general election and the 1979 vote of no confidence in the government of James Callaghan. The play is set in the Palace of Westminster mainly in the offices of the Labour and Tory Chief Whips. Party leaders such as Ted Heath, Harold Wilson, James Callaghan, Jeremy Thorpe and Margaret Thatcher remain offstage characters. The narrative concentrates on the relationships between the two sets of whips (the so-called usual channels), and between the whips, their backbenchers and the members of the minor parties.
It's a sort of Yes Minister on steroids. Like House of Cards but with extra Jokers.
Very funny. Recommended.
Friday, December 02, 2016
Dreamgirls...
Last night Stuart, Darren, Mark and I went to see Dreamgirls at the Savoy Theatre in London's glitzy West End.
Synopsis: Great musical. Great production. Amber Riley packs a punch and is outstanding as the wronged Effie White. Just don't call it a show about The Supremes!
The original Broadway production of Dreamgirls in 1981 starred Jennifer Holliday as Effie White and Sheryl Lee Ralph as Deena. It ran for 5 barn-storming years.
The Oscar winning 2006 Dreamgirls film starring Jennifer Hudson as Effie and Beyoncé as Deena made a fortune at the box-office and came away dripping with awards.
For this its West End premiere the musical is being directed and choreographed by Olivier and Tony Award-winning Casey Nicholaw and stars Glee's Amber Riley as Effie White. Abd it's no exaggeration to claim it’s probably the West End's hottest ticket right now.
So expectations were pretty sky high as we took our seats.
But did it deliver? Could it live up to the hype? You betcha! Amber Riley was simply sensational. You couldn't take your eyes off her.
Dreamgirls is based upon the show business aspirations and successes of R&B acts such as The Supremes, The Shirelles, James Brown, Jackie Wilson, and others. Act 1 starts in 1960s. Full-figured lead singer Effie White and best friends, Deena Jones and Lorrell Robinson perform as The Dreamettes at the famous Apollo Theatre talent show. Effie's song writing brother C.C. writes their songs and they catch the eye of used car salesman Curtis Taylor who is determined to make these three black singers household names.
Curtis's first decision is to make Deena the lead singer and consign Effie to singing the oohs and aahs as a backing singer. Effie as the better singer is initially outraged but goes along with it for the time being. Later when they get billed for their first Las Vegas gig as "Deena Jones and the Dreams" Effie has had enough and stands up to them all. They sack her as she belts out the show-stopping "And I Am Telling You I'm Not Going". Wow, what a song!
In the original version Effie was meant to die at the end of the first act but thank goodness the producers changed their minds.
Act 2 starts in 1972 and Deena Jones and the Dreams have become the most successful girl group in the country. Effie's attempt at a solo comeback starting with "I Am Changing" and C.C.'s emotional ballad "One Night Only" initially fares well. However, Curtis steals "One Night Only", makes it into a disco stomper for Deena Jones and the Dreams and attempts to destroy Effie's comeback.
Effie and her lawyer confront Curtis backstage, Deena and Effie reconcile and Denna decides to break up the Dreams to pursue an acting career. At the Dreams' farewell concert, Effie re-joins the group on stage one last time.
It's all great fun. And judging but all the women sitting around us shouting out "Go get him, gurl!" and "You walk out on him, missy!" everyone else loved it as much as we did.
It really was Amber Riley's show though. Her Effie was sublime.
A special mention also needs to go to Adam J. Bernard's Jimmy Early who was fantastic.
My only minor quibble might be that perhaps that Liisi LaFontaine's Deena isn't strong enough for her role as might have been hoped.
Go see.
And the similarities between The Supremes true life events and the plot of the musical? Purely coincidental, surely.
Both the Supremes and the Dreams started off with "ettes" in their group's name. The Supremes were originally the Primettes, the Dreams are shown as starting off as the Dreamettes.
In the beginning, Florence Ballard originally sang lead, just as Effie White does in the musical.
Both the Supremes and the Dreams did background vocals for established recording artists before becoming famous.
Diana Ross was chosen as the lead singer of the Supremes because of her distinctive, softer, commercial voice, just as Deena Jones is chosen as the lead singer of the Dreams.
The storyline of the love affair between Deena Jones and Curtis Taylor Jr. was modelled on Diana Ross and Berry Gordy Jr.'s love affair which eventually led to his emphasis on her career rather than that of the group.
The storyline of Lorrell Robinson and James "Thunder" Early's relationship resembles Mary Wilson's relationships with fellow Motown artists as well as Welsh singer Tom Jones.
Deena Jones is coached to be the spokesperson for the group during press conferences, just as Diana Ross was for the Supremes.
The press was instructed to refer to Diana Ross as "Miss Ross," just as the press is instructed to refer to Deena Jones as "Miss Jones."
As Diana Ross was pushed forward as the star of the Supremes, Florence Ballard became jealous and hostile when she was forced into the background. Effie White reacts in a similar manner when Deena Jones is pushed forward as the star of the Dreams.
Florence Ballard missed performances, recording sessions, allegedly "faked" illnesses, and gained weight, all of which resulted in her being fired from the group in Las Vegas in 1967. The character of Effie White goes through the same experience.
Cindy Birdsong went on to perform with the Supremes the same night Florence Ballard was fired, just as Michelle Morris goes on to perform with the Dreams the same night Effie White is fired.
The Supremes became "Diana Ross & the Supremes" in 1967 while in Las Vegas. The Dreams became "Deena Jones & the Dreams" in 1967 while in Las Vegas.
After Diana Ross left the Supremes in 1970 to pursue other projects such as film work, in 1972 she starred in her first motion picture, the Motown-produced Lady Sings the Blues. The character of Deena Jones leaves the Dreams in 1972 to pursue a career as an actress.
So no similarities then!
Synopsis: Great musical. Great production. Amber Riley packs a punch and is outstanding as the wronged Effie White. Just don't call it a show about The Supremes!
The original Broadway production of Dreamgirls in 1981 starred Jennifer Holliday as Effie White and Sheryl Lee Ralph as Deena. It ran for 5 barn-storming years.
The Oscar winning 2006 Dreamgirls film starring Jennifer Hudson as Effie and Beyoncé as Deena made a fortune at the box-office and came away dripping with awards.
For this its West End premiere the musical is being directed and choreographed by Olivier and Tony Award-winning Casey Nicholaw and stars Glee's Amber Riley as Effie White. Abd it's no exaggeration to claim it’s probably the West End's hottest ticket right now.
So expectations were pretty sky high as we took our seats.
But did it deliver? Could it live up to the hype? You betcha! Amber Riley was simply sensational. You couldn't take your eyes off her.
Dreamgirls is based upon the show business aspirations and successes of R&B acts such as The Supremes, The Shirelles, James Brown, Jackie Wilson, and others. Act 1 starts in 1960s. Full-figured lead singer Effie White and best friends, Deena Jones and Lorrell Robinson perform as The Dreamettes at the famous Apollo Theatre talent show. Effie's song writing brother C.C. writes their songs and they catch the eye of used car salesman Curtis Taylor who is determined to make these three black singers household names.
Curtis's first decision is to make Deena the lead singer and consign Effie to singing the oohs and aahs as a backing singer. Effie as the better singer is initially outraged but goes along with it for the time being. Later when they get billed for their first Las Vegas gig as "Deena Jones and the Dreams" Effie has had enough and stands up to them all. They sack her as she belts out the show-stopping "And I Am Telling You I'm Not Going". Wow, what a song!
In the original version Effie was meant to die at the end of the first act but thank goodness the producers changed their minds.
Act 2 starts in 1972 and Deena Jones and the Dreams have become the most successful girl group in the country. Effie's attempt at a solo comeback starting with "I Am Changing" and C.C.'s emotional ballad "One Night Only" initially fares well. However, Curtis steals "One Night Only", makes it into a disco stomper for Deena Jones and the Dreams and attempts to destroy Effie's comeback.
Effie and her lawyer confront Curtis backstage, Deena and Effie reconcile and Denna decides to break up the Dreams to pursue an acting career. At the Dreams' farewell concert, Effie re-joins the group on stage one last time.
It's all great fun. And judging but all the women sitting around us shouting out "Go get him, gurl!" and "You walk out on him, missy!" everyone else loved it as much as we did.
It really was Amber Riley's show though. Her Effie was sublime.
A special mention also needs to go to Adam J. Bernard's Jimmy Early who was fantastic.
My only minor quibble might be that perhaps that Liisi LaFontaine's Deena isn't strong enough for her role as might have been hoped.
Go see.
And the similarities between The Supremes true life events and the plot of the musical? Purely coincidental, surely.
Both the Supremes and the Dreams started off with "ettes" in their group's name. The Supremes were originally the Primettes, the Dreams are shown as starting off as the Dreamettes.
In the beginning, Florence Ballard originally sang lead, just as Effie White does in the musical.
Both the Supremes and the Dreams did background vocals for established recording artists before becoming famous.
Diana Ross was chosen as the lead singer of the Supremes because of her distinctive, softer, commercial voice, just as Deena Jones is chosen as the lead singer of the Dreams.
The storyline of the love affair between Deena Jones and Curtis Taylor Jr. was modelled on Diana Ross and Berry Gordy Jr.'s love affair which eventually led to his emphasis on her career rather than that of the group.
The storyline of Lorrell Robinson and James "Thunder" Early's relationship resembles Mary Wilson's relationships with fellow Motown artists as well as Welsh singer Tom Jones.
Deena Jones is coached to be the spokesperson for the group during press conferences, just as Diana Ross was for the Supremes.
The press was instructed to refer to Diana Ross as "Miss Ross," just as the press is instructed to refer to Deena Jones as "Miss Jones."
As Diana Ross was pushed forward as the star of the Supremes, Florence Ballard became jealous and hostile when she was forced into the background. Effie White reacts in a similar manner when Deena Jones is pushed forward as the star of the Dreams.
Florence Ballard missed performances, recording sessions, allegedly "faked" illnesses, and gained weight, all of which resulted in her being fired from the group in Las Vegas in 1967. The character of Effie White goes through the same experience.
Cindy Birdsong went on to perform with the Supremes the same night Florence Ballard was fired, just as Michelle Morris goes on to perform with the Dreams the same night Effie White is fired.
The Supremes became "Diana Ross & the Supremes" in 1967 while in Las Vegas. The Dreams became "Deena Jones & the Dreams" in 1967 while in Las Vegas.
After Diana Ross left the Supremes in 1970 to pursue other projects such as film work, in 1972 she starred in her first motion picture, the Motown-produced Lady Sings the Blues. The character of Deena Jones leaves the Dreams in 1972 to pursue a career as an actress.
So no similarities then!
Thursday, December 01, 2016
Netflix and Chill...
Netflix now allowing downloads.
Fab. About time too. Currently downloading box set of The Crown and the latest series of Black Mirror.
Wednesday, November 30, 2016
An Inspector Calls...
Last Friday night Stuart and I went to see An Inspector Calls at the Playhouse Theatre in London's glitzy West End.
(Full disclosure: I've shagged the director so the following views may be well biased, innit.)
Synopsis: High drama and socialist hectoring as the toffs confess all. Sorry did I say "socialist hectoring"? I meant "a scathing critique of the hypocrisies of Victorian/Edwardian English society."
J B Priestley's An Inspector Calls is a thinly-veiled attack on the Upper Classes. So thin in fact that at one point one of the characters breaks the fourth wall to step forward, wag his finger and lecture the audience on the injustices metered out by the privileged few and reiterating the wrongs that we have just witnessed. And it's a bit of a toe-curling moment.
But that aside it's a merry old romp. Hidden inside what appears to be a Wendy House at the back of the stage a posh family are having a celebratory engagement dinner. However, when a mysterious visitor comes a-knocking asking questions each nob in turn let's slip a secret about how they have done someone less well-heeled than themselves a grave misdeed. Giving them each enough rope to hang themselves (and their class) the Inspector gets the toffs to see the error of their ways. Or does he?
It's a fun show with lots of dramatic music, rain, smoke, and a fabulous lurching set. And of course a solid message.
The stylised tone straying perhaps a little too far into melodrama at times but well worth a night out. Shag or no shag.
(Full disclosure: I've shagged the director so the following views may be well biased, innit.)
Synopsis: High drama and socialist hectoring as the toffs confess all. Sorry did I say "socialist hectoring"? I meant "a scathing critique of the hypocrisies of Victorian/Edwardian English society."
J B Priestley's An Inspector Calls is a thinly-veiled attack on the Upper Classes. So thin in fact that at one point one of the characters breaks the fourth wall to step forward, wag his finger and lecture the audience on the injustices metered out by the privileged few and reiterating the wrongs that we have just witnessed. And it's a bit of a toe-curling moment.
But that aside it's a merry old romp. Hidden inside what appears to be a Wendy House at the back of the stage a posh family are having a celebratory engagement dinner. However, when a mysterious visitor comes a-knocking asking questions each nob in turn let's slip a secret about how they have done someone less well-heeled than themselves a grave misdeed. Giving them each enough rope to hang themselves (and their class) the Inspector gets the toffs to see the error of their ways. Or does he?
It's a fun show with lots of dramatic music, rain, smoke, and a fabulous lurching set. And of course a solid message.
The stylised tone straying perhaps a little too far into melodrama at times but well worth a night out. Shag or no shag.
Tuesday, November 29, 2016
Laurent Koscielny vs Rainbow Laces...
Our captain Laurent Koscielny wore a rainbow-coloured captain's band at the game yesterday in support of the 🌈 laces campaign. Nice man. #proud
Monday, November 28, 2016
Gay Gooners...
The Gay Gooners featured on the Premier League's website this weekend: https://www.premierleague.com/news/147220
Friday, November 25, 2016
King Lear...
Last night Stuart and I went to see the mighty Glenda Jackson take on the Herculean task of performing King Lear at the Old Vic in London's glitzy Waterloo.
Synopsis: Great play. Lousy production. It's never a good sign when people walk out of a show or don't come back after the interval. Here they did - in numbers.
First the good; Glenda the Good...
So Glenda Jackson is back. The ex-Labour MP for Hampstead and Kilburn has made the short walk across Hungerford Bridge from the back benches of the Houses of Parliament to the front of the stage on the Old Vic Theatre. And it's a triumphant return.
Aged 80 and with a deep, sandpaper voice hone both from an illustrious stage career and in the House the wizen Jackson was ideally suited to play this shouty, misguided, vain, and foolish king. She totally steals the show; again and again proving she has lost none of her unearthly powers to captivate an audience. Her Lear is throaty, aggressive and bad-tempered but cleverly avoids playing on our sympathies even when dementia, madness and tragedy strike.
In Act I Scene I when Lear challenges his three daughters to say who loves him the most we know it’s all going to end in tears. But when he banishes one and divides the kingdom between the other two we see a greater tragedy ahead.
Cleverly Jackson injects her Lear with such confidence, power and ferocity that she makes this particular tragedy seem more like destiny than pure happenstance. It's a truly magnificent performance.
However, that is probably all I have to say that is good about this particular show.
To the production itself...
This modern dress take was frankly utterly amateurish. It came across as "sorry about the blue plastic chairs but this is the last run-through rehearsal in our East End warehouse before we move to a proper theatre with proper set and a proper costumes".
Talking of which there was no continuity with the costumes and the standard device of giving visual clues via colour as to who was aligned to whom was completely missed.
And the set... what set? It was dull and featureless.
The entrance at the back meant it took ages for an actor to walk to the front to start to say their lines. Sometimes the other actors would just watch them walk downstage. And in the final scene when Lear is tugged on stage riding on a blanket her wail lasts for over a minute as she gets dragged all the way to the front. Bizarre.
And don't get me started on the interminable setting up and striking of trestle tables behind the actors. It was noisy and distracting.
The storm scene with its billowing black-plastic sheeting? Laughable.
Oh and get that fridge door fixed.
And its long. Three and half hours long. And the time went very, very slowly.
And now to the players...
Fantastic though it was to see a glittering array of well-known actors there was precious little to commend in any of their performances. They were poorly directed, didn't listen to each other as characters but simply battled for the audience's attention shouting their lines at each other and us.
Celia Imrie as Goneril continually mugged off like Miss Babs from Acorn Antiques. She even got some yellow rubber gloves out to wipe the floor.
Jane Horrocks as Regan was unpowered and lifeless.
Rhys Ifans played The Fool far too broadly and not as wittily as his lines deserved. Putting eggshells in your eyes and doing "Grasshopper" impersonations stopped being funny in 1976.
Did we need to see Simon Manyonda as Edmond showing his arse and having a wank? Twice.
Did we need to see Harry Melling (Harry Potter's Dudley) as Edgar stripping off completely and over-acting for England? I noted he also completely threw away the beautiful clifftop speech - a tragedy in of itself.
At least when Karl Johnson's Gloucester had his eyes plucked out and chucked into the stalls he was spared seeing any further embarrassment on stage.
The play itself...
Written in 1606 - or to be more accurate rewritten in 1606 - King Lear was based on an existing manuscript. Shakespeare had made many changes though; turning the happy ending into an utter tragedy, making the traitors' undoing an intercepted letter (a plot device straight out of the previous year's Gunpowder Plot) and changing "I smell the blood of a English man" to "I smell the blood of a British man" to assuage his patron the new King James who was hell-bent of uniting the countries of England and Scotland into a single United Kingdom of Britain.
Shakespeare's theme throughout Lear is 'nothing'. The characters earn nothing, deserve nothing and end up with nothing. And as Lear says to his Fool, "Nothing comes of nothing."
So rather like this production - a was all bit of a nothing (but for Glenda!)
Synopsis: Great play. Lousy production. It's never a good sign when people walk out of a show or don't come back after the interval. Here they did - in numbers.
First the good; Glenda the Good...
So Glenda Jackson is back. The ex-Labour MP for Hampstead and Kilburn has made the short walk across Hungerford Bridge from the back benches of the Houses of Parliament to the front of the stage on the Old Vic Theatre. And it's a triumphant return.
Aged 80 and with a deep, sandpaper voice hone both from an illustrious stage career and in the House the wizen Jackson was ideally suited to play this shouty, misguided, vain, and foolish king. She totally steals the show; again and again proving she has lost none of her unearthly powers to captivate an audience. Her Lear is throaty, aggressive and bad-tempered but cleverly avoids playing on our sympathies even when dementia, madness and tragedy strike.
In Act I Scene I when Lear challenges his three daughters to say who loves him the most we know it’s all going to end in tears. But when he banishes one and divides the kingdom between the other two we see a greater tragedy ahead.
Cleverly Jackson injects her Lear with such confidence, power and ferocity that she makes this particular tragedy seem more like destiny than pure happenstance. It's a truly magnificent performance.
However, that is probably all I have to say that is good about this particular show.
To the production itself...
This modern dress take was frankly utterly amateurish. It came across as "sorry about the blue plastic chairs but this is the last run-through rehearsal in our East End warehouse before we move to a proper theatre with proper set and a proper costumes".
Talking of which there was no continuity with the costumes and the standard device of giving visual clues via colour as to who was aligned to whom was completely missed.
And the set... what set? It was dull and featureless.
The entrance at the back meant it took ages for an actor to walk to the front to start to say their lines. Sometimes the other actors would just watch them walk downstage. And in the final scene when Lear is tugged on stage riding on a blanket her wail lasts for over a minute as she gets dragged all the way to the front. Bizarre.
And don't get me started on the interminable setting up and striking of trestle tables behind the actors. It was noisy and distracting.
The storm scene with its billowing black-plastic sheeting? Laughable.
Oh and get that fridge door fixed.
And its long. Three and half hours long. And the time went very, very slowly.
And now to the players...
Fantastic though it was to see a glittering array of well-known actors there was precious little to commend in any of their performances. They were poorly directed, didn't listen to each other as characters but simply battled for the audience's attention shouting their lines at each other and us.
Celia Imrie as Goneril continually mugged off like Miss Babs from Acorn Antiques. She even got some yellow rubber gloves out to wipe the floor.
Jane Horrocks as Regan was unpowered and lifeless.
Rhys Ifans played The Fool far too broadly and not as wittily as his lines deserved. Putting eggshells in your eyes and doing "Grasshopper" impersonations stopped being funny in 1976.
Did we need to see Simon Manyonda as Edmond showing his arse and having a wank? Twice.
Did we need to see Harry Melling (Harry Potter's Dudley) as Edgar stripping off completely and over-acting for England? I noted he also completely threw away the beautiful clifftop speech - a tragedy in of itself.
At least when Karl Johnson's Gloucester had his eyes plucked out and chucked into the stalls he was spared seeing any further embarrassment on stage.
The play itself...
Written in 1606 - or to be more accurate rewritten in 1606 - King Lear was based on an existing manuscript. Shakespeare had made many changes though; turning the happy ending into an utter tragedy, making the traitors' undoing an intercepted letter (a plot device straight out of the previous year's Gunpowder Plot) and changing "I smell the blood of a English man" to "I smell the blood of a British man" to assuage his patron the new King James who was hell-bent of uniting the countries of England and Scotland into a single United Kingdom of Britain.
Shakespeare's theme throughout Lear is 'nothing'. The characters earn nothing, deserve nothing and end up with nothing. And as Lear says to his Fool, "Nothing comes of nothing."
So rather like this production - a was all bit of a nothing (but for Glenda!)
Thursday, November 24, 2016
Brian Blessed...
My mate Rob was stood outside a London hostelry one evening when who should walk by on the other side of the street but the legend that is Brian Blessed.
Rob, being a bit of a lad sometimes, shouts "Gordon's Alive!" at the top of his voice, just as Brian disappears around the corner - to the amusement of his drinking buddies. As the laughter died down, Brian re-appeared back around the corner and at the top of HIS voice, shouted:
"CCCCCCUUUUUUNNNNNNTTTTTTT!!!!"
Rob, being a bit of a lad sometimes, shouts "Gordon's Alive!" at the top of his voice, just as Brian disappears around the corner - to the amusement of his drinking buddies. As the laughter died down, Brian re-appeared back around the corner and at the top of HIS voice, shouted:
"CCCCCCUUUUUUNNNNNNTTTTTTT!!!!"
Wednesday, November 23, 2016
Tuesday, November 22, 2016
Lazarus...
Last Friday night Stuart and I went to see new musical Lazarus at the King's Cross Theatre in London's glitzy King's Cross.
Synopsis: Sub-standard Bowie karaoke with hammy acting in-between. A sad epitaph to a great singer. Dreadful. Simply dreadful.
A wealthy recluse - Thomas Jerome Newton - the stranded alien protagonist of the 1976 film "The Man Who Fell to Earth" is dying but somehow not dead, and sits atop his New York tower, hallucinating about his past and the music of David Bowie.
Sometimes you get to see talented people perform great material. Which is great.
Sometimes you get to see talented people perform weak material. Which is a shame.
But occasionally you get to see talented people perform great material weakly. Which is more than just a shame. Because it's an opportunity utterly wasted. And so it was with Lazarus.
For the original Bowie songs - Changes, Absolute Beginners, Sound and Vision, Heroes etc. - are great. And the actors including the wonderful Michael C Hall, the co-writer Enda Walsh and the director Ivo van Hove - are all very talented too. So where does it all go wrong here?
Well, let's start with the show-tunes versions of the classics. This is a big misstep. Not that we have a jazz hands version of The Man Who Sold the World exactly - but almost! And giving it loads of shoulder as you croon a slowed down Changes doesn't make it any more meaningful even if you did have mousy hair - which you don't. And we collectively cringed at a spoken-word over-enunciated Life On Mars? that would even make Eliza Doolittle blush. And don't get me started on the staccato Heroes - it was done way better in Moulin Rouge!
The back projection was excellent and band played very well. And if we had come to see a Bowie tribute gig I perhaps could have been more forgiving. But we hadn't. We'd come to see a a drama with music, paid through the nose and frankly felt ripped off.
I know Bowie was involved with the original production but this was just bewildering and frustrating. And at times just plain silly. Slide around the stage in a pool of milk anyone?
Hard to recommend. There were lots of yawns near us.
Synopsis: Sub-standard Bowie karaoke with hammy acting in-between. A sad epitaph to a great singer. Dreadful. Simply dreadful.
A wealthy recluse - Thomas Jerome Newton - the stranded alien protagonist of the 1976 film "The Man Who Fell to Earth" is dying but somehow not dead, and sits atop his New York tower, hallucinating about his past and the music of David Bowie.
Sometimes you get to see talented people perform great material. Which is great.
Sometimes you get to see talented people perform weak material. Which is a shame.
But occasionally you get to see talented people perform great material weakly. Which is more than just a shame. Because it's an opportunity utterly wasted. And so it was with Lazarus.
For the original Bowie songs - Changes, Absolute Beginners, Sound and Vision, Heroes etc. - are great. And the actors including the wonderful Michael C Hall, the co-writer Enda Walsh and the director Ivo van Hove - are all very talented too. So where does it all go wrong here?
Well, let's start with the show-tunes versions of the classics. This is a big misstep. Not that we have a jazz hands version of The Man Who Sold the World exactly - but almost! And giving it loads of shoulder as you croon a slowed down Changes doesn't make it any more meaningful even if you did have mousy hair - which you don't. And we collectively cringed at a spoken-word over-enunciated Life On Mars? that would even make Eliza Doolittle blush. And don't get me started on the staccato Heroes - it was done way better in Moulin Rouge!
The back projection was excellent and band played very well. And if we had come to see a Bowie tribute gig I perhaps could have been more forgiving. But we hadn't. We'd come to see a a drama with music, paid through the nose and frankly felt ripped off.
I know Bowie was involved with the original production but this was just bewildering and frustrating. And at times just plain silly. Slide around the stage in a pool of milk anyone?
Hard to recommend. There were lots of yawns near us.
Monday, November 21, 2016
Friday, November 18, 2016
Nice Fish...
Synopsis: Two men out on the ice fishing muse about life. Yes, it's that boring.
Last night Stuart and I went to see Nice Fish at the Harold Pinter Theatre in London's glitzy West End.
Mark Rylance stars in and wrote it. And if ever there was an example of a piece of work where you should not let the star write his own material this was it.
Like some over-long end of year drama school improv night it was self-indulgent, boring, stupid with few laughs.
Mark Rylance is undoubtedly a great actor. And he acts well in this. It's just that it's rubbish.
His co-actor Jim Lichtscheidl struggles with the material almost as hard as the front two rows who couldn't even see what was going on on the elevated stage. They din't miss much.
Avoid.
Last night Stuart and I went to see Nice Fish at the Harold Pinter Theatre in London's glitzy West End.
Mark Rylance stars in and wrote it. And if ever there was an example of a piece of work where you should not let the star write his own material this was it.
Like some over-long end of year drama school improv night it was self-indulgent, boring, stupid with few laughs.
Mark Rylance is undoubtedly a great actor. And he acts well in this. It's just that it's rubbish.
His co-actor Jim Lichtscheidl struggles with the material almost as hard as the front two rows who couldn't even see what was going on on the elevated stage. They din't miss much.
Avoid.
Thursday, November 17, 2016
The Restart Page...
Geek Porn Alert:- If you're addicted to watching old PCs reboot then have I got a website for you.
Fill your boots, reboot obsessives. (Turn it up loud!)
http://www.therestartpage.com
Fill your boots, reboot obsessives. (Turn it up loud!)
http://www.therestartpage.com
Wednesday, November 16, 2016
Washing Machine...
We just bought a new Miele washing machine.
Now I'm not saying it's over-complicated but the instruction book is big enough to stun an ox and when I tried to program our first wash last night it barked at me in German, sounded a klaxon and flashed up a recipe for flaky pastry.
Now I'm not saying it's over-complicated but the instruction book is big enough to stun an ox and when I tried to program our first wash last night it barked at me in German, sounded a klaxon and flashed up a recipe for flaky pastry.
Tuesday, November 15, 2016
Julius Caesar...
Last Friday night Stuart and I went to see the first in the trilogy (but the final for us) of the all-female Shakespearean Donmar productions - Julius Caesar - at the pop-up theatre in increasingly glitzy Kings Cross.
And for us we had saved the best till last.
Directed by Phyllida Lloyd and starring the usual cast of excellent actors the story of conspiracy, assassination, retribution, betrayal and revenge was brilliantly realised.
The modern dress production was - as were the other plays in the trilogy (Henry IV and The Tempest) - set in a single-sex female prison. Nice idea. But it is one thing to have an ingenious concept, quite another to carry it out. Thankfully Lloyd's production is a triumph and proves that female actors can bring a fresh perspective to traditionally male roles. It was witty, liberating and inventive.
Occasionally 'real-life' would interrupt the action with the warders hastily intervening with lock-downs, cell searches and identity lines - and this just made the plot more immediate, more real. The anguish in the play was mirrored by that in the cells.
The use of heavy-metal music to evoke military conflict is excellent too. The drum kit being pushed into battle at full roar is magnificent.
If you like your Shakespeare modern, raw, and loud - go see.
And for us we had saved the best till last.
Directed by Phyllida Lloyd and starring the usual cast of excellent actors the story of conspiracy, assassination, retribution, betrayal and revenge was brilliantly realised.
The modern dress production was - as were the other plays in the trilogy (Henry IV and The Tempest) - set in a single-sex female prison. Nice idea. But it is one thing to have an ingenious concept, quite another to carry it out. Thankfully Lloyd's production is a triumph and proves that female actors can bring a fresh perspective to traditionally male roles. It was witty, liberating and inventive.
Occasionally 'real-life' would interrupt the action with the warders hastily intervening with lock-downs, cell searches and identity lines - and this just made the plot more immediate, more real. The anguish in the play was mirrored by that in the cells.
The use of heavy-metal music to evoke military conflict is excellent too. The drum kit being pushed into battle at full roar is magnificent.
If you like your Shakespeare modern, raw, and loud - go see.
Monday, November 14, 2016
Friday, November 11, 2016
Travesties...
Last night Stuart and I went to see Tom Stoppard's masterful modern classic Travesties at the Menier Chocolate Factory in London's unglitzy London Bridge Quarter.
Synopsis: Tom Hollander is hilarious in this mind-bogglingly entertaining Stoppard revival. Great play: very funny, very clever, great cast, West End transfer. Good see.
In Woody Allen's film Stardust Memories the Martians come down to Earth and say to Woody, "we enjoy your works, particularly the early, funny ones”. Well dear reader, the play Travesties is one of Stoppard's early, funny ones.
Travesties is a genuine celebration of the highly improbable but 100% true moment in European history, when James Joyce (Peter McDonald) was writing Ulysses, Lenin (Forbes Masson) was plotting a Soviet revolution and Tristan Tzara (Freddie Fox) was forming the pre-Surrealist Dada movement all in Zurich in 1917. It’s also a massive, joyous piss-take of it all, with a storyline that involves fashion-obsessed British consular official Henry Carr (Tom Hollander) being flattered by the dour Joyce to star in his production of The Importance of Being Earnest, while also posing as Dadaist poet Tzara’s brother in order to win the affections of Cecily (Clare Foster), a librarian with Marxist sympathies.
From these raw materials Stoppard creates an intricate fretwork of political and philosophical exchanges, jokes so densely packed that when you laugh at one you miss the next three, stylistic fireworks and general high jinks involving an Englishman, an Irishman, a Russian and a Romanian.
It’s all intentionally ludicrously complicated, and flies through a wild host of styles – some sections are in stilted rhyming verse; there is singing; there is dancing; there is an entire scene in the limerick form; there is much in Russian; there are allusions, word-play and parodies; there are bits surprising reminiscent of Monty Python's Flying Circus and Vic & Bob.
Not only this but Stoppard throws in a running debate about the value and purpose of art before morphing his characters into the cast of The Importance of Being Earnest in earnest. James Joyce as Lady Bracknell is a scream.
“to be an artist at all is like living in Switzerland during a world war. To be an artist in Zurich in 1917, implies a degree of self-absorption that would have glazed over the eyes of Narcissus”
In lesser hands, such overload could be insufferable. With this gang, displaying the finesse of accomplished farceurs on Tim Hatley’s paper-strewn period set, the artifice is fleet, funny and hooks you in even as you pant to keep up.
It’s impossible to do full justice to the cast but Tom Hollander is outstanding as dotty Henry Carr, Freddie Fox shines as the insolent Tzara, Peter McDonald is spot-on as an ineptly dressed Joyce (even magicking a rabbit from his hat), and the sung-through showdown between Clare Foster’s Cecily and Amy Morgan’s Gwendolen, a barbed conversational exchange familiar to Wilde lovers but here reprised as if in some demented dream, is alone worth a wait in the returns queue.
If you only know Stoppard from stuff like Arcadia or Shakespeare in Love, you might be taken aback by the wildness, no the Wildeness, of Travesties.
Thank goodness a West End transfer is on the cards – anything less would have been a travesty.
Go see.
Synopsis: Tom Hollander is hilarious in this mind-bogglingly entertaining Stoppard revival. Great play: very funny, very clever, great cast, West End transfer. Good see.
In Woody Allen's film Stardust Memories the Martians come down to Earth and say to Woody, "we enjoy your works, particularly the early, funny ones”. Well dear reader, the play Travesties is one of Stoppard's early, funny ones.
Travesties is a genuine celebration of the highly improbable but 100% true moment in European history, when James Joyce (Peter McDonald) was writing Ulysses, Lenin (Forbes Masson) was plotting a Soviet revolution and Tristan Tzara (Freddie Fox) was forming the pre-Surrealist Dada movement all in Zurich in 1917. It’s also a massive, joyous piss-take of it all, with a storyline that involves fashion-obsessed British consular official Henry Carr (Tom Hollander) being flattered by the dour Joyce to star in his production of The Importance of Being Earnest, while also posing as Dadaist poet Tzara’s brother in order to win the affections of Cecily (Clare Foster), a librarian with Marxist sympathies.
From these raw materials Stoppard creates an intricate fretwork of political and philosophical exchanges, jokes so densely packed that when you laugh at one you miss the next three, stylistic fireworks and general high jinks involving an Englishman, an Irishman, a Russian and a Romanian.
It’s all intentionally ludicrously complicated, and flies through a wild host of styles – some sections are in stilted rhyming verse; there is singing; there is dancing; there is an entire scene in the limerick form; there is much in Russian; there are allusions, word-play and parodies; there are bits surprising reminiscent of Monty Python's Flying Circus and Vic & Bob.
Not only this but Stoppard throws in a running debate about the value and purpose of art before morphing his characters into the cast of The Importance of Being Earnest in earnest. James Joyce as Lady Bracknell is a scream.
“to be an artist at all is like living in Switzerland during a world war. To be an artist in Zurich in 1917, implies a degree of self-absorption that would have glazed over the eyes of Narcissus”
In lesser hands, such overload could be insufferable. With this gang, displaying the finesse of accomplished farceurs on Tim Hatley’s paper-strewn period set, the artifice is fleet, funny and hooks you in even as you pant to keep up.
It’s impossible to do full justice to the cast but Tom Hollander is outstanding as dotty Henry Carr, Freddie Fox shines as the insolent Tzara, Peter McDonald is spot-on as an ineptly dressed Joyce (even magicking a rabbit from his hat), and the sung-through showdown between Clare Foster’s Cecily and Amy Morgan’s Gwendolen, a barbed conversational exchange familiar to Wilde lovers but here reprised as if in some demented dream, is alone worth a wait in the returns queue.
If you only know Stoppard from stuff like Arcadia or Shakespeare in Love, you might be taken aback by the wildness, no the Wildeness, of Travesties.
Thank goodness a West End transfer is on the cards – anything less would have been a travesty.
Go see.
Thursday, November 10, 2016
Wednesday, November 09, 2016
President Trump...
I feel sick. The rise of the 'populists' continues unabated across the Western world. We have been let down badly by our current crop of politicians who have shown no vision, no leadership. That void has been filled by the town fool.
General population: "The current Establishment has let me down. All of it. The unaccountable government, corrupt politicians, paedo church, and fat-cat banking have all let me down. So they all deserve a good kicking. And don't get me started on immigrants! I feel I have great power now with my Twitter and my Facebook but how can I wield it? I know, X-Factor has shown me the way!"
The Establishment: "It's time to vote."
General population: "Right, let's vote for Donald Trump, Brexit, Ed Balls and Boaty McBoatface. That'll show 'em!"
The Establishment: "You're idiots."
General population: "The current Establishment has let me down. All of it. The unaccountable government, corrupt politicians, paedo church, and fat-cat banking have all let me down. So they all deserve a good kicking. And don't get me started on immigrants! I feel I have great power now with my Twitter and my Facebook but how can I wield it? I know, X-Factor has shown me the way!"
The Establishment: "It's time to vote."
General population: "Right, let's vote for Donald Trump, Brexit, Ed Balls and Boaty McBoatface. That'll show 'em!"
The Establishment: "You're idiots."
Tuesday, November 08, 2016
Washing Machine...
My old washing machine has broken down. Boo!
I've ordered a new one though! Hurray!
It's not coming until next Tuesday though! Boo!
It's being delivered and installed by John Lewis and they'll take my old one away too! Hurray!
It's costing me an arm and leg though! Boo!
http://www.johnlewis.com/miele-wkr-571-wps-washing-machine-9kg-load-a-energy-rating-1600rpm-spin-white/p2541443
I've ordered a new one though! Hurray!
It's not coming until next Tuesday though! Boo!
It's being delivered and installed by John Lewis and they'll take my old one away too! Hurray!
It's costing me an arm and leg though! Boo!
http://www.johnlewis.com/miele-wkr-571-wps-washing-machine-9kg-load-a-energy-rating-1600rpm-spin-white/p2541443
Monday, November 07, 2016
Amadeus...
On Friday night Stuart and I went to see Amadeus at the Olivier Theatre on London's glitzy South Bank.
Synopsis: Great revival of a great play. It's annoying Mozart vs mediocre Salieri - with the questionable message that envy is sorely an affliction of the second-rate.
Thirty-seven years after its highly acclaimed and celebrated premiere, Peter Shaffer’s Amadeus has returned to the Olivier stage in a bold, boisterous, and masterful production. Michael Longhurst, who directed Nick Payne’s Constellations, colours Shaffer’s epic tale with both pomp and irreverence: the world of Mozart moves effortlessly from the vulgar to the sublime. With the Southbank Sinfonia beautifully accompanying throughout, Amadeus is high drama and symphonic storytelling done at its best. The icing on the cake is the excerpts of Mozart’s masterpieces presented in gorgeous splendour including snippets of The Magic Flute, The Marriage of Figaro, and Don Giovanni.
Lucian Msamati from this year’s Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom leads as Antonio Salieri - the “patron saint of mediocrities”. Msamati is a stoic, calculated power, who only cracks when listening to Mozart’s music, turning tender and vulnerable. Adam Gillen as Mozart on the other hand is perfectly haughty, infantile, and erratic. He stamps about with a rebellious attitude, but also displays a dependence on others that not only evokes pity but compassion. Both are opposite yet equally astonishing performances that complement and, just as with their characters themselves, almost rely on each other.
History, legend, scandal, and music make up the components of Shaffer’s prodigious script. As upstart young talent Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart galvanises Vienna with his remarkable music, established composer Antonio Salieri is consumed by jealousy. It is a searing meditation on genius, rivalry, and what it means to be immortal.
The play starts as, disregarding the fourth wall, Salieri tells us about his career, a success story tainted only by the fact that he is acutely aware of his own meagre talents, and acutely aware of young Mozart’s genius. He wants to kill him.
Adam Gillen’s white-hot Mozart is almost too much at first, seemingly channelling The Young Ones as he farts and froths and shrieks across the stage. On one level it is virtuosic – here is the simpering, giggling, infantile enfant terrible who is so busy casually showing off, he fails to notice how many of the stuffy courtiers standing around him are being permanently alienated. Gillen, with a shock of bright blonde hair, and a baby-voice that would make the most tolerant type want to throttle him, pushes Mozart’s insouciance so far that he’s often loping about the place with a Quasimodo-like gait
Good though Gillen is there is surely a limit to how much an audience can take however. As he renders every last syllable and spits it through a mangle so piercingly boorish that by the end you would be forgiven for thinking Salieri more a fumigator than an avenger. I realise we are seeing Mozart through Salieri’s memory, not the real Mozart, but that doesn’t make it any less agonising to share a theatre with.
A master stroke of the production is to make the Southbank Sinfonia actually part of the action. They don't only play Mozart, they act with Mozart too. Although at times this creates certain undeniable problems: a chorus engaged in a 21st century rave to a remixed Symphony No.25 runs perilously close to adding little while trying too hard. But at other times it reaps scintillating rewards: at the play’s turning point the entire set seems to advance towards the audience on a prostrate Salieri as the Mass in C minor rises in crescendo, one of the finest unities of sound, visuals and plotting I have ever seen done at the National.
All in all, it was a wonderful evening with glorious performances with my only slight niggle being Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart himself. Jess, what a smug twat!
Synopsis: Great revival of a great play. It's annoying Mozart vs mediocre Salieri - with the questionable message that envy is sorely an affliction of the second-rate.
Thirty-seven years after its highly acclaimed and celebrated premiere, Peter Shaffer’s Amadeus has returned to the Olivier stage in a bold, boisterous, and masterful production. Michael Longhurst, who directed Nick Payne’s Constellations, colours Shaffer’s epic tale with both pomp and irreverence: the world of Mozart moves effortlessly from the vulgar to the sublime. With the Southbank Sinfonia beautifully accompanying throughout, Amadeus is high drama and symphonic storytelling done at its best. The icing on the cake is the excerpts of Mozart’s masterpieces presented in gorgeous splendour including snippets of The Magic Flute, The Marriage of Figaro, and Don Giovanni.
Lucian Msamati from this year’s Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom leads as Antonio Salieri - the “patron saint of mediocrities”. Msamati is a stoic, calculated power, who only cracks when listening to Mozart’s music, turning tender and vulnerable. Adam Gillen as Mozart on the other hand is perfectly haughty, infantile, and erratic. He stamps about with a rebellious attitude, but also displays a dependence on others that not only evokes pity but compassion. Both are opposite yet equally astonishing performances that complement and, just as with their characters themselves, almost rely on each other.
History, legend, scandal, and music make up the components of Shaffer’s prodigious script. As upstart young talent Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart galvanises Vienna with his remarkable music, established composer Antonio Salieri is consumed by jealousy. It is a searing meditation on genius, rivalry, and what it means to be immortal.
The play starts as, disregarding the fourth wall, Salieri tells us about his career, a success story tainted only by the fact that he is acutely aware of his own meagre talents, and acutely aware of young Mozart’s genius. He wants to kill him.
Adam Gillen’s white-hot Mozart is almost too much at first, seemingly channelling The Young Ones as he farts and froths and shrieks across the stage. On one level it is virtuosic – here is the simpering, giggling, infantile enfant terrible who is so busy casually showing off, he fails to notice how many of the stuffy courtiers standing around him are being permanently alienated. Gillen, with a shock of bright blonde hair, and a baby-voice that would make the most tolerant type want to throttle him, pushes Mozart’s insouciance so far that he’s often loping about the place with a Quasimodo-like gait
Good though Gillen is there is surely a limit to how much an audience can take however. As he renders every last syllable and spits it through a mangle so piercingly boorish that by the end you would be forgiven for thinking Salieri more a fumigator than an avenger. I realise we are seeing Mozart through Salieri’s memory, not the real Mozart, but that doesn’t make it any less agonising to share a theatre with.
A master stroke of the production is to make the Southbank Sinfonia actually part of the action. They don't only play Mozart, they act with Mozart too. Although at times this creates certain undeniable problems: a chorus engaged in a 21st century rave to a remixed Symphony No.25 runs perilously close to adding little while trying too hard. But at other times it reaps scintillating rewards: at the play’s turning point the entire set seems to advance towards the audience on a prostrate Salieri as the Mass in C minor rises in crescendo, one of the finest unities of sound, visuals and plotting I have ever seen done at the National.
All in all, it was a wonderful evening with glorious performances with my only slight niggle being Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart himself. Jess, what a smug twat!
Friday, November 04, 2016
Oil...
.
Last Thursday Stuart and I went to see mini-epic Oil at the Almeida theatre in London's glitzy Islington. Starring Anne-Marie Duff as the central and recurring character May, the story unfolds as a history of oil and energy as told in five different sub-sections. Each sub-section is effectively a whole play in itself set at different periods in history and often in different countries. The five sub-sections run sequentially. And we have to make sense if them.
We start off in the 1860s on a meagre candlelit farmhouse as a stranger arrives with a wondrous new kerosene lamp. We then get transported to Iran in the 1930s (oil discovery), the UK in the 1970s (oil crisis), Iraq in the near future (oil war), and UK in the distant future (energy crisis).
Rather like in Cloud Atlas the same characters and actors constantly reappear and common threads weave into each tale. A mother, a daughter, ambition, love and abandonment... And oil of course. Although oil is very much the medium rather than the message. These dramas are all very human. It just so happens that these particular humans work in, or are affected by, the industry we call oil.
It was a brave attempt at a play - our series of plays - with many interesting ideas. But it was equally frustrating and some of the sub-sections were decidedly weaker than others and perhaps could have done with some rewrites.
Ms Duff was excellent thoughout though.
Thursday, November 03, 2016
Winter 'Flu Jab...
If you want to avoid getting ‘flu this winter (and giving it to anyone else!) Boots Pharmacy do the NHS 'flu jab for £12.99.
I’m getting mine tomorrow.
Wednesday, November 02, 2016
Homophobic Friends...
Every single gay joke from 10 series of TV show Friends edited together. It's great stuff but... even though the jokes are sometimes funny there is a point about homophobic attitudes in mainstream media.
Tuesday, November 01, 2016
Alan Sugar Emulator...
1 REM *****************************
2 REM **** ALAN SUGAR EMULATOR ****
3 REM *****************************
10 input "Are you a twat? (y/n)",$a
20 if a$="y" print "You're hired!": end
30 if a$="n" print "You're fired!"
2 REM **** ALAN SUGAR EMULATOR ****
3 REM *****************************
10 input "Are you a twat? (y/n)",$a
20 if a$="y" print "You're hired!": end
30 if a$="n" print "You're fired!"
Monday, October 31, 2016
The Intelligent Homosexual’s Guide to Capitalism and Socialism With a Key to the Scriptures (also known as iHO)...
Last Friday night Stuart and I went to see The Intelligent Homosexual’s Guide to Capitalism and Socialism With a Key to the Scriptures at the Hamsptead Theatre in London's unglitzy Swiss Cottage.
"Have you seen the play?” “No, but I’ve read the title.” Ha, ha.
Synopsis: David Calder plays a communist longshoreman with a death wish and Tamsin Greig is his witty, passionate daughter in Michael Boyd’s terrific production.
Tony Kushner’s prodigious three-and-a-half-hour play The Intelligent Homosexual’s Guide to Capitalism and Socialism With a Key to the Scriptures (also known as iHO) reveals a lot in its full title: this is a work about sex, politics and religion. While it bulges at the seams, it is bracing, in an age of mini-dramas, to find a play that throws in everything from Marx to modern materialism.
In contrast to the spiralling fantasy of Angels in America, Kushner has written a piece that relies on the tradition of American family drama. The setting is New York in 2007 and Gus, a retired Brooklyn longshoreman and devout communist, has called his clan together to announce his plan to sell his house and then kill himself. This causes varying degrees of shock to his three offspring. Empty (short for Maria Teresa) is a labour lawyer with a pregnant lesbian partner. Pill (otherwise Pier Luigi) is a gay teacher torn between his long-term academic lover and a young Yale-educated rent-boy. V (short for Vito) is a hetero building-contractor and much the angriest. Watching over proceedings with eerie calm is Gus’s sister, Clio, a one-time nun and Maoist.
And if you think that all sounds a bit like Amazon's Prime's Transparent you'd be right. It's that good.
It is easy to itemise the flaws in Kushner’s concept. At one point, he resorts to a plot device straight out of The Cherry Orchard. The religious element, in that the partners of both Empty and Pill study faith without practising it, often seems tacked on. And you wonder how many lovers discuss commodity fetishism in the heat of passion. But the play, which makes constant use of overlapping dialogue to convey family tensions, has a furious energy and deals with the disillusion in an Italian-American community, and by implication a whole society, whose dreams have not been realised.
Kushner is at his best when he deals directly with politics in a series of father-child exchanges. The most powerful comes when Gus is confronted by Empty over his planned suicide. He may have Alzheimer’s but it is clear that his death wish is driven by despair over revolutionary failure: as a union man, he fought for a guaranteed annual income for longshoremen only to find it never achieved the radical change he longed for. Meanwhile Empty is an ardent revisionist who cites the numerous incremental benefits brought about by political action. It is a classic battle between the revolutionary and the reformer and has echoes of the father-daughter conflicts in Shaw’s Major Barbara.
Kushner’s play, which is both vivid and untidy, is given a terrific production by Michael Boyd. David Calder’s Gus has the right mix of gravitas and rumbling embitterment. Tamsin Greig as Empty is sharp, witty and passionate in her gradualism and there are equally strong performances from Richard Clothier as the chronically indecisive Pill and Lex Shrapnel as the recklessly impulsive V. But the performance that draws the eye in this tumultuous family battle is that of Sara Kestelman as the ironically watchful Clio. There are many better-organised plays around, but Kushner’s has the rare capacity to make ideas fizz.
"Have you seen the play?” “No, but I’ve read the title.” Ha, ha.
Synopsis: David Calder plays a communist longshoreman with a death wish and Tamsin Greig is his witty, passionate daughter in Michael Boyd’s terrific production.
Tony Kushner’s prodigious three-and-a-half-hour play The Intelligent Homosexual’s Guide to Capitalism and Socialism With a Key to the Scriptures (also known as iHO) reveals a lot in its full title: this is a work about sex, politics and religion. While it bulges at the seams, it is bracing, in an age of mini-dramas, to find a play that throws in everything from Marx to modern materialism.
In contrast to the spiralling fantasy of Angels in America, Kushner has written a piece that relies on the tradition of American family drama. The setting is New York in 2007 and Gus, a retired Brooklyn longshoreman and devout communist, has called his clan together to announce his plan to sell his house and then kill himself. This causes varying degrees of shock to his three offspring. Empty (short for Maria Teresa) is a labour lawyer with a pregnant lesbian partner. Pill (otherwise Pier Luigi) is a gay teacher torn between his long-term academic lover and a young Yale-educated rent-boy. V (short for Vito) is a hetero building-contractor and much the angriest. Watching over proceedings with eerie calm is Gus’s sister, Clio, a one-time nun and Maoist.
And if you think that all sounds a bit like Amazon's Prime's Transparent you'd be right. It's that good.
It is easy to itemise the flaws in Kushner’s concept. At one point, he resorts to a plot device straight out of The Cherry Orchard. The religious element, in that the partners of both Empty and Pill study faith without practising it, often seems tacked on. And you wonder how many lovers discuss commodity fetishism in the heat of passion. But the play, which makes constant use of overlapping dialogue to convey family tensions, has a furious energy and deals with the disillusion in an Italian-American community, and by implication a whole society, whose dreams have not been realised.
Kushner is at his best when he deals directly with politics in a series of father-child exchanges. The most powerful comes when Gus is confronted by Empty over his planned suicide. He may have Alzheimer’s but it is clear that his death wish is driven by despair over revolutionary failure: as a union man, he fought for a guaranteed annual income for longshoremen only to find it never achieved the radical change he longed for. Meanwhile Empty is an ardent revisionist who cites the numerous incremental benefits brought about by political action. It is a classic battle between the revolutionary and the reformer and has echoes of the father-daughter conflicts in Shaw’s Major Barbara.
Kushner’s play, which is both vivid and untidy, is given a terrific production by Michael Boyd. David Calder’s Gus has the right mix of gravitas and rumbling embitterment. Tamsin Greig as Empty is sharp, witty and passionate in her gradualism and there are equally strong performances from Richard Clothier as the chronically indecisive Pill and Lex Shrapnel as the recklessly impulsive V. But the performance that draws the eye in this tumultuous family battle is that of Sara Kestelman as the ironically watchful Clio. There are many better-organised plays around, but Kushner’s has the rare capacity to make ideas fizz.
Friday, October 28, 2016
Shopping and Fucking...
Last night Stuart and I went to the Lyric Theatre in London's glitzy Hammersmith to see Sean Holmes's production of Mark Ravenhill's debut play Shopping and Fucking - or Shopping and Fucking Dreadful as we called it by the end.
OK, that's a bit unfair. The play - when I saw it back in 1996 - was a scathing, semi-abstract satire on the transformation of human relationships from the emotional to the transactional. Ravenhill was making the point that in this world of consumerism our emotions have been replaced by transaction: you pay for sex, you pay for companionship, you pay for drugs, and you pay to feel. And nowhere was this happening more than in the gay world of the 1990s. So that's what he wrote about. The world he knew at that time; sex, drugs and clubbing and how it was all about the money.
Only this production sadly drowns any of this socio-economic commentary in a sea of brightly coloured, flashy, empty noise. The three main characters no longer live in a bed-sit and spend their night going out clubbing but inhabit a TV studio piled high with cheap products which they try and sell. And in a masterful misstep by Holmes the cast are forced to break character (and the fourth wall) to try and sell this tat directly to the audience. This audience interaction is weak, unnecessary and brings any suspension of disbelief crashing to the plastic floor. Yeah, we know about consumerism. We paid to get in!
There is real drama to be had in the play as the rent boy who is being abused tries to find love. But this message gets somewhat lost when the actor playing him turns to the woman in Row A dressed in only his pants and tries to sell her a Chicken Curry Pot Noodle.
Sadly the production values are simply rubbish too - the set looks like a tip and the lighting is crude and (ironically) unilluminating. There were audible groans towards the end as each fresh stage gimmick was trotted out. 'Slow dance with an audience member' had people avoiding eye contact with the cast unless they got chosen. A few people left. If we weren’t mid-row we might have followed them.
I can't put it better than one critic pointing out it's like "an acid-drenched collision of ‘The Word’ and the QVC shopping channel."
In the end the thing that sealed the terrible evening for me was the constant karaoke interludes. Randomly the cast were called upon to sing a pop classic at the audience - Labi Siffre's Something Inside So Strong, East 17's Stay Another Day - you get the idea. But to suggestion that music is as hollow as shopping and fucking is certainly not a point Ravenhill ever tried to make in this piece. Why torture us with it? So at that point - I was out.
This play deserves better. Much better.
OK, that's a bit unfair. The play - when I saw it back in 1996 - was a scathing, semi-abstract satire on the transformation of human relationships from the emotional to the transactional. Ravenhill was making the point that in this world of consumerism our emotions have been replaced by transaction: you pay for sex, you pay for companionship, you pay for drugs, and you pay to feel. And nowhere was this happening more than in the gay world of the 1990s. So that's what he wrote about. The world he knew at that time; sex, drugs and clubbing and how it was all about the money.
Only this production sadly drowns any of this socio-economic commentary in a sea of brightly coloured, flashy, empty noise. The three main characters no longer live in a bed-sit and spend their night going out clubbing but inhabit a TV studio piled high with cheap products which they try and sell. And in a masterful misstep by Holmes the cast are forced to break character (and the fourth wall) to try and sell this tat directly to the audience. This audience interaction is weak, unnecessary and brings any suspension of disbelief crashing to the plastic floor. Yeah, we know about consumerism. We paid to get in!
There is real drama to be had in the play as the rent boy who is being abused tries to find love. But this message gets somewhat lost when the actor playing him turns to the woman in Row A dressed in only his pants and tries to sell her a Chicken Curry Pot Noodle.
Sadly the production values are simply rubbish too - the set looks like a tip and the lighting is crude and (ironically) unilluminating. There were audible groans towards the end as each fresh stage gimmick was trotted out. 'Slow dance with an audience member' had people avoiding eye contact with the cast unless they got chosen. A few people left. If we weren’t mid-row we might have followed them.
I can't put it better than one critic pointing out it's like "an acid-drenched collision of ‘The Word’ and the QVC shopping channel."
In the end the thing that sealed the terrible evening for me was the constant karaoke interludes. Randomly the cast were called upon to sing a pop classic at the audience - Labi Siffre's Something Inside So Strong, East 17's Stay Another Day - you get the idea. But to suggestion that music is as hollow as shopping and fucking is certainly not a point Ravenhill ever tried to make in this piece. Why torture us with it? So at that point - I was out.
This play deserves better. Much better.
Friday, October 21, 2016
Réunion: Au Revoir...
Goodbye fair Réunion, it's been fab. With your tropical beaches, your high mountains, your crashing waves, your blue sea, your lush green forests, and your amazing people. Till the next time.
Thursday, October 20, 2016
Réunion: The Volcano...
Réunion Island's most iconic landmark is Piton de la Fournaise, a climbable active volcano standing 2,632m (8,635 ft.).
Have you ever climbed a volcano? No, us neither. Well, we have now and I'm not sure I can wholeheartedly recommended it.
Imagine walking over marbles for 5 and a half hours. Ok, not just marbles. Marbles and needles. Marbles, needles, thorns and ice. Only these are all make of rock. And at a 30 degree angle. With gaps in between. Big gaps. And lava. Did I mention the lava? And to get to the rocky marbles and needles and thorns and ice and lava you need to first drive for two hours up a windy road so high you are above the clouds, then walk down (and afterwards up again) a rocky staircase over 500m high. And all this in the heat of the beating sun. And when you have walked, stumbled and clawed your way up what my FitBit tells me is 20km of distance and up 622 stories high you see the most amazing sight ever. The crator of the most active volcano in recent history. Well, that.
But what a view! What a sense of achievement! But what sore feet!
I hear people only do it once. I can see why.
Réunion: It's France!...
Réunion Island is a French department in the Indian Ocean. Which makes it France. Proper France. It really does. And don't you ever let me hear you say differently. Or I'll have to send the garçons round.
Réunion is lovely. It's part of the EU of course (you do remember it is France, right?) and as such is way more developed than either its sister island Mauritius or impoverished Madagascar.
Stuart and I came here to see Stu's old college chum Nikki who along with her lovely family have been hosting us. Nikki is so sweet and has been checking our itinerary to make sure we see all the sights in her adopted island. And what sights there are!
We've been up a dead volcano, up a live volcano (more on that later), on a beach, narrowly avoiding some sharks, and touring round the island generally making a nuisance of ourselves.
It's a great holiday destination with much to do! So I'd better get back to sipping cocktails by the pool. French cocktails of course. Because. It's. France.
Sunday, October 16, 2016
Madagascar: Stuart, Jonathan (and other animals)...
Ok, so Madagascar isn't just about the lemurs. Turns out the place is packed with other unique animal species too. Chameleons, owls, iguanas, spiders, preying mantes, giraffe beetles, snakes, geckos, hedgehogs, you name it.
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