Micro Review 71

 

The Fire Cats of London by Anna Fargher (Macmillan Children's Books)

After the splendid Umbrella Mouse books the whole family has been looking forward to this new book from Anna Fargher - her talent for retelling history through the eyes of animals is just brilliant.

This time we've gone much further back in time to London in 1666 and while the book does feature the Great Fire  it isn't quite the main point of the book. 

Plot threads are all about being separated from your family, perilous journeys, the fear (real or imagined) that is in the air regarding people who are different or foreign, and also quack medical ideas plus cruelty to animals in various forms.

When listed like that the books seems very dark and depressing - and also very political, but while, as an adult reader I can see these themes the book is just an adventure story about two wildcats who are captured in the wild, brought to London and then try to escape back to their home territory.

The skill in telling a story with so much to unpick but that remains a gripping adventure is huge and I'm already hoping for another book from Fargher very soon!

Micro Review 2

Mudlarking by Lara Maiklem

Since the whole Coronavirus (Covid-19) outbreak started the one thing I have discovered about myself is that water and water landscapes are very important to me. The three months of serious lockdown became the longest time I have ever not seen the sea, and I think that I would have gone stark staring mad if we hadn't found some riverside walks close to home.

Similarly a visit to London that doesn't include sight of the Thames also feels wrong to me and I can only image Maiklem's relief at being allowed back on the foreshore again.

This book is split in to sections, generally divided by the bridges and Maiklem talks if her finds and the history of each area specific to the river bank. For a mudlarker there are certain things that are 'holy grail-like' it seems as well as each person having their own special treasures, patches and stories to tell.

At a time that you can't travel this is a wonderful read, and it makes me want to comb the banks of the Thames at low tide next time I am on the Southbank with some time to kill.

When we were younger my sister and I did a little mudlarking of our own when visiting our aunt and uncle who lived by the coast in an area that was once a brickworks. The foreshore there was full of curiosities, pieces of china and glass and when the tide (and mud) were right we would comb the area looking for bottles and the like. This book brought back those happy memories too and so another reason why I see this one ending up in my top reads of the year in a few months time.

As I was writing this post a Tweet scrolled by saying that Mudlarking has won the non-fiction Indie Book Award 2020 a fact that has made me very happy!

Travelogue or memoir? Or Both?

Between the Stops: The View of My Life from the Top of the Number 12 Bus by Sandi Toksvig

As a fan of both Toksvig's earlier books and her work on the TV I've been very excited about this book since I heard it was coming and my cup nearly ran over when I was granted an early review copy by Net Galley.

While Toksvig has had an interesting and varied life which would have made a straight autobiography an enjoyable read this book moved away from that and we follow Sandi as she takes the Number 12 bus from her home to the BBC building in central London.

Like the bus this lets the book unfold in a slower, more meandering way as Toksvig talks about her life and the sights she sees from the bus, intertwining these with thoughts on modern life and politics.

The talent in the book is to know how much information to give from each area and how to stop it becoming a travelogue or a 'show off' tome. Toksivg is clearly incredibly knowledgeable and curious (which is why she makes such a great host of QI) but she also knows how to stop the book becoming a book of facts with her use of comedy and self deprecation while she never apologises for her intelligence or her views.

There are a lot of celebrity biographies to read but this one is a cut above the rest, the personal is mixed so well with the rest that I really do feel that I got to sit next to Sandi on the bus and hear all about her life and the history of the areas we were passing.

I do also want to take the Number 12 bus now and see these sites for myself - I'm obviously a real sucker for books that are entertaining and can be used as a travel guide, after all my last review was for the same style of book!

(Reviews from Kentishbookboy will resume soon - he, Mr Norfolkbookworm and I are all enjoying Harry Potter although I'm not so sure his mum is!)

Theatre 2016: Review Thirty Eight

Les Miserables, Queen's Theatre London. December 2016.

This one really is squeezing in at the the end of my theatre going year and was a post-Christmas treat for Mr Norfolkbookworm, me and my parents. In fact we all gave each other the the tickets as Christmas presents!

Les Miserables is always going to hold a special place in our family as this was the first London show my sister and I were taken to. I still remember Dad coming home with the tickets and the anticipation of our grand day out. I think I was about 13 and my sister 8 or 9... I've seen the show twice more since then, once in London and once on tour in Norwich but not recently.

We had a lovely day, seats in the stalls with a great view (they were listed as restricted view but as we are short only Mr N missed a tiny bit of projected writing and despite knowing the show inside out we were still all swept up in the drama of the piece.

Dad and I agreed that it doesn't matter how many times we've seen it neither of us warm to Cosette and always find her the weakest part. We also all agreed that the show is really about Javert and not Valjean!  Every word of every song could be heard clearly and the staging was effective - many times the scene changes were done to expertly that we were surprised to see that they had taken place!

We jumped at the gun fire and wept at the sad bits and all four of us came out of the theatre feeling astounded at how good something so familiar can be.

This is the 2nd time we've had a family theatre outing at Christmas time and Dad is already asking what we can see next year - a new tradition is born, but the bar has been set very high!

Theatre 2016: Review Nine

The Lion King, Lyceum Theatre, London. March 2016.

Many years ago my sister and I saw this but at the time all we could manage were seats right up in the Gods and our fellow audience members had no idea how to behave in a theatre. We still shudder at the memory! Fast forward a few years and Mr Norfolkbookworm sees some of the cast from this perform on Blue Peter and decides he'd like to see the show, all we had to do then was wait for our nephew to be old enough to sit through a full length musical.

That day came and off we all went to London for our joint Christmas presents!

This time we were sat on the end of a row very near the front of the stalls and for my sister and I it was like seeing a completely different show. Those who hadn't seen it were also spellbound! The plot is similar to that of the Disney cartoon but there are just enough asides and modern quips to make the spectacle feel fresh, funny and up-to-date. The cast were uniformly superb and being so close to the stage and aisle just mean that we could see the artistry in puppets and the puppeteers whilst also believing totally that they were 'real'.

The magic of the production worked on all of our party, the sad bits were sad, the funny bits funny and the comeuppance of the bad characters well received, not a weak link at all. A week on and I am still humming the songs!

I'm also pleased to report that the people sitting near us were much better behaved this time!

Theatre 2016: Review Four

Guys and Dolls, Savoy Theatre, London. January 2016.

January and seeing a musical starring Jamie Parker is starting to become a tradition, last year it was Assassins and this year Guys and Dolls. Once more I went in 'blind' so to speak as apart from Sit Down Your Rocking the Boat I didn't know any of the songs and I certainly didn't know the plot. I'd heard that it was about a floating craps game but thought that this meant it had a riverboat setting and not that the gambling roamed around New York.

I think that this is the way to go sometimes as it is a good test for a musical's book - at no point in this show did I feel lost, or did I forget who was who.  The two love stories are very sweet and, despite being writ large for the stage, very believable and the plot as a whole pretty coherent. All of the cast were on top form the night we saw this and they had so much energy - impressive for the coldest night of the winter so far!

The cast were all British but speaking and singing with American accents and I don't think that I noticed once this falter, although I'm not sure they all came from New York!  I thought I was going to find Miss Adelaide annoying as her accent was so over the top but this was needed for the role and she quickly won me over and I was totally on her side, and ready to do battle with Nathan on her behalf.

I think that what impressed me about this was the parity in the roles, a musical about illegal gambling could so easily have been one sided and just had the female roles as an after thought but in this production Miss Sarah and Miss Adelaide were so strong that it was definitely a four-hander. That being said there wasn't a weak link in the cast, either those with speaking roles or the dancers.

The Savoy Theatre is a beautiful theatre and we had excellent seats in the Stalls and although I primarily went to see this because it is one of Rebecca's favourites (and yes because of the male lead) I am so glad that I did go, I came out with a big smile which hasn't gone yet.

The production is coming to Norwich on tour later in the year and I may go again then, although I think that it will have had a major cast change, but something that has left me this happy deserves a second viewing. I will also look out the stories by Damon Runyon that the show is based on.

Theatre 2015: Review Thirty-Five

Romeo and Juliet, The The Royal Opera House, London. October 2015.

Earlier in the year mum and I saw Romeo and Juliet at the Globe and I mentioned then that I'd been writing about the play for my MA.  One of the essays based on the play was actually about how it translated into ballet, the version I talked about was that choreographed by Kenneth Macmillan. When mum and I found out that this adaptation was to be on stage we treated ourselves to tickets and planned an overnight trip to London to see this.

I loved the DVD version that I watched and rewatched while writing my essay but really is no comparison to seeing a filmed version and the real thing.

From the moment the conductor appeared until the last curtain call I was swept away in the story and although our seats didn't give the same close up views that the DVD did I found it more involving.

Everyone always warns you when you go to your first ballet you will be surprised by the noise the dancers' feet make.  Having seen a few contemporary Mathew Bourne ballets I thought I was prepared for this but it was more pronounced in this and I think added something - you really could see how hard the dances were and how effortless the dancers made it seem.

Our Juliet, Roberta Marquez, was such a good actress as well as dancer that I felt she was the real star of the performance we saw.  Not that Romeo wasn't good - and the two had a believable chemistry - it was just that she was outstanding.  Her growth from childhood to womanhood was portrayed wonderfully and believably.

The crowd scenes were also fabulous, being in the theatre meant that I could look all over the stage, not just where the camera man decided I should look, really opened up the scenes and added menace and foreshadowing which helped move the plot along.

The whole evening was magical and I am a firm convert to the world of ballet, however the one thing that both mum and I noticed (and were a little sad about) was that at the end the principals all took a bow but the corps de ballet were not acknowledged at all.  I'll need to see more ballet in order to find out if this is standard practice or an aberration, despite the two bunches of flowers it wasn't Marquez's last night in the role...

There is even a Norfolk link to this outing as Kenneth Macmillan was born in Great Yarmouth!

Theatre 2015: Review Twenty-Two

Richard II, Shakespeare's Globe, London. August 2015.

This was a surprise addition to my theatre going calendar as I was lucky enough to win tickets to this on Twitter. Well I actually won tickets to any Globe production this season but as it is my friend's favourite Shakespeare play (probably) we decided that this was the one we'd see.

It was also my friend's first visit to the Globe after listening to me rave about it for the past few years so I was a little nervous how she'd take to the space - it isn't for everyone after all,  To add to the pressure she'd also accompanied me to see Richard II in 2013 when we saw the RSC version.

I found this production much clearer in terms of plot narrative, starting the play with the coronation of a child  (which segued into an adult very well) showed that this version of Richard was all about a king who hadn't known any other way of life, hence why he was so spoilt and petulant.  The action unfolded naturally after this and there was a lot of humour in the staging, this childishness was also very movingly reprised at the end in a scene that did bring a lump to my throat.

This Bolingbroke was a charismatic and alluring figure, more so than the king, and thus it was easy to see why people did follow him so swiftly.  He also managed to foreshadow his future as shown in Henry IV (parts one and two) which was a nice touch. In this version Aumerle was more of a sycophant to Richard than anything else and his treachery treated very well.

This isn't a play that allows a lot of interaction with the Groundlings and what there was came naturally and wasn't over played, as with the rest of the season however I did find that the space was used a little too much for entrances and exits.

The comic scenes were typical Globe moments and worked wonderfully within the play, they kept the plot moving and were not at all comic asides or pauses in the action. The love between Richard and his Queen was another beautiful thing to watch.

My main criticism with this play remains the same as before - unless you listen very, very closely to the words - you are left not entirely sure why the king is as 'bad' as he is and why he has to abdicate. There is no flowing hair or homosexual undertone in this version and I came away feeling that poor Richard really got the thin edge of the wedge. My friend and I were debating this after the show, and both agreed that occasionally we found his lines to be rushed and wondered if this was a directorial choice and a way of showing his instability and unsuitability...

I am revisiting this play on the very last day of the season and I am pleased to have a second chance to see this play as it is deceptively complicated and there are a lot of little details I want to see again.

Theatre 2015: Review Twenty

Measure for Measure, Shakespeare's Globe, London. August 2015.

I confess that I approached this play with some trepidation,  the play was a set text earlier this year and I wasn't at all sure what to make of it.  Luckily in the hands of the Globe I needn't have worried and this outing has rocketed high into my top ten performances of the year so far.

Measure for Measure is one of the 'problem plays,' both through content and disputed authorship! But as in Taming of the Shrew a few years ago a fine line was steered and the play clarified before my eyes.

Put very simply the Duke of Vienna is tired of his role, his city is out of control and so he decides to appoint a deputy and leave town.  His deputy, Angelo, starts off with good intentions but then proves himself as corrupt as the rest of Vienna. However in this play you can see that Angelo's actions are having an effect and that he is improving the city - before the official start the Yard was full of action, bawdy houses were wheeled on and drunks, prostitutes, corrupt law men and religious pamphleteers filled the area with a show.  These characters continued to pop up on the stage between scenes throughout the first act, but by the end we rarely saw them and the city was a better place... In his personal decisions Angelo may be corrupt and hypocritical but his ideas for the city as a whole weren't all detrimental.

The ending of this play is morally dubious. After preventing Isabella from being violated by Angelo the Duke all but forces her into giving up the religious life for which she was training and into marrying him.  The staging of this version did allude to this slightly - the Duke appeared to realise that his actions towards Isabella were little better than Angelo's, and in the end, it is clearly Isabella who makes the choice for her future.  For me I find the Duke's actions as reprehensible as the court in Merchant of Venice when it forces Shylock to convert to Christianity and I was surprised at the laugh this scene raised in the theatre when I was expecting a hiss...

The comedy was very much to the fore in this production and I liked this, the comic scenes felt very much integral to the story and not at all as light relief scenes between the drama. Once more my slight criticism could be that there was too much action off stage in the Yard but this was rarely actual speech, just added colour and so I'll just recommend this play to anyone who can get to London!

Theatre 2015: Review Eleven

Shakespeare in Love, Noel Coward Theatre, London. April 2015.

Apologies for the radio silence - April has been an important study month with two essays to research and write.  I've broken the back of them now and so time to catch up on other areas!

Way back at the start of the month a friend and I went to London on a whim to see Shakespeare in Love. For me it was a recommended play/film for my Shakespeare's Legacy course and my friend is also studying Shakespeare currently.

This was a delightful way to spend the afternoon, the play followed the film throughout and now that I have spent a few years studying the Bard I found it a lot funnier than I recall. In fact at a couple of points my friend and I found ourselves laughing at lines that others in the audience didn't...

The set for this play was magnificent and very clever as it moved back and forth to show the different locations in which the action takes place.  Some of my favourite parts were very simple, for instance when Shakespeare is in the row boat cast members dip hands in and out of buckets of water to create the sound effects.  The use of the actors to move the scenery was very well done, and I liked the way that most of them appeared on stage throughout. It did remind me in someways of Elizabethan/Jacobean theatre as staged in the two theatres at the Globe but was still modern. It mixed the styles very well.

Sadly this play closed in the middle of April but I hear rumours that it will be going on tour and if it does then I do recommend trying to see it.  It is a fun romp that leaves you with a smile and sometimes that is just what you want from a play. This is the first film-to-play show that I've seen and I think that it worked very well, I do wonder if a lot of this is due to the fact that Tom Stoppard (renowned playwright) wrote the script to the film.

There is also an adorable dog in the play who steals the show entirely in the couple of scenes he appears in - although I'm not sure he deserved the biggest cheer at the end!

Theatre 2015: Review Eight

Man and Superman, The Lyttleton Theatre at the National Theatre, London. March 2015.

There has been a little gap in my theatre jaunts, partly thanks to fear of bad weather and partly because the train line between Norwich and London has been so appalling this winter, however recently Rebecca and I had one of our mammoth theatre weekends in London.  Three plays in effectively 27 hours.

First up was Man and Superman which in its own right is a bit of a big-one coming in at over three and a half hours.  Mainly it has to be said due to the author, George Bernard Shaw, who seems never to use one word if fifty will do and then to say it all twice.

That being said this was still, thanks to the cast, an enjoyable experience.  Jack Tanner, Ralph Fiennes, has been appointed an unwilling co-guardian of his friend's daughter Anne.  He is what in the early 1900s was a new man and not keen on this burden and as a radical thinks himself unsuitable for the role and for romance in general. Anne thinks him ideal for the role and also a great romantic catch.

While the acting, costumes and set were all good I did find that some of the ideas that Bernard Shaw put forward as progressive in his time now felt dated and entirely sexist. Anne is not really an independent and intelligent woman but rather a scheming manipulative one who always gets her own way.  Jack and her mother both see through her but seem unable to stop or change her and as a result I never warmed to her character and really hoped that the play would have a different outcome.

The play is so long because stuck in the middle of the action is a dream sequence where Jack Tanner morphs in to Don Juan and ends up in hell debating philosophy with the devil.  This started well and was wonderfully different from the rest of the play but just went on for too long and in the end I did lose a little of the plot and was longing for Andy Hamilton's version of the devil from Old Harry's Game to appear and put an end to it.

Oh dear - again this sounds terribly negative and this isn't quite how I feel about the play. There was a lot of humour and visually it was a treat. It was also brave to stage the whole thing and without the excellent cast this would have fallen completely flat but I do think that a little editing wouldn't have gone amiss, and I was uncomfortable with the way woman in the character of Anne was portrayed.

Rebecca had an interesting idea - the play should be restaged but with the main characters' genders switched...

This play will be broadcast live to cinemas in May but once was enough for me on this occasion.

Theatre 2015: Review Four

Assassins. The Chocolate Menier Theatre, London. January 2015.

After the previous uninspiring theatre trip and a week spent nursing an ear infection I can't say I was particularly looking forward to the trip to London for this.  Coupled with the fact that my last two plays directed by Jamie Lloyd (Richard III and Macbeth) have been among my worst experiences at the theatre it really wouldn't have taken much to see me call this visit off.

However the lure of the venue and the cast saw me negotiating the complicated rail timetables and heading to the theatre.  I am so pleased I did.

Apart from being about the people who have killed (or tried to kill) the Presidents of the United States I knew nothing about this show at all and got quite a shock as we entered the auditorium through a creepy, run down clown's mouth past a dodgem car into a really grungy old travelling funfair come circus set.

The musical was as creepy as the staging, and I mean that in the best way, I was on edge the whole time and totally unsure as to what was going to happen or how.  The assassins brandished guns with abandon and as the venue is so small to be looking down the barrel of a gun at that close distance coupled with the manic grin of a mad assassin meant that the hairs on the back of my neck didn't lay down for the whole 75 minutes of the show.

I hadn't read reviews or the programme so the small casting twist took me totally by surprise and worked wonderfully.  I didn't come out humming the songs but I know that it will take a long time to let the images of the show calm down in my mind.

Another (sell out) hit from the Menier - now let me go and look at their schedule for the rest of the year...

Theatre 2015: Review Three

Taken at Midnight. Theatre Royal Haymarket, London. January 2015.

It has been a little while since I saw this, the review is late because I saw a preview of the show and also because I was unwell the week after seeing it.

There is also another reason - the old adage if you can't say something nice,don't say anything at all rings horribly true with my feelings on the play.

We had good seats, the actors spoke well and the scenery and use of stage was good. The original story - that of lawyer Hans Litton -  is incredible.  This is a man who put Hitler on trial before he came to power and was then, inevitably, imprisoned once Hitler was legitimately elected to power.

So what went wrong?  For me there was just too much narration and not enough acting, I think in fact that the cast spent more time carrying props on and off the stage than they did interacting with them, or each other. There were two stand out performances that of John Light as Dr Konrad the SS Officer and Martin Hutson as Hans.  The role of Hans' mother, played by Penelope Wilton, should have been a tour de force but sadly was one note and flat throughout.

In the final two scenes I finally became emotionally involved, and the final scene before the interval was shocking but on the whole this made a great radio play but not very inspiring theatre.

Theatre 2014: Review Thirty-Four

Doctor Scroggy's War, Shakespeares' Globe, London. October 2014.

After meeting Rebecca, having a cup of tea, saying goodbye to companion number one and locating our hotel we returned to the Globe for the evening.

We started in the lecture theatre below the theatre for a "Perspectives" talk. This involved Howard Brenton (author of the play) talking about the play and then taking questions from the audience.  The talk tried very hard not to spoil any surprises in the play for those of us who hadn't yet seen it but at the same time gave us a good idea on how it came to be written and some of the research undertaken to formulate it.

I was most interested in the areas of the talk, and questions, that talked about how Brenton wrote the play for the space and the uniqueness of the Globe, and how the audience interaction can both be a help and a hindrance to the playwright and actor.  I was also really pleased to hear Brenton talk about how WW1 wasn't the first mechanised/trench war - he acknowledged the American Civil War! This is a pet peeve of mine - can you tell!

After the talk we had very high hopes for the play and were in our seats well before the start.

The plot follows three people Jack Twigg - a temporary gentleman with a commission in the London Irish Regiment, Penelope Wedgewood - a leading socialite, and Dr Harold Gillies - a pioneering plastic surgeon with a progressive and unorthodox take on medicine and the importance of morale on healing. There are many other incidental characters helping to drive the plot and in historical terms the play focuses on the Battle of Loos in 1915 and the incredible mistake made by high command.

The play purports to be, and the pre show talk lead me to believe, that the focus would be on the dramatisation of the real life Gillies and his unorthodox but effective treatment of soldiers who suffered facial injuries - he was in fact mentioned recently in the moving ITV series The People's War - however for me this didn't turn out to be the case.

For me the play felt like it was put on stage too early - I think that there are three excellent stories to be told, but that to develop them better each needs more space, or a play of their own.  Jack's story is fascinating and I wanted to know more of him in all ways, without spoilers it is also still very pertinent in asking what does being British actually mean.

Penelope undergoes the most radical of changes and has a fascinating arc to explore, especially in the light of last year's Bluestockings and as for poor Gillies...he was played by the ever wonderful James Garnon but was woefully under used and I felt that there was a lot more mileage in his character. It almost feel disrespectful to use a real person in such a desultory way.

My final grievance with the play was the jig at the end, I can't explain why but for me to see people dancing to Goodbye Dolly Gray and Tipperary seemed wrong.

On the plus side the play held my attention throughout the (scant) two hours, I laughed lots and learned lots of new things about a subject I do know well. It was acted brilliantly and the use of sound was incredible.  I hope that perhaps some more work is done on this play and that it does come back again as it is an interesting story, I'm just not 100% sure that at present the play tells it.

Theatre 2014: Review Thirty-Three

Pitcairn, Shakespeare's Globe, London. October 2014.

I'm just back from another of my epic trips to London. This two day stay saw me take in three exhibitions, three plays and a 'setting the scene' talk at The Globe!

I'd enticed a new friend to London with me this time and before we went to the Globe he suggested a visit to see the Magna Carta exhibition at London's Guildhall.  The display was small but we still managed to spend ages looking at the document and trying to understand what it was all about.  We came to the conclusion that it was a wonderful piece of propaganda that seemed to be offering the common man a lot of things but that in actual fact it was firmly maintaining the status quo and protecting the rich! The one surprise for me was how protected women were in the document and how progressive society was towards us.
After this we also visited the Roman Amphitheatre buried below, and again although small was fascinating.  I shall go back and explore other areas of the building in the future.

Pitcairn in the afternoon was another surprise.  Reviews for this had been decidedly lukewarm and I was apprehensive - was my run of great new writing at the Globe about to be broken?

Absolutely not - from the very start I loved the play, the story, the acting and the use of space.  I wasn't hugely up on my historical knowledge of Pitcairn, Fletcher Christian, Captain Bligh and the Bounty but the story was so clear that this never became an issue, without resorting to too much back story narration I understood everything clearly.

My theatre companion is more knowledgeable in this part of history and he also agreed that this was a good imagining of what could have happened and neither of us spotted the twist in the story and the very funny denouement at the end. One element of the plot was very Enid Blyton but such was the story that it just added to my enjoyment. I was impressed that even a play about the Mutiny on the Bounty could get in the obligatory dig against the French!

The play was a bit rude, lewd and crude and I can see why some might not like it but for me it was a great piece of entertainment that made me think and also made me want to know more about the history around this version.  I also adored the jig at the end becoming a South Sea Haka.

Theatre 2014: Review Thirty-Two

My Night With Reg, The Donmar Warehouse, London. September 2014.

Not quite an impulse trip but one that Rebecca and I planned after reading several reviews and realising that this looked like a good play in one of our favourite venues.

We weren't disappointed.  The play is a very clever three act piece featuring six men all of whom know Reg in some way and it then follows their lives over the next few years as the importance of this friendship becomes known.

All three acts take place in the same room and it is very clever how they segue into each other, it is only by paying close attention to the words and body language that you you can see what is actually happening - even thought the play has now actually closed I am loathe to explain too much about this as this is so cleverly done that I don't want to spoil it for anyone who may see this, or who looks for a copy of the film.

The play managed to go from causing tears of laughter to tears of grief in a heartbeat and was totally wonderful, like the best drama it kept me guessing and the third act for me was a real surprise and shock, and I don't just mean thanks to the full frontal male nudity.

There was so much detail and nuance in this play that part of me wishes I'd caught it early in the run and had the chance to see it again but then it was close to being perfect when I saw it and perhaps a second viewing would have spoiled that.

I love the surprise of theatre - every time I see a good play I think 'that's it - I'm never going to see something that good again' and lo and behold the next play is even better...

Theatre 2014: Review Seventeen

Another Country, The Trafalgar Studios, London. May 2014.

It has been an incredible little while for me in May and I've packed a lot into a few weeks. This means that some of the events that happened towards the start of the month are starting to be a little fuzzy around the edges when it comes to details. However as I blog for pleasure and to create a memory for me I'm not too worried about this.

Rebecca and I had another one of our mammoth London weekends recently, and although this time we packed in slightly less than usual due to a mini heatwave we still saw three plays.

The first was the sublime Another Country with a cast of young actors - many of them only just out of college.  You'd never have guessed this and it was a shame that the theatre was over half empty for the matinee, this worked in our favour though as we were upgraded from seats at the back of the auditorium to the third row!

The entire play takes place in a boarding school and has many themes, the main one being that the old boy network rules completely and that to be different in anyway works against you. The school has been rocked by a suicide and there is a lot of soul searching taking place as well as a lot of hypocrisy.  Another plot thread is that one of the character is Julian Mitchell's idea of the Cambridge Spy Guy Bennett and how his experiences at school led him along the path he took.

This last plot strand is often the one focused on most by critics but I feel that in this revival it is a smaller part - mainly because the scandal of the Cambridge Spies is now so far away that many of the younger audience may not have heard of it, and because unlike The History Boys there is no epilogue stating where the boys go after leaving school. The friendships and the hypocrisy are what I drew.

I loved the play, and while I will look out for the film version it is going to have to be amazing to be better than the play I saw.

Theatre 2014: Review Fourteen

We Will Rock You. The Dominion Theatre, London. April 2014.

Some of my earliest musical memories are of Queen songs and they are a band that as a child we all liked as a family.  Watching their turn on Live Aid in 1985 was fantastic and I remember how sad we all were when Freddie died.

We Will Rock You the musical opened in 2002 and my sister saw it in previews, unlike the critics she loved it and over time all of the family has been to see it several times.  My sister and I went to the special concert performed on what would have been Freddie's 60th Birthday and we know all of the words to the dialogue as well as the songs.  However somewhere along the lines we fell a little out of love with it and autumn 2010 was the last time we went.

On hearing that it was closing on 31st May this year we instantly started checking our diaries to see if one last visit together was going to be possible and luckily time and prices worked in our favour.

I'm not sure if the gap in visits made the difference, or if there is just more energy at an evening show than a matinee, but I for one fell in love all over again.  Sure the plot is creaky and daft but the execution is outstanding.  There have been lots of little changes over the years - to me the gags seemed less obviously written by Ben Elton but at the same time not quite as funny.  As the musical was always set in the future somethings have caught up with the original gags and lines have been changed to reflect this - no one really had Twitter or Facebook in 2002 and the iPod/iPhone really didn't dominate like it does now.  Some lines have been changed to fit these in and generally they do work.  My sister was very pleased that her favourite line about Armani/M&S was still there.

For me the music always worked because different people sang the original Queen songs, no one person tried to reach all of Freddie's range and this was still true, however the Galileo we saw wasn't 100% convincing as an 18 year old school leaver thanks to the start of the bald spot that was visible from the circle.  My one disappointment was the start of the second act which used to start so powerfully with the percussion line from One Vision no longer does. A small niggle.

On the whole I can see why the show is closing. The theatre really does need some work doing to it, and by all accounts on many nights it is not full but I am so pleased that I did see it once more and that I had such a good time.  Of course I'll buy a cast DVD should one be produced but it won't be the same...

Theatre 2014: Review Thirteen

Blithe Spirit. Gielgud Theatre, London. April 2014.

I was joined by an old friend, Jo, for this play - she is another person that indulges me in my hobby but in my defence she did already have an interest in theatre and (this time) I didn't do too much corrupting.

Some how or other I managed to get to this play without knowing anything about the story save that a seance goes wrong and a man's first wife comes back from "the otherside" to haunt him.  Unlike some plays where not knowing the plot is a hindrance this made Blithe Spirit a total delight as Coward is a master story teller and I could follow everything whilst still being surprised by the story.

Coming from Kent originally the little details about towns I know well were very funny and added another level of enjoyment to the afternoon. Once I'd got used to the applause every time Dame Angela Lansbury entered or exited the stage I found the play a delight. It was also nice to see a comedy that wasn't farce, yes there were elements but the laughs did rely more on the lines and interpretation rather than slapstick actions.

But...and you knew that this was coming... if there hadn't been a star name attached to the play would it be being staged in London, and would it be selling out?  There was absolutely nothing wrong with any of the play, it was well acted, well designed and funny but for Jo and I it wasn't anything more and certainly not standing ovation worthy.
I also certainly don't think that the premium tickets at over £100 represent anything like good value. I hasten to add that we paid nothing like this amount for our seats and although listed as restricted view we missed very little of the action.

I enjoyed the afternoon immensely and loved the play a lot but it just wasn't memorable and while our seats made this fine if I'd paid more I'd have been very disappointed.

The West End seems to have gone mad with pricing at the moment, and celebrity casting which could be causing the price rises.  I appreciate that it isn't cheap to mount a good production but when one premium West End ticket for Book of Mormon at £152 - through the theatre and not secondhand - will pay for an entire season at the National Theatre or The Globe I feel that something is wrong.  I know a lot of theatres offer day seats but when you live a 2 hour train ride away getting in the queue for these is impossible and the cheap ticket Mondays mean that you have to be on line at just the right time or else...

The train companies offer advance booking discounts and so do hotels - why not the theatres?

Archived!

London and Stratford-upon-Avon

It is coming around to essay time again and this term we can't just rely on books so I've spent some time recently exploring the archives at the V&A in London and those at the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust.

Both days have been really interesting, I work in a library that is connected to the local Record Office and that holds some rare books, images and ephemera but to visit some archives as a customer/student was really nice.

In both places the staff were incredibly helpful both before and during my visit and were endlessly patient with my queries about the catalogues as I tried to locate items relevant to my investigations and I think I have got some useful information.

The nice thing about both archives was the mix of people in them, there were some people doing very serious research, students and others who were almost there on a whim. It made the rooms feel very relaxed and open.

The only sad thing in some ways for me was that the theatre archive for the V&A is housed out at Olympia (in the building above) and not at the museum itself so I didn't get to study in the fabulous on site reading room:

I did spend an hour or so in the Theatre Galleries at the V&A before catching my train home and they were also wonderful - so varied. Everything from a poster advertising a Queen concert to a First Folio Shakespeare. The galleries are free and there is a daily tour which I shall endeavour to take at some point soon.